I'll consider an SSD when they work out the security issues (reliable data erasure) and bring prices down to more reasonable levels. A 1TB spinner is just fine for now, as far as I'm concerned.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Who is using older OS X and why?
- Thread starter Last iOS 5 user
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Are they plastic Macbooks? Some 2009 plastic Macbooks can, and all desktops and Macbook Pro/Air (except for one 2008 model) can run the latest
Snow Leopard for me, on a 2011 27" iMac.
My reasons are simple - it works fine and I need Rosetta. It's mostly Rosetta holding me back, as I still want to use a legacy PPC app that won't be updated (Freehand MX).
I would like to update to Mavericks so I can run newer apps that require more recent OS versions (Rocksmith 2014 is rather tempting) but the need to use Freehand kind of trumps that for me at this stage.
I should be grateful really as it's meant I've saved a fortune on games that I would have otherwise bought if I'd upgraded the OS
My reasons are simple - it works fine and I need Rosetta. It's mostly Rosetta holding me back, as I still want to use a legacy PPC app that won't be updated (Freehand MX).
I would like to update to Mavericks so I can run newer apps that require more recent OS versions (Rocksmith 2014 is rather tempting) but the need to use Freehand kind of trumps that for me at this stage.
I should be grateful really as it's meant I've saved a fortune on games that I would have otherwise bought if I'd upgraded the OS
Really? I didn't know. Thank you for that info. One is a 2009 Mac Mini and 2008 8-core MP. While both are old they've held up so incredibly well that I simply have had little desire to replace either.
I run Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on my Mid 2010 6-core Mac Pro at home.
(I run Mavericks 10.9.4 on my Mac mini at work.)
I'm a Sys Admin and have to deal with hundreds of e-mails a day. I need the best, most efficient e-mail client I can find and that's Snow Leopard's Mail.app for me. What Apple has done to Mail since then is an abomination. The Mavericks Mail.app is the best of a bad lot since Lion and that's not saying much.
I can do an "Erase Deleted Items" "In All Accounts" on Snow Leopard and even with 4 e-mail accounts the Activity window will be cleared in seconds if not a minute or so.
On Mavericks with only 1 e-mail account it can take several minutes for the same thing to be done. It's beyond my comprehension what brain damage Apple has inflicted upon this once excellent app.
Other than that, there's a few things I miss by not running something newer (the screen/scrollback restore in recent vintage Terminal.app is awesome) but for the most part I don't miss a thing by being on Snow Leopard at home. As far as I'm concerned 10.6.8 is still the best Mac OS X version ever, by a mile.
There's been a few times when I've needed to use programs that demanded Lion or newer; I just fire up VMware Fusion 5.x and I have a Mountain Lion 10.8.5 VM for that. I wish VMware hadn't made Fusion 6 require Lion-or-newer
(I run Mavericks 10.9.4 on my Mac mini at work.)
I'm a Sys Admin and have to deal with hundreds of e-mails a day. I need the best, most efficient e-mail client I can find and that's Snow Leopard's Mail.app for me. What Apple has done to Mail since then is an abomination. The Mavericks Mail.app is the best of a bad lot since Lion and that's not saying much.
I can do an "Erase Deleted Items" "In All Accounts" on Snow Leopard and even with 4 e-mail accounts the Activity window will be cleared in seconds if not a minute or so.
On Mavericks with only 1 e-mail account it can take several minutes for the same thing to be done. It's beyond my comprehension what brain damage Apple has inflicted upon this once excellent app.
Other than that, there's a few things I miss by not running something newer (the screen/scrollback restore in recent vintage Terminal.app is awesome) but for the most part I don't miss a thing by being on Snow Leopard at home. As far as I'm concerned 10.6.8 is still the best Mac OS X version ever, by a mile.
There's been a few times when I've needed to use programs that demanded Lion or newer; I just fire up VMware Fusion 5.x and I have a Mountain Lion 10.8.5 VM for that. I wish VMware hadn't made Fusion 6 require Lion-or-newer
Are you talking late 2011 generation macbook pro?
If so, how is that possible if it came with Lion?
Are you talking late 2011 generation macbook pro?
There are "tricks" to force OSX installs onto hardware a specific version is not officially compatible with(provided that there are no hardware limitations like lack of driver support in a specific version). One way of doing this is by cloning a hard drive in a computer that is running the specific version of OSX desired.
If someone is truly running 10.6 on a Late 2011 MBP(which, incidentally, is what I'm typing this post from, although running 10.9), I suspect that this may be how they accomplished this feat.
I've done the cloning trick many times to "force" OSX 10.5 onto PowerPC systems that are capable of running it but don't officially support it(G4 processor slower than 867mhz).
That's kinda weird. I think the beach ball and slow down issues are caused by booting through an external USB Drive. Hard drive connected via USB often work less reliable than ones connected through SATA. Probably you should try creating a new partition on your build-in hard drive and install OS X 10.9.4.
I'm currently running 10.9.4 on a 2011 Mac mini, and it's screamingly fast - I use Logic Pro X, Final Cut Pro X, AE, AI, PS, Keynote and Pages on a daily basis. No lag whatsoever except firing up Mission Control, which is something I don't use anyway.
