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Snow Leopard on Ivy Bridge

P

Pared3s

macrumors regular
Original poster
Can anyone make a guess as to whether the upcoming Ivy Bridge MacBook Pros will be able to run Snow Leopard?
 
in theory... yes.
in practice... no.

Apple will definitely not support it out of the box, they are never backwards compatible when it comes to older OSs on newer hardware. Similar to getting SL onto a 2011 Air or 2011 Mini, it will require some jerry-rigging and fooling around with kexts.
 
oneMadRssn said:
in theory... yes.
in practice... no.

Apple will definitely not support it out of the box, they are never backwards compatible when it comes to older OSs on newer hardware. Similar to getting SL onto a 2011 Air or 2011 Mini, it will require some jerry-rigging and fooling around with kexts.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

Can Snow Leopard be installed on the current models?
An Apple Genius once told me that I could install it using Boot Camp on the current Sandy Bridge models. Is that true?
 
Pared3s said:
Thanks for the reply.

Can Snow Leopard be installed on the current models?
An Apple Genius once told me that I could install it using Boot Camp on the current Sandy Bridge models. Is that true?
Click to expand...

The original iteration of the Sandy Bridge models came with Snow Leopard so I would think that it would work fine.
 
The CPU is not really the problem but they just don't supply the necessary drivers with snow leopard. Especially if it is a bigger redesign it will be very unlikely to run SL.
It is something Apple does on purpose. It wouldn't really be difficult to supply add all the drivers. There is no low level difference between the OS like it was between Vista & XP.
 
Pared3s said:
Can Snow Leopard be installed on the current models?
Click to expand...
If a particular model had at any time in the past shipped with SL on it, then yes. Today, it can be downgraded to SL easily. This applies to all the Macbook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros.

Since the newest models of the Mac Minis and Macbook Airs never shipped with SL, only Lion, they cannot be downgraded easily. People have figured out ways to get SL to run on them, there are instructions if you search. Basically, it involves messing with the kexts and thunderbolt might not work properly... It's a YMMV type of situation.

Pared3s said:
An Apple Genius once told me that I could install it using Boot Camp on the current Sandy Bridge models. Is that true?
Click to expand...
Yes and no. Boot camp is meant for dual booting windows. It can also be used for dual booting linux. I have never tried, but I assume it can also be used to dual boot into different versions of OSX. However, as I someone explained above, the issue will be related to native driver support.
 
oneMadRssn said:
If a particular model had at any time in the past shipped with SL on it, then yes. Today, it can be downgraded to SL easily. This applies to all the Macbook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros.

Since the newest models of the Mac Minis and Macbook Airs never shipped with SL, only Lion, they cannot be downgraded easily. People have figured out ways to get SL to run on them, there are instructions if you search. Basically, it involves messing with the kexts and thunderbolt might not work properly... It's a YMMV type of situation.


Yes and no. Boot camp is meant for dual booting windows. It can also be used for dual booting linux. I have never tried, but I assume it can also be used to dual boot into different versions of OSX. However, as I someone explained above, the issue will be related to native driver support.
Click to expand...

I thought the latest MacBook pros shipped with Lion? Or are they close enough in spec to the early 2011 models that SL can be installed?
 
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