Well that's a bummer, considering I just put an SSD into my early-2008 MacBook last night to try and squeeze another year or so out of it before updating.
Mountain Lion comes out this summer (four months at the soonest, seven at the latest), you will not be left out in the cold on things like Adobe Flash, Safari, and iTunes for at least three months to the launch of OS X 10.9. You have time. Even so though, if you wanted to repurpose that SSD, it's not like you can't do that.
And no ATI X1600 support either...
Windows 7 dropped support for that because ATI (AMD) stopped updating the drivers for the Radeon X1xxx series. This is also why Radeon X1xxx series GPU-equipped Macs don't support running Windows 7 as part of Boot Camp. It was assumed that Apple didn't even update the drivers themselves when moving from Leopard to Snow Leopard (and thusly from Snow Leopard to Lion), they just did the bare minimum to ensure that the pre-existing drivers would continue to work and that was that.
I hope they don't drop support for all of the late 2006 iMacs, just because the lowest-end, education-only model doesn't have the right graphics...
(It's also odd, because the GMA 950 systems still support Boot Camp, while the Radeon X1600 systems don't!)
No, they're dropping support for X1600 Macs too. And the reason why GMA 950 cards support Windows 7 with Boot Camp (which is all that Lion offers, itself, aside from pre-existing XP and Vista set-ups) and Radeon X1xxx cards don't is that Intel made Windows 7 drivers for the GMA 950, whereas ATI (AMD) didn't for the Radeon X1xxx.
Hopefully my Core 2 Duo with the Nvidia 320m will still be good enough in the next 3 years.
Given that it's barely be two years old, I'd imagine it would. Apple doesn't drop support for Macs that are less than five years unless there's a single part that doesn't support a required technology (i.e. the Intel Integrated cards from 2006-2008 being weak, and the Radeon X1600/X1900 not having driver support anymore. The 320M is superior in performance to the GeForce 8600M GT that is still supported with Mountain Lion; so I'd say you have at least one more version of OS X before you're left out in the cold.
I have a late 2008 MacBook, and the model number is A1278. I should be good to go, right?
If it's Aluminum, yes. If it's plastic, no.
Was expecting this. My late 2006 MBP (purchased in March 2007) w/ X1600 card is gonna get replaced w/in 12 months anyway, I think. Hoping I can squeeze at least that much more life out of it anyway.
If you're running Lion, you'll easily last another 12 more months. If you're running Snow Leopard, you might start to feel the burn of lack of Apple support, but even then, you should be fine for at least a month or two after Lion's out.
The funny thing is that they have already had a mountain lion OS X. They just called it a Puma
This means that OS X Cougar is fair game.
It probably won't be long until their next new release won't be compatible with any C2D's either
I'd say we have one more release before C2Ds are left out. My guess is that the next one will be limited to Penryn and the Core i CPUs (or to Macs with a miniDP port, for the sake of simplicity), and then the one thereafter will be Core i and newer.
I expect it's more of AMD's doing in the case of the X1600 than Apple. They discontinued driver support for it as Windows 7 released back in 2009.
It absolutely is AMD and not Apple. The X1600 isn't much worse (if at all) than the GeForce 8600M GT and the latter is still being supported. Though I'd figure with the failure rating of the latter, Apple would want to drop support for it ASAP.
So Mountain Lion won't run on a Mac mini I purchased new in 2007 but I have no problem at all running Windows 8 on a laptop I purchased in 2004. Strange. Thanks a lot Apple.
Windows 8 will run like crap on a laptop purchased in 2004. Windows 7 would even run like crap on such a laptop. You do not want a Pentium 4 running anything higher than XP as your experience will suck. Apple sees that and would rather not have people feeling that kind of a burn. Also, it is rare that any OS reigns as long as Windows XP did. So all of this "why are they not supporting my five year old hardware; Microsoft doesn't have that problem" arguments are kind of stupid as they only pertain to one odd-ball example. Do I think that said example should become more of the norm in the computer world? Hell yeah! But it's not.
I have an early 2008 iMac running the Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.66GHz and it's 64bit from top to bottom with 4gigs DDR2 of Ram. My video card is the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256MB of VRam.
And I'm currently running Lion perfectly.
Should I be ok?
Your machine wasn't listed as one of the excluded models. You should read the beginning of the post before you worry.
It's not about consuming more resources, it's about only supporting graphics cards that are capable of open-CL.
The X1600 doesn't support open-CL, or many of the integrated GPUs.
That may be the case, but the Intel HD 3000 on the current low-end Mac mini (as well as the current Mac mini Server), 13" MacBook Pro, and both MacBook Air models wouldn't be compatible as it doesn't support OpenCL. Those machines will HAVE to be supported, so OpenCL can't be the deciding factor. Unless Apple will design something to enable some form of intermediary support to work for those machines, which, I suppose is entirely possible.
How long have you been using Macs? They USED to release a new OS every year, and at $129. Then they slowed that down, to every other year or so in 2006.
Just looking at OS X:
Public Beta Kodiak, September 13, 2000
10.0 Cheetah, March 24, 2001
10.1 Puma, July 18, 2001
10.2 Jaguar, May 6, 2002
10.3 Panther, June 23, 2003
10.4 Tiger, May 4, 2004
10.5 Leopard, June 26, 2006
10.6 Snow Leopard, June 9, 2008
10.7 Lion, October 20, 2010
10.8 Mountain Lion, February 16, 2012
So you can see they had a major revision every year (two in 2001) since the release of OS X, until they got to Leopard. Then it was every two years. Now it's going back to every year. And at $29, I don't see a problem!
