OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008 Macs with Integrated Graphics

[mosx]

Dito, it’s indeed good news. I’m having second thoughts though, as my Unibody MacBook has become slower with each upgrade, notably Lion. Restarting usually takes ages and beach balls are not seldom. If Apple is indeed cutting the cords for several Macs, this might suggest that Mountain Lion could require a sacrifice of overall performance.

Sounds like you need a fresh install of OS X. By that I mean truly fresh. Wipe the HDD and install Lion fresh. No upgrades. Then copy your files and such back over, but don't do a "back up" or "restore from a previous Mac" or whatever. Just do a completely fresh install.

I have the late 2008 unibody MacBook 2GHz. Upgraded to 4GB of RAM and a 320GB 7200RPM HDD. It's faster now with Lion than it has ever been. I always do fresh installs though. Never upgrade.

 

[Richdmoore]

My 2007 white plastic macbook 2,1 had a good run of updates (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, and finally Lion.)

It's primary mission (travel) was replaced with an iPad 1, and it's other mission (home computer) was replaced with a 2011 t-bolt iMac 12,1.

The computer is still going to be in use, right now as a windows 7 machine, (girlfriend college classes require windows) and if it lasts a few more years, a reinstall of Lion or Snow Leopard to set it up for light server duty.

 

[zorinlynx]

Any word on the Mac Pro 1,1? I still have this venerable old beast and it's serving me well; would hate to have to upgrade it to an iMac (as I can't afford a new Mac Pro. Times were good in 2006!)

 

[MartiNZ]

I'm kind of surprised they're not dropping support for Airs bought a year ago with only 2GB RAM lol.

 

[cbrad82]

Looking forward to it....

 

[macminz]

I have a late 2008 MacBook, and the model number is A1278. I should be good to go, right?

Im in the same boat as you buddy, anyone care to shine a light on this!

 

[class77]

The funny thing is that they have already had a mountain lion OS X. They just called it a Puma

 

[milo]

Thats ok, Snow Leopard is still superior (faster, less bloated, more stable and has expose).

You don't know that ML is slower or more bloated, it just shipped the first beta today and will hopefully improve from there. I've seen at least one report from a dev that it's faster at least than Lion was.

 

[nicklad]

Im in the same boat as you buddy, anyone care to shine a light on this!

Fine, because it has an NVIDIA 9400M.

 

[ALongoria23]

Fine, because it has an NVIDIA 9400M.

I figured I would be ok. Thanks for the answer!

 

[Amazing Iceman]

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.

You can always move your SSD to a newer Mackbook Pro, heheh..
My MBP is from 2007 but it has an nVidia GeForce 8600M GT card, so I may probably be OK. I just dislike not being able to add more than 4GB RAM.

 

[PorterRocks]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

This does not bode well for my late '07 MacBook white. I just installed 4GB RAM the other day and will be installing an SSD tonight. There's still some life left in the old gal.

 

[ScottishDuck]

Why do people still defend Lion? It's a bad OS, it has bugs. It's OK to admit it, Apple won't ban you from their stores.

Mountain Lion for me so far has been a far more pleasant experience.

 

[milo]

Now if I want to get to my widget from space 4, I have to cross space 3, 2, and 1, and then go all the way back to get back to them.

There's a system pref: "show dashboard as a space". Turn that off and widgets are a transparent layer over any space like in 10.6. I agree with many of the other issues in Lion but that one you can change back.

$29/yr...

Price isn't announced. It could be more expensive, could be less, could be free.

In Snow Leopard:

show all windows all at once in expose, go to finder (any finder window) open in illustrator, copy object, show all windows again all at once and go DIRECTLY into the desired photoshop document and paste.

In Lion, why not go to the app window view, copy, then command tab to the app you're going to paste into (it stays in app window view). Sure it's a different way to do the same thing but seems no worse, maybe even better than the old way.

Any word on the Mac Pro 1,1? I still have this venerable old beast and it's serving me well; would hate to have to upgrade it to an iMac (as I can't afford a new Mac Pro. Times were good in 2006!)

Apple's info says 2008 MP and on.

 

[Eidorian]

And no ATI X1600 support either...

AMD dropped the ball on supporting anything pre-DX10 back when Windows 7 came out. They issued one last roll up driver and it was HD 2000 or bust from there.

