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lastest imac running snow leopard

T

tzenobite

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 12, 2023
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0
hi to all!
after years of loyalty, my old late 2009 21.5" imac is abandoning me. on two disks i was running usually high sierra and occasionally snow leopard for some retro works, i'd like to do it again with the "new" mac.
the point is: which was the latest imac and mac mini running snow leopard? someone told me mid 2010 for both but i found out online than mid 2011 imacs were shipped with 10.6.6 by apple.
so, what's the right answer?
thank you!
 
Mid 2011 for both - SL flies especially on the 2011 with the i5 / i7.
 
thank you.
better ask the seller for the recovery dvd and make sure it's 10.6.*? i found a 2011 imac online and the seller says it was shipped with 10.7
 
hi again.
i looked at some mac minis on sale online i'm having second thoughts...

with my limited budget i need to choose if buy a high-end 2011 mac mini and make two startup volumes just like the imac, but it will be an old machine anyway, or go for a 2018 model and run snow leopard on parallel or fusion just when i need it (freehand, some vectorworks)
which one of them is the better solution? a 2018 mac mini will run snow leopard decently?

thank you all!
 
Why not consider a 2018 Mac Mini with a new Separate monitor that can live beyond the life of the Mac Mini?
 
You mentioned a 2011 iMac, that shipped with Lion. There was a Late 2011 iMac that shipped new with Lion, but is a relatively-crippled education(?) only model that was missing both bluetooth and Thunderbolt, came with only a 256GB hard drive, and downgraded vid card, and also doesn't support beyond 16GB. I would suggest THAT one is not worth getting, even if you can upgrade most of it. and, of course, there would still be the challenge of running Snow Leopard, on a Mac that is only slightly newer than the Mac that you have been using, yet can't natively boot to Snow L.
 
tzenobite said:
thank you.
better ask the seller for the recovery dvd and make sure it's 10.6.*? i found a 2011 imac online and the seller says it was shipped with 10.7
Click to expand...

All 2011 (early/mid/late) iMacs, MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, and Mac minis which shipped with early builds of Lion are completely capable of running 10.6.8 natively. All are Sandy Bridge models.

Many, especially from July 2011 onward, may have been bundled with 10.7 or even 10.7.1 or 10.7.2, but these will run 10.6.8 — whether you install from a 10.6.7 DVD; install from another Mac on an external drive, followed by moving that drive to the internal of the destination 2011 Mac; or transplanting a build of 10.6.8 on an HDD/SSD from another 2011 (or even 2009) Mac, into the 2011 Mac you’re planning to run SL.

This is what I did when I moved from a mid-2009 MBP running 10.6.8 to a early 2011 MBP which shipped with Lion 10.7(.0): I yanked out that HDD and dropped in the HDD from the 2009 MBP. (Later, I cloned that HDD to an SSD and dropped that in.) Years on, I still run that SSD with the same build of 10.6.8, except it’s now in a late 2011 MBP — a model which (probably) shipped initially with 10.7.2.

Where you will run into trouble are with the Ivy Bridge Macs, which began being sold in 2012. While there are hacks to get SL 10.6.8 to run on them, they will not run without a hitch.

So in short: a mid-2011 iMac which shipped with 10.7(.0) will boot 10.6.8. You will just need to supply that yourself, whether by transplant and/or a 10.6.7 DVD.

As for best plan, given limited resources: the 2011s are pretty inexpensive now, and in some cases might be given away for free on local trading boards (since people just want the “stuff” no longer in use out of their lives). Heck, I’ve even run across Haswell-era 2013 iMacs being given away for free locally.
 
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I can confirm that a Mid-2011 21.5" iMac 2.5 Ghz shipped with a 10.6.7 MacOS install disc (Snow Leopard).
 
tzenobite said:
the separate monitor is a choice i already did, i have to choose which mac mini
Click to expand...
Any post 2011 Intel Mac (including the Mini) can run Snow Leopard in Parallels.

My 2011 Mac Mini is getting long in the tooth, so instead of rebooting it from High Sierra into Snow Leopard natively, I sometimes use my 2018 MacBook Pro to run Snow Leopard in Parallels, as needed.
 
@MichaelLAX

Does that mean one can run PowerPC applications on a 2018 MacBook Pro, by running Rosetta within Snow Leopard within Parallels?
 
MichaelLAX said:
Any post 2011 Intel Mac (including the Mini) can run Snow Leopard in Parallels.

My 2011 Mac Mini is getting long in the tooth, so instead of rebooting it from High Sierra into Snow Leopard natively, I sometimes use my 2018 MacBook Pro to run Snow Leopard in Parallels, as needed.
Click to expand...

Parallels, as with VMware Fusion, is a virtual machine platform. Though handy for some functions, there are fundamental (hardware) limitations when relying on a vm.

As to @Aii ’s question, you’re dealing with a virtual machine which, itself, is relying on a code translation layer (Rosetta). My experience with running SL on VMware Fusion (including on the laptop on which I’m making this reply) is that core hardware features, like audio, video playback, etc., may be compromised. A good example: most vm platforms, like Parallels and VMware, aren’t going to be able to mimic a certain hardware GPU, while the actual GPU on your host device may not have legible drivers/translation for the guest vm to make proper use of it.

In my use-case, as a test example, the production of music on Snow Leopard running as a vm on much later hardware, is a complete non-starter, especially when dovetailing in external MIDI controllers.

VMs are fantastic for things like remote computing and for developer environments, yet it remains a superficial solution for other tasks and functions. A vm, for its benefits, is still not the actual machine/hardware: some functions may (and will) be lost in translation.
 
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DeltaMac said:
There was a Late 2011 iMac that shipped new with Lion, but is a relatively-crippled education(?) only model that was missing both bluetooth and Thunderbolt, came with only a 256GB hard drive, and downgraded vid card, and also doesn't support beyond 16GB....
Click to expand...

A few months behind, but I had the misfortune of using one of these 2011 education iMacs. They do indeed support 32GB of memory without issue, despite what Apple and Mactracker state.
 
I recall installing SL on a Mac that shipped with a later OS. I was running SL on my previous Mac, and had a bootable clone of that installation made with Carbon Copy Cloner. So I just used CCC to copy that clone onto my new Mac, and it ran SL natively without issue. It of course won't work for all Mac/OS combos, but it's worth a try.
 
Last edited:
B S Magnet said:
Parallels, as with VMware Fusion, is a virtual machine platform. Though handy for some functions, there are fundamental (hardware) limitations when relying on a vm.

As to @Aii ’s question, you’re dealing with a virtual machine which, itself, is relying on a code translation layer (Rosetta). My experience with running SL on VMware Fusion (including on the laptop on which I’m making this reply) is that core hardware features, like audio, video playback, etc., may be compromised. A good example: most vm platforms, like Parallels and VMware, aren’t going to be able to mimic a certain hardware GPU, while the actual GPU on your host device may not have legible drivers/translation for the guest vm to make proper use of it.

In my use-case, as a test example, the production of music on Snow Leopard running as a vm on much later hardware, is a complete non-starter, especially when dovetailing in external MIDI controllers.

VMs are fantastic for things like remote computing and for developer environments, yet it remains a superficial solution for other tasks and functions. A vm, for its benefits, is still not the actual machine/hardware: some functions may (and will) be lost in translation.
Click to expand...
Why would you produce music in Snow Leopard?

Or any of the other functions diminished by the age of Snow Leopard such as video production, internet access etc?
 
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