Installing Snow Leopard on 2012 MBP?

[theBostonian]

I'm on the fence with this, not sure if I should sell my current MBP (early 2011 2.2GHz) and get the new 2012 high end non-retina MBP.

The only thing really stopping me is, I really love Snow Leopard. My current Mac is the first one I've ever owned and I find Snow Leopard to be really great to use, it's responsive, has amazing battery life etc.

Can I install Snow Leopard on a 2012 MBP and install the kext for the graphics et all from the 2012 iteration of Lion onto OS X 10.6.8? In theory, it would in effect be a Hackintosh on a Macintosh.

Would this be a hopeless endeavour and a waste of my time or something worth exploring?

 

[calderone]

Hopeless and waste of time would be accurate.

 

[InuNacho]

Yea, 2011 was the last year for SL. I know people got it running on the Minis, MBPs, and iMacs dunno about the MBAs though.

 

[marzxbarz]

I'm on the fence with this, not sure if I should sell my current MBP (early 2011 2.2GHz) and get the new 2012 high end non-retina MBP.

The only thing really stopping me is, I really love Snow Leopard. My current Mac is the first one I've ever owned and I find Snow Leopard to be really great to use, it's responsive, has amazing battery life etc.

Can I install Snow Leopard on a 2012 MBP and install the kext for the graphics et all from the 2012 iteration of Lion onto OS X 10.6.8? In theory, it would in effect be a Hackintosh on a Macintosh.

Would this be a hopeless endeavour and a waste of my time or something worth exploring?

Give Lion a try. It has had a year to mature so now all the funky kinks are gone. I only notice battery decreasing when the OS is backing up files or archiving. Besides minor enhancements, Lion and SL feel the same.

 

[theBostonian]

Give Lion a try. It has had a year to mature so now all the funky kinks are gone. I only notice battery decreasing when the OS is backing up files or archiving. Besides minor enhancements, Lion and SL feel the same.

I've tried it in my local Apple Store, some of the gestures are awkward and I dunno, it's not as snappy as SL I guess.

I'm not sure why it should be impossible to install SL on a new MBP tho

How do they do it on Hackintoshes?

 

[Icy1007]

Yep, SL will not work on any MBP after Early 2011 models.

 

[theBostonian]

That's not true, people have managed to get SL working on the late 2011 MBPs.

EDIT: I'm thinking I could use this program to install kexts from the 2012's Mountain Lion or Lion.

 

[Icy1007]

That's not true, people have managed to get SL working on the late 2011 MBPs.

EDIT: I'm thinking I could use this program to install kexts from the 2012's Mountain Lion or Lion.

Well good for those people. It's not supported.

Snow Leopard doesn't contain the drivers for the new nvidia or intel graphic cards. or any of the other new hardware.

 

[calderone]

That's not true, people have managed to get SL working on the late 2011 MBPs.

EDIT: I'm thinking I could use this program to install kexts from the 2012's Mountain Lion or Lion.

It isn't going to work.

 

[Trey M]

The reason you like Snow Leopard is because it's responsive as hell and it does exactly what you want. However, if you found some sort of workaround to get snow leopard running on a new MB, then you would lose the responsiveness. Although Hackintoshes are great and I've used some in the past, they're just not as intuitive or as clean operating as a standard Apple product. I feel like you'd be disappointed with it, even if you did manage to run Snow Leopard on a new MB. I know the problem seems small and it seems like it should be easy to get it running on what seems to be an identical laptop, but trust me it's very complicated.

As far as gestures, you can customize all gestures in Lion in settings. I really liked the gestures in Snow Leopard as well and I set up my original Lion machine with those gestures. However, as time went on, I slowly transitioned to stock Lion gestures and now I use most of those, except for natural scrolling. I think that is such a damn stupid idea...it's not intuitive and it's not a phone lol. But yeah I agree with others, I loved Snow Leopard and hated Lion at first as well because it wasn't as clean running or responsive, but it's matured and it's there now. And Snow Leopard will become really obsolete with even less support when Mountain Lion launches next month anyways...

I've tried it in my local Apple Store, some of the gestures are awkward and I dunno, it's not as snappy as SL I guess.

I'm not sure why it should be impossible to install SL on a new MBP tho

How do they do it on Hackintoshes?

 

[yly3]

Like people already said, SL could be installed even on Late 2011 machines. And I am hoping it can be even in 2012 machines, at least the non-retina ones.

I have had for 6 months a top of the line 2011 15" MBP with 10.7.4 WITH a custom Kingston Hyper X Sata III SSD with 480MBps writing speeds and right now I have a mid 2007 15" MBP with a 5400RPM hard drive but installed with 10.6.8

I can assure you that waking from sleep even after being left overnight trully instantaneous, on Snow Leopard machine that is. It really is a 2sec at max. Once the cache. On the monster Lion machine with SSD it took almost 6 seconds overall.

Everything just works, and opening apps is as fast as opening on a SSD. Of course, not all in the same time, but opening Safari/iTunes etc. I couldn't tell the difference. Snow Leopard is trully an Apple OS and I will hold onto it for as much as I can. I also don't like this new boring grey/black themes you find in ML and Lion, SL feels much more pleasent to the eye and friendly.



Battery life is better on SL

 

[SDAVE]

Lion (10.7.4) is fine. 10.7.0 was terrible, though.

