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Installing Snow Leopard on 2011 Mac Mini

MarkN said:
I found an upgrade disc to 10.6.8 on ebay, and I have the original upgrade snow leopard disc 10.6.0(?) I purchased the first day it came out. Do you think (speculation only) that 10.6.0 will install well enough on a new mac mini so that I could upgrade it to 10.6.8 with the upgrade disc? The only other full version of snow leopard I see on ebay is 10.6.3.



I will have to give Plex a try. Front Row is a mostly known entity to me, and it is a familiar option. I wish Apple didn't abandon it.
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I don't think 10.6.0 would install well enough as it wouldn't have adequate drivers (even if it was possible). Therefore, your OS foundation wouldn't be stable.

Like I've said, if it doesn't ship with Snow Leopard - chances are that installing any version of 10.6 (even if possible) wouldn't be stable.

Best bet is to get a refurb of the the old generation (the current ones now) when the new ones debut - as the current Mac minis use Snow Leopard.
 
Minicube said:
Rather than bothering with install disks, how about just cloning an updated version of Snow Lep. from another computer onto a reformatted 2011 Mini drive (assuming it would boot SL)?

I'm in the same boat; I need to run SL to run Golive CS2. If the new Mini can't boot SL, I can't use it.

Someone on this board opined that if the 2011 Mini uses the same hardware as the 13" Macbook Pro (which I think is likely and believe has happened in previous updates), then it will boot in SL also. Someone else said Apple will change the boot ROMs and it won't work. I can't seem to get a definitive answer.
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Well, I don't think anyone's going to have a definitive answer until it comes out. ;) If I had to place a bet I would bet that the new mini won't boot Snow Leopard because Apple doesn't want it to...and they're making the thing.
 
Tulpa said:
Well, I don't think anyone's going to have a definitive answer until it comes out. ;) If I had to place a bet I would bet that the new mini won't boot Snow Leopard because Apple doesn't want it to...and they're making the thing.
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I think you're right. On the other hand, I can't imagine Apple would go far out of it's way to make SL not bootable on a new Mini. It's a small group (those that need Rosetta) that would shun Lion, but Apple will lose hardware sales by making the Mini non-bootable in SL; a bigger loss to their bottom line.

Anyway, we shall see, if they EVER release the damn thing ;-).
 
Minicube said:
I think you're right. On the other hand, I can't imagine Apple would go far out of it's way to make SL not bootable on a new Mini. It's a small group (those that need Rosetta) that would shun Lion, but Apple will lose hardware sales by making the Mini non-bootable in SL; a bigger loss to their bottom line.

Anyway, we shall see, if they EVER release the damn thing ;-).
Click to expand...

I hope my bet is wrong there. I have a strong feeling that Lion is going to suck, so I might be right there with you trying to install SL on the new mini even though I don't have any PPC apps. I have a Mac instead of an iPad because I want to avoid the walled garden and sandbox computing nonsense, not because I want a bigger screen. Mr. Jobs doesn't seem to get that!
 
Tulpa said:
I hope my bet is wrong there. I have a strong feeling that Lion is going to suck, so I might be right there with you trying to install SL on the new mini even though I don't have any PPC apps. I have a Mac instead of an iPad because I want to avoid the walled garden and sandbox computing nonsense, not because I want a bigger screen. Mr. Jobs doesn't seem to get that!
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No, he just gets your money. And I suspect he's just fine with that.
 
clyde2801 said:
No, he just gets your money. And I suspect he's just fine with that.
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He has my past money, but whether he gets my future money is in doubt.

Of course, for every one of us on this board wringing our hands over this stuff, there are 5 people who will be like "oh look, it can use gestures! How cute!" camping out outside the Apple Store on release day.
 
Hi,
once you get a Mac with a Lion shipped, you'll have a hard time to even get rid of it.
You can't re-partition or erase the HD from the SL install disk (you get the message that you need a newer install disk...)
Since the Lion is not on the DVD you'll have to install SL on external HD, upgrade with Lion, restart from that external & then you can erase the HD in your Mini (I had done it twice already).
 
Stan Mikulenka said:
once you get a Mac with a Lion shipped, you'll have a hard time to even get rid of it.
You can't re-partition or erase the HD from the SL install disk (you get the message that you need a newer install disk...)
Since the Lion is not on the DVD you'll have to install SL on external HD, upgrade with Lion, restart from that external & then you can erase the HD in your Mini (I had done it twice already).
Click to expand...

If you get a new machine with Lion then there will be a 650MB Recovery HD partition that you can boot to that has the disk utility on it. From there you can erase or re-partition the rest of the disk.
 
Stan Mikulenka said:
Hi,
once you get a Mac with a Lion shipped, you'll have a hard time to even get rid of it.
You can't re-partition or erase the HD from the SL install disk (you get the message that you need a newer install disk...)
Since the Lion is not on the DVD you'll have to install SL on external HD, upgrade with Lion, restart from that external & then you can erase the HD in your Mini (I had done it twice already).
Click to expand...

I recently "returned" to using OS X and had a similar problems under windows. Solution is to use a live CD and wipe the internal HDD with the live CD. In windows I just used Acronis (a backup / restore program) and just started a resotre processs and killing it after it had started. There is also something like Paragon's partition manager that I've used. I suspect that there are similar live CD's for OS X Intel (have not investigated this for the Intel CPU) but for the OS X PPC the finnix.org live CD comes to mind.
 
"once you get a Mac with a Lion shipped, you'll have a hard time to even get rid of it.
You can't re-partition or erase the HD from the SL install disk (you get the message that you need a newer install disk...)"
---
What? You mean you can't just see the Lion disk from firewire target mode on another Mac, and just format and clone over like has always worked in the past?
 
Hi Minicube,
it might be fixed with the 'final' release, but I had already installed 2 diff. Lions (1st 6 weeks ago, 2nd 2 weeks ago) & had a hard time getting rid of it both times.
The SL Install DVD will say you have too old Installer appl. & you can't get rid of the Lion...
I know how to create the 'Install DVD' from the Lion GM (golden master {I think it means}) which I also have now - but that's for another discussion...
 
Stan Mikulenka said:
Hi Minicube,
it might be fixed with the 'final' release, but I had already installed 2 diff. Lions (1st 6 weeks ago, 2nd 2 weeks ago) & had a hard time getting rid of it both times.
The SL Install DVD will say you have too old Installer appl. & you can't get rid of the Lion...
I know how to create the 'Install DVD' from the Lion GM (golden master {I think it means}) which I also have now - but that's for another discussion...
Click to expand...

But how about doing what I mentioned above; a clone of SL from another drive? I never install from DVD. I have a bare bones SL on an external hard drive that I clone over, then use Migration Assistant to import my apps, settings, etc.
 
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