Last edited:
Are you talking late 2011 generation macbook pro?
It's the same Model ID and hardware as the Early 2011, which shipped with Snow Leopard when launched.
I swapped the 10.6.8 HDD in from my old uMB and it just worked, and later borrowed some early 2011 OS X media from work which again was fine.
Shame Snow Lep will never run on my rMBP.
I use Mavericks on my main machine. It came with ML, but I don't think I stayed a month with it. Before that I used a 2010 MBA that came with SL, and which I use as my backup machine now. I kept updating this one, from Lion to ML, then to Mavericks, and finally decided to give it a shot with Yosemite.
Found the Yosemite UI a bit tiresome and the performance a bit subpar (maybe because it is a beta on an old system), so today I decided to reinstall its original SL OS on it, and boy, what a shot from the past! My first mac was a white macbook that came with Leopard, and the UI was just the same as SL.
I think a lot of people still use SL because of its nostalgic feeling. Leopard was released in late 2007 and till mid 2011 there were zero changes to the UI, almost four years of aesthetic stability. Then suddenly we began getting tweaks every year, doing away with aqua, launchpad, mission control, etc etc, and now we're getting a massive overhaul. I have to admit, having installed SL on my old machine, I copied all of its original wallpapers onto my main computer, just to have a bit of that "homey" sensation here too.
Found the Yosemite UI a bit tiresome and the performance a bit subpar (maybe because it is a beta on an old system), so today I decided to reinstall its original SL OS on it, and boy, what a shot from the past! My first mac was a white macbook that came with Leopard, and the UI was just the same as SL.
I think a lot of people still use SL because of its nostalgic feeling. Leopard was released in late 2007 and till mid 2011 there were zero changes to the UI, almost four years of aesthetic stability. Then suddenly we began getting tweaks every year, doing away with aqua, launchpad, mission control, etc etc, and now we're getting a massive overhaul. I have to admit, having installed SL on my old machine, I copied all of its original wallpapers onto my main computer, just to have a bit of that "homey" sensation here too.
I always upgrade to the latest OS for the sake of security. I'm happy to sacrifice performance and stability in order to be kept updated with security.
I too run Lion for exactly the same reason. I would like to run SL though, since it was better I think, but it won't let me downgrade. The iOS ish feel is too graphic and fancy IMO. It's like they're designing the software now for a new generation of buyers (which they aren't cause it was fine just a few years ago).
I really hope Apple is headed in the right direction, Windows is not an alternative for me, neither is Linux...
Freehand MX running in Snow Leopard Server installed into Parallels for use in Lion, Mt. Lion and Mavericks:
Installing Snow Leopard Server into Parallels for DUMMIES!
[click on image to enlarge]
Attachments
Just for the heck of it, I have my MDD(mirrored drive door) Powermac G4 with 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5(as well as OS 9.2.2) installed on it.
I have 10.0 installed on my iMac G3(the only install disks I have for 10.0 are specific to that system), and 10.1 on my G4 "Quicksilver."
I have no particular reason for all of this-just that it's fun to see the evolution of OS X through these different versions. I'd like to get all of them on one computer, although hard drive space(and having enough partitions) can become an issue. The MDDs are an ideal platform as they support four hard drives, although I'm not sure how well 10.0 and 10.1 would work on one.
For day to day work on the older systems(I still use the G4 Quicksilver as well as a G5 regularly) I tend toward the latest version that will work on them. My G5 only has Leopard on it, while I switch between Leopard and Tiger on the Quicksilver depending on what exactly I'm doing. Leopard is definitely a lot more comfortable with the 4gb of ram and 256mb of VRAM in my G5 vs the 1.5gb ram and 64mb VRAM in my G4.
If I had an early Intel Mac lying around, I'd likely also keep Snow Leopard installed just for the heck of it, although I didn't really get into Macs until the Lion era. I'm currently using Mavericks on my main day-to-day computer.
My Powerbook G4 is running Tiger(10.4) as its only OS. I have the Yosemite wallpaper on it now, and with the flat dock characteristic of 10.4 and earlier, it might pass as running Yosemite on a casual glance . Of course, the blue Apple(as well as the old dock icons) gives it away immediately on a closer look.
I have 10.0 installed on my iMac G3(the only install disks I have for 10.0 are specific to that system), and 10.1 on my G4 "Quicksilver."
I have no particular reason for all of this-just that it's fun to see the evolution of OS X through these different versions. I'd like to get all of them on one computer, although hard drive space(and having enough partitions) can become an issue. The MDDs are an ideal platform as they support four hard drives, although I'm not sure how well 10.0 and 10.1 would work on one.
For day to day work on the older systems(I still use the G4 Quicksilver as well as a G5 regularly) I tend toward the latest version that will work on them. My G5 only has Leopard on it, while I switch between Leopard and Tiger on the Quicksilver depending on what exactly I'm doing. Leopard is definitely a lot more comfortable with the 4gb of ram and 256mb of VRAM in my G5 vs the 1.5gb ram and 64mb VRAM in my G4.