 

[rowley]

My Mac Mini doesn't support Lion, so the mountain version not being supported even more. Sticking with Snow Leopard until of course I get new hardware.

 

[nicklad]

AMD dropped the ball on supporting anything pre-DX10 back when Windows 7 came out. They issued one last roll up driver and it was HD 2000 or bust from there.

And NVIDIA are still providing driver support for the GeForce 6 series and later...

 

[ed724]

It gets worse. Mission control is a complete failure.

Try working on 2 documents in Illustrator, 3 in Photoshop and 1 in Indesign, and having a couple finder windows open, Xee, and some other stuff. Youre currently in one of your photoshop documents and you need to find a file, open it in illustrator and bring it into photoshop.

In Snow Leopard:

show all windows all at once in expose, go to finder (any finder window) open in illustrator, copy object, show all windows again all at once and go DIRECTLY into the desired photoshop document and paste.

In Lion:

show all windows in mission control, and then get stuck with all finder windows being grouped together. randomly choose one and then find window. then open file in illustrator, copy object and use mission control only to find all photoshop document windows AGAIN be grouped, which the only solution is to pick the front document and hope its the desired one, and if not, use mission control AGAIN to fan out all documents within the application, requiring another useless step, just like the initial step with finder.

Who the hell was in charge of mission control?

And why is there no option in system preferences for mission control to show all windows at once without grouping?!

Wow, you seriously have no clue how to manage multiple windows.
1 - set your apps to open in specific windows
2 - When you click and hold on the dock app icon, select show all windows to pick the one you want for that app
3 - when you use mission control, simply click on the left most window and you have widgets.

Good lord, if you'd take the time to learn how to use the tools and quit complaining, you might enjoy Lion much more.

 

[newagemac]

It gets worse. Mission control is a complete failure.

Try working on 2 documents in Illustrator, 3 in Photoshop and 1 in Indesign, and having a couple finder windows open, Xee, and some other stuff. Youre currently in one of your photoshop documents and you need to find a file, open it in illustrator and bring it into photoshop.

In Snow Leopard:

show all windows all at once in expose, go to finder (any finder window) open in illustrator, copy object, show all windows again all at once and go DIRECTLY into the desired photoshop document and paste.

In Lion:

show all windows in mission control, and then get stuck with all finder windows being grouped together. randomly choose one and then find window. then open file in illustrator, copy object and use mission control only to find all photoshop document windows AGAIN be grouped, which the only solution is to pick the front document and hope its the desired one, and if not, use mission control AGAIN to fan out all documents within the application, requiring another useless step, just like the initial step with finder.

Who the hell was in charge of mission control?

And why is there no option in system preferences for mission control to show all windows at once without grouping?!

You don't have to use Mission Control to fan out all documents within an application. A gesture gets you that functionality no matter where you are. Also, are you using an old version of Photoshop and illustrator? Because your problem seems to stem from you using a workflow designed for the old paradigm within a new OS.

Adobe introduced the Application Frame throughout Creative Suite in CS4 I believe it was. With the Application Frame, documents stay within the application in tabs which can also be aligned side by side. If you are using this more modern way of working with docs in Creative Suite, then Lion and Mission Control makes all the sense in the world.

I've switched every on our team to Lion and it's done wonders for our productivity. But if you are trying to fit old software workflows into a modern OS I can see how things can not seem right.

 

[Lesser Evets]

Any word on the Mac Pro 1,1? I still have this venerable old beast and it's serving me well; would hate to have to upgrade it to an iMac (as I can't afford a new Mac Pro. Times were good in 2006!)

I feel the same, but I haven't seen any mention of people having troubles with their 2006 Pros. I'm hoping to cling to this machine for another 3 years. The minis are already faster than the Xeon 2.66! Sheesh. I'll just buy a low-end mini and use my present monitors if they still function.

I'm pretty sure we can hold out for a couple more years, but all bets are off after that. If you use your current monitors and get a $600 mini, all you need are TB externals to match your tower's function. Most likely the TB drive housings will reduce price in the next two or three years, and for $1000 you can get a mini set up that works faster than your current computer.

Heck, by that time the iPad will be almost as fast as these towers.

I wouldn't assume that the $29/yr price will stick. ... I expect that this update or the next will be free.

