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stevo8

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 3, 2007
333
17
So I gave my aunt my old core duo MBP as she only surfs the web with it and it is basically useless to me. She had a iPhone 3Gs and broke it, now upgraded to the iPhone 4. I went to sync her iTunes with it and it said it requires OS X 10.5.8 which is leopard and the computer is still on 10.4.11. Is the only way to sync her phone with all of her old data thats on her iTunes to pay for leopard or snow leopard, or whats the protocol here?
 
To upgrade from Mac OS X 10.4.x Tiger to either Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or Mac OS X 10.6, you need to get a Retail version of either Mac OS X 10.5 (eBay, 120 USD and more) or Mac OS X 10.6 (29 USD). Mac OS X 10.6 will work with any Intel Mac and will work as Upgrade DVD with Mac OS X 10.4.

And yes, you have to upgrade, Mac OS X 10.6 is the cheaper variant of both.
 
thats pretty lame.. Oh well. Ok second question is, is that the cd drive on the mbp is busted and so I cant get the $29 SL dvd into it. If I buy it online as a download will I have any issues upgrading since its tiger and not leopard? from what I understood SL is a upgrade to leopard for $29, not the complete OS......?
 
thats pretty lame.. Oh well. Ok second question is, is that the cd drive on the mbp is busted and so I cant get the $29 SL dvd into it. If I buy it online as a download will I have any issues upgrading since its tiger and not leopard? from what I understood SL is a upgrade to leopard for $29, not the complete OS......?

You can't purchase Mac OS X as download via any online retailer. You can only obtain it illegally via download, but you still need to burn it to a DVD, as a DVD is needed to install Mac OS X. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard works as Retail DVD, thus it does not need Mac OS X 10.5 on the Mac, it can even be installed onto an empty Mac.

Do you have access to an external USB DVD drive? Or another Mac with Firewire port?
 
nevermind, doesnt even look like they offer it as a download, only as a disc. :(

So basically she is screwed? Fix the drive and upgrade the OS, or she cant use the phone for the most part?
 
You can't purchase Mac OS X as download via any online retailer. You can only obtain it illegally via download, but you still need to burn it to a DVD, as a DVD is needed to install Mac OS X. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard works as Retail DVD, thus it does not need Mac OS X 10.5 on the Mac, it can even be installed onto an empty Mac.

Do you have access to an external USB DVD drive? Or another Mac with Firewire port?

Yeah I have a 2.8GHz imac and some externals.. both usb and FW. As far as a empty mac goes, do I then need to install a fresh version or tiger on the mbp?
 
Yeah I have a 2.8GHz imac and some externals.. both usb and FW. As far as a empty mac goes, do I then need to install a fresh version or tiger on the mbp?

Connect MBP and iMac via Firewire, start iMac in Target Disk Mode and insert the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD into the iMac's Optical Disc Drive (ODD) and use the iMac's ODD as source for the installation via booting the MBP holding down the OPTION/ALT key, which then should give you the option to boot from the DVD in the iMac's ODD.

As I wrote before:


You can't purchase Mac OS X as download via any online retailer. You can only obtain it illegally via download, but you still need to burn it to a DVD, as a DVD is needed to install Mac OS X. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard works as Retail DVD, thus it does not need Mac OS X 10.5 on the Mac, it can even be installed onto an empty Mac.
...

In short: no prior version of Mac OS X needs to be on the target HDD.
 
Yeah I have a 2.8GHz imac and some externals.. both usb and FW. As far as a empty mac goes, do I then need to install a fresh version or tiger on the mbp?

:D sorry, caught you in between posts I think
 
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