Also if you get Lion now, you can get a free upgrade to Mountain Lion. It has some new features and I am positive it will have some bugs at 10.8.0, but I am sure it will be a bit better than Lion.

 

[punkromance]

Well good for those people. It's not supported.

Snow Leopard doesn't contain the drivers for the new nvidia or intel graphic cards. or any of the other new hardware.

Wrong.

 

[vladzaharia]

Wrong.

Err... How exactly is that wrong? The new Macbooks have different hardware which wasn't available when SL was last released. Obviously those drivers aren't going to have been magically added in with the last SL update. The OS is not supported, they're not going to try and keep compatibility with new hardware.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Like people already said, SL could be installed even on Late 2011 machines. And I am hoping it can be even in 2012 machines, at least the non-retina ones.

Nothing inside the kernel of Mac OS X 10.6.x supports Ivy Bridge processors or other new hardware components. So you can forget that option. I recommend that you install the App Store version of Mountain Lion. If you buy a Mac after the WWDC 2012, you can use the OS X Mountain Lion Up-to-Date program:
http://www.apple.com/osx/uptodate/
(A free upgrade for all your Macs.)

 

[yly3]

Nothing inside the kernel of Mac OS X 10.6.x supports Ivy Bridge processors or other new hardware components. So you can forget that option. I recommend that you install the App Store version of Mountain Lion. If you buy a Mac after the WWDC 2012, you can use the OS X Mountain Lion Up-to-Date program:
http://www.apple.com/osx/uptodate/
(A free upgrade for all your Macs.)

Untill I see threads starting to pop out about how ML is so much better than SL and how it is the 2nd coming of Christ I will not upgrade. I don't care for Notification Center and Facebook in my computer. Growl is amazing as it is right now.
I like having notification center on my iPhone.
I don't care for iCloud, I only use it to store my contacts. Internet is not mainstream enough like air to be found anywhere and with decent speeds.

This is coming from a guy who likes to adopt new technology and has been with Lion since day 1.
I am sure there will be a workaround, but not for retina macs

 

[Ccrew]

Internet is not mainstream enough like air to be found anywhere and with decent speeds.

Yeah, that whole interwebs thing is just a fad

 

[iSayuSay]

Lion (10.7.4) is fine. 10.7.0 was terrible, though.

Also if you get Lion now, you can get a free upgrade to Mountain Lion. It has some new features and I am positive it will have some bugs at 10.8.0, but I am sure it will be a bit better than Lion.

Wait .. don't understand your quote. Whether you have Lion now or not, you'd still have to buy Mountain Lion for $19.99. So if your current intel Mac computer still in Snow Leopard, DO NOT upgrade to Lion. It would cost your $29.99 to upgrade from SL, and sometimes next month you have to pay another $19.99 for ML, which render your Lion copy being $30 garbage since you don't use it anymore.

Free upgrade to 10.8 only valid for Mac purchase from June 11th and forth, not because you upgrade to Lion now.

 

[maflynn]

Wrong.

Actually the member is correct. Snow Leopard does not contain the ivy-bridge kexts needed, plus the GPU drivers. The technology has changed sufficiently and apple has not (and will not) update Snow Leopard for the new laptops since there's no need.

 

[SDAVE]

Wait .. don't understand your quote. Whether you have Lion now or not, you'd still have to buy Mountain Lion for $19.99. So if your current intel Mac computer still in Snow Leopard, DO NOT upgrade to Lion. It would cost your $29.99 to upgrade from SL, and sometimes next month you have to pay another $19.99 for ML, which render your Lion copy being $30 garbage since you don't use it anymore.

Free upgrade to 10.8 only valid for Mac purchase from June 11th and forth, not because you upgrade to Lion now.

Don't misquote me.

The point was, if you buy a 2012 MBP now, it will come with Lion. ML will be a free upgrade once it comes out next month.

The OP is not looking to buy Lion, he/she is looking to buy a 2012 MBP, which will come with Lion, and wants to put SL. To which, I say, is pointless as Lion is fairly stable at the moment and ML will make it much better (probably a second revision will be better to wait for).

I push Lion to it's limits sometimes and I haven't experienced any extreme disappointing results. I did have a kernel panic once, but I assume it's due to my SSD.

 

[shurcooL]

Can you run Windows XP on the 2012 rMBP?

 

[joecool99]

Running 10.6.8 on late 2011 2.5GHz. When 2012 arrives this week, will try to swap the hard drive if it will still run.

 

[theBostonian]

Running 10.6.8 on late 2011 2.5GHz. When 2012 arrives this week, will try to swap the hard drive if it will still run.

That's very noble of you but I don't think it will unless the kexts from the 2012's Lion are installed in Snow Leopard.

I think perhaps inquiring on a hackintosh forum may yield more practical insight.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Running 10.6.8 on late 2011 2.5GHz. When 2012 arrives this week, will try to swap the hard drive if it will still run.

No, it does not run on Ivy Bridge processors. The kernel initializes certain processor specific settings within the processor "registers", and Ivy Bridge has many changed registers and other hardware components, which make it impossible to use the kernel which comes with Mac OS X 10.6.x.

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That's very noble of you but I don't think it will unless the kexts from the 2012's Lion are installed in Snow Leopard.

Which is impossible, because the kexts are kernel specific.

I think perhaps inquiring on a hackintosh forum may yield more practical insight.

Correct.

 

[joecool99]

i'll confirm this when i get the 2012 this week.