I've used every version of Mac OS starting with 7.1.2. I skipped the public beta of OS X, but installed Cheetah the day is was released. Had to do a lot of dual booting back then.
In the time between 7.1.2 and OS X 10.0, I've used 23 different versions of Mac OS, ending with Mac OS 9.2.2.
I bought a PowerMac 6100 in 1994. So in the seven years from that machine running 7.5 to Mac OS X 10.0 in 2001, Apple released
21 OS updates. That's three updates a year!
That release date chart you've put there is wrong past 10.2 as from that point on, you are posting announcement dates, not release dates. That being said, even with Mountain Lion on the horizon, Lion is still the most recent release of the OS until Mountain Lion comes out to officially succeed it.
Well, since that machine came with Leopard, you actually already DID get two more major OS releases: Snow Leopard and Lion. Mountain Lion will be the third major update since 2008.
Of course, it is very debatable which OS X update could honestly be considered a "major" update and which of them were more like paid Service Packs. Snow Leopard certainly only was a Service Pack, and even Lion was only a minor upgrade. I think the last "major" update that OS X saw was Leopard 10.5.
You're kind of wrong there. Snow Leopard only seems like a service pack on the surface because very little changed on the surface. That being said, it wasn't at all about above the hood, it was about undernearth. Just about everything in Leopard was recoded and retooled for (a) streamlined performace and (b) setting the stage for the OSes to come thereafter. Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, 64-bit kernel, plus everything recoded from Carbon to Cocoa (finally), that's not a freakin' Service Pack, it's a freakin' redesign from the bottom up. Not to mention the reclamation of up to 14GB of hard drive space. If more OS updates could be like that one, we would have a better computer.
Yes, because OpenCL is
really needed to run a simple GUI....
Exactly what benefit do I get from having OpenCL calls in the GUI? What eye candy does Mountain Lion feature that I simply cannot live without it in a preference setting (like lower feature levels in Windows for eye candy)? With Apple's level of resources and cash, there is simply
no excuse for their poor level of support compared to Microsoft after the sale.
I can put Mountain Lion on my late 2008 Macbook Pro which is still running Snow Leopard, but I don't think I want to. I still use Rosetta for a couple of things like Diablo2 and Office '04 (see no reason I should pay to upgrade when I use it so little these days so it would be just one more cost to this "upgrade") nor do I need any of these iOS-centric features. I like Screens just the way it is in Snow Leopard and Leopard, not like Mission Control has it. Apple doesn't provide nearly enough customization and options for people that prefer the previous setups for things like that.
Despite all the rhetoric about making OSX more efficient and optimized, the FACT remains that Snow Leopard made my Macbook Pro SLOWER than it was with Leopard. The only noticeable improvement was a slight decrease in hard drive space used on install (due to erasing PPC support stuff), but then the drive I have in that machine is quite large and so it really wasn't worth it. But I HAD to upgrade to keep certain programs' newer versions working (as developers typically dump older OS support when it inconveniences them more than a few seconds).
I ran Snow Leopard on three Macs, an Early 2006 iMac (2.0GHz Core Duo; 2GB RAM, Radeon X1600), an Early 2006 Mac mini (1.5GHz Core Solo [in theory the slowest Intel Mac ever released next to the first MacBook Airs], 2GB of RAM; GMA 950), and a Late 2006 MacBook (1.83GHz Merom Core 2 Duo; 2GB of RAM; GMA 950); Snow Leopard made all three machines run faster than any of them ever did in Leopard. You must have some weird issue or your upgrade didn't go smoothly.
How can I tell what year/model my 13" Macbook Pro is?
I guess I'm looking for the MB????? number?
All 13" MacBook Pro models are supported. Unless you bought yours in 2011 (or 2012, for that matter), if you look at the bottom of the machine, the copyright year will tell you if it's a Mid 2009 or a Mid 2010. At least, that was the trick I always used for IDing 13" Pros at work.
Is it just me, or is using solely the keyboard for Exposé no longer available in Lion? For instance, with F9 (show all windows), I could use the arrow keys to select a given window and bring it to the front. Now, I don't seem to be able to (=the mouse is required). I've searched for a setting about that, but didn't find any. I missed it?
You should still be able to change it back; though Apple has been slowly putting to rest the F9/F10/F11 Expose convention introduced in OS X 10.3 Panther. I miss it too; though given that I'll be buying a MacBook Pro on the sooner side of things, I imagine that I'll be forced into using shortcuts built into the earlier F keys.
Wait...I can't believe this.
My late 2008 macbook(which I bought 1st quarter in 2009) , 2GHZ core 2 duo, GeForce 9400M will NOT be able to run Mountain Lion?
What the HELL??
Come on, who has machine obsolete to run an OS 4 years in time difference?
My 2002 lamp iMac lasted from 2002 up to 2009!!!
My current laptop still feels lightening fast! not to mention I have seen my friends buying latest macbook models, and I really don't see any significant difference. They operate just as good as my machine does! Where is the problem?
I am currently running Lion with no issues at all, and Mountain Lion seems like its Lion with few features updates. Its not like the jump from OS9 to OSX
First off, chill out, bro. Second off, GeForce 9400M Macs will be supported. If you have a white MacBook from early 2009 and it has a GeForce 9400M, you can go to the Mountain Lion party. Don't expect an invite to the 10.9 party, but still, you're good for now.
Why is it most of these complaints often just ignore the option starring them right in the face ?
It's MacRumors. Most people here don't look for answers before complaining about not knowing them. That said, I'm probably a little guilty of that in some of my "does anyone on here know about x" posts, but at least, it's not common problems or concerns to which there really is an easy solution or easily found answer to things. I do like to Google things first.