You aren't the only one saying it might be free. Can you provide a precedent? When has Apple ever offered a free OS or major software (aside from the ones installed on the machine)? How would they make money with all that product development?

I can confidently say there will be NO free OS of a different leading integer.

Price might trend down, but it seems to have settled at $29 and that would be fair for a well-progressive upgrade in OSX. It wasn't so long ago that it was $129, and they did $29 with 10.6 because it was a very minor update compared to previous OSX versions. Eliminating all the hassles of packaging, packing design, printing, storage, and shipping, they can bring down the cost drastically and sell more. It's probably at a low at this moment.

 

[Macintosh-HD]

It probably won't be long until their next new release won't be compatible with any C2D's either

 

[nicklad]

I feel the same, but I haven't seen any mention of people having troubles with their 2006 Pros. I'm hoping to cling to this machine for another 3 years. The minis are already faster than the Xeon 2.66! Sheesh. I'll just buy a low-end mini and use my present monitors if they still function.

I'm pretty sure we can hold out for a couple more years, but all bets are off after that. If you use your current monitors and get a $600 mini, all you need are TB externals to match your tower's function. Most likely the TB drive housings will reduce price in the next two or three years, and for $1000 you can get a mini set up that works faster than your current computer.



You aren't the only one saying it might be free. Can you provide a precedent? When has Apple ever offered a free OS or major software (aside from the ones installed on the machine)? How would they make money with all that product development?

I can confidently say there will be NO free OS of a different leading integer.

Price might trend down, but it seems to have settled at $29 and that would be fair for a well-progressive upgrade in OSX. It wasn't so long ago that it was $129, and they did $29 with 10.6 because it was a very minor update compared to previous OSX versions. Eliminating all the hassles of packaging, packing design, printing, storage, and shipping, they can bring down the cost drastically and sell more. It's probably at a low at this moment.

I don't think any of us can be confident about Apple's plans.

Personally, I expect it will be free. Otherwise, how would Internet Recovery know what you're entitled to?

They are apparently moving to the iOS model where we'll see annual major releases. At those points, in my view, it is likely that they'll deprecate hardware faster than they have done before and the actual OS releases will be free.

 

[roadbloc]

NERDS ANGRY BECAUSE THEY ARE FORCED TO CHANGE!!!

Um... nobody has been forced to change. Nor should anyone should be. Them who are happy with Snow Leopard are still on Snow Leopard.

I've got to admit, I have never seen fuss and criticism over a new OS [Lion] continue on this forum for so long and such a persistent level. Food for thought since most 'Mac OS X 10.x sucks' threads have gone after a few weeks of it being released.

 

[Eric S.]

Are there any odds is decision could be reversed, or are we (the Unibody Aluminum MacBook users) pretty safely locked in to getting Mountain Lion? I'm happy with Lion, but I would like to know I'm still thought about in Apple's world.

I'm in the same place, model-wise, although I have no interest in this Mountain Lion - I tried Lion, hated the iOS feel of it and quickly retreated back to Leopard land.

Even more daunting is how quickly the old hardware is now being jettisoned from OSX. 4yo machines are already vorbei. Horrible, but the extras these OS versions are bringing aren't world-shattering necessary for productivity; OSX is loading up with trinket functions instead of spending time honing and improving their existing programs (some of which are bizarrely underdeveloped after a decade).

Yup, Apple's business model (besides suing anyone and anything that "displeases" them) is now rapid end-of-life for HW that is still quite capable of acceptable performance. This from a company that once upon a time went the extra mile to ensure backwards compatibility. Just wait till you see how many Mac models are dropped by iOS X 10.9 Congolese Spotted Lion.

Any word on the Mac Pro 1,1? I still have this venerable old beast and it's serving me well; would hate to have to upgrade it to an iMac (as I can't afford a new Mac Pro. Times were good in 2006!)

Mac Pro? Huh? I think Apple has probably moved their MP development team to a dark and dingy back corner and is making sure they don't plan any real OS improvements. That would interfere with the consumerization of the Mac brand.

 

[the-ep]

Had to notify two friends of mine, who have Late '06 iMacs with the X1600, about this news. They were a bit distressed, but at the same time were content with keeping their systems on Lion / Win7 for a bit longer.

Either way, considering AAPL's track record with quick discontinuation of older hardware this comes as no surprise.