If I had an early Intel Mac lying around, I'd likely also keep Snow Leopard installed just for the heck of it, although I didn't really get into Macs until the Lion era. I'm currently using Mavericks on my main day-to-day computer.
My Powerbook G4 is running Tiger(10.4) as its only OS. I have the Yosemite wallpaper on it now, and with the flat dock characteristic of 10.4 and earlier, it might pass as running Yosemite on a casual glance
. Of course, the blue Apple(as well as the old dock icons) gives it away immediately on a closer look.I have 10.6.8 running quite comfortably on an old HP laptop of mine, had the 10.6 retail disc hanging around and decided to have a mess and see if it would work; which it does beautifully.
Running 10.9 on all my other work macs, but it sure is nice to go back to the past sometimes! I don't have any problems with any of the new versions, looking forward to 10.10; but the wow factor that I first had when unboxing my first mac with 10.5 installed, snow Leo takes me back to that
Running 10.9 on all my other work macs, but it sure is nice to go back to the past sometimes! I don't have any problems with any of the new versions, looking forward to 10.10; but the wow factor that I first had when unboxing my first mac with 10.5 installed, snow Leo takes me back to that
Mountain Lion seems to receive MORE support from third-party software makers than Mavericks, plus it's a lot faster, so I use it. I don't see any reason to update to Mavericks. No new features worth noting.
----------
No offense, but you should try Mountain Lion with an open mind. It's just Lion with all its features completed and more stable. Really, most people I know consider Lion a dud. The "iOS features" added are actually useful things like iMessage support in Messages, and nothing gets in the way if you don't use it.
You know what I hate, though? The new saving system in Lion and later still messes with me. It automatically saves my stuff without asking, and then I have to keep reverting to older versions. I tried a hack to stop this, but it didn't work. And I have to use a hack just to enable "save as". I mean, that's an elementary feature. What were they thinking?!
----------
No offense, but you should try Mountain Lion with an open mind. It's just Lion with all its features completed and more stable. Really, most people I know consider Lion a dud. The "iOS features" added are actually useful things like iMessage support in Messages, and nothing gets in the way if you don't use it.
You know what I hate, though? The new saving system in Lion and later still messes with me. It automatically saves my stuff without asking, and then I have to keep reverting to older versions. I tried a hack to stop this, but it didn't work. And I have to use a hack just to enable "save as". I mean, that's an elementary feature. What were they thinking?!
Mavericks, because it's the product of a clear, shared vision
I prefer Mavericks.
Primarily because Mavericks is the product of a clear, shared vision. Yosemite appears to be without that quality.
Secondarily because Yosemite has abandoned one of the two things that were essential to windows and panels.
The second thing is exacerbated by an apparent misunderstanding by Apple, at WWDC, of the word title.
One word sums up my thoughts on the overall appearance of Yosemite: fugly.
I prefer Mavericks.
Primarily because Mavericks is the product of a clear, shared vision. Yosemite appears to be without that quality.
Secondarily because Yosemite has abandoned one of the two things that were essential to windows and panels.
The second thing is exacerbated by an apparent misunderstanding by Apple, at WWDC, of the word title.
One word sums up my thoughts on the overall appearance of Yosemite: fugly.
I'm using Mountain Lion because in my opinion it's the latest truly refined OS X. Mavericks feels rushed, just redundant update, release for the sake of release, pre-alpha Yosemite version with its over saturated colors and stripped down UI, removing skeuomorphism and replacing it with nothingness and emptiness utill they have time to come up with something. I guess they were busy with iOS 7, which, I may add, I love. Now Yosemite looks promising. I like the new look, it's not a complete redesign of Mac OS, but still feels fresh, beautiful and tasteful. Unlike Mavericks, which is inconsistent and clearly confused of what it is, skeuomorphic or flat. Really looking forward to final release of Yosemite.
I'm mostly using Tiger these days. Not only because my iMac G4 won't run anything over it but because it is my favorite OS X. OS X began to get ruined for me after Snow Leopard with the release of Lion, bloating the stable and feature complete OS with iOS gimmicks. Yosemite continues this trend with a simply disgusting redesign. And screw that autosave thing that Lion introduced, it did nothing but mess with my documents and cause a whole load of hassle.
Tiger is also the only OS X to have features I need like bluetooth phone control through iSync, a useful and very powerful feature that was stripped in Leopard, no doubt because the iPhone was Apple's priority and not everybody else's handsets.
So yeah, I'm happy to be still using Tiger. It's fast and without a doubt the most stable version of OS X I've used.
Tiger is also the only OS X to have features I need like bluetooth phone control through iSync, a useful and very powerful feature that was stripped in Leopard, no doubt because the iPhone was Apple's priority and not everybody else's handsets.
So yeah, I'm happy to be still using Tiger. It's fast and without a doubt the most stable version of OS X I've used.
Last edited:
As a pro user (meaning I have loads of work files made w various software going back 10+ years), I have no choice but to keep at least a working SL mac so as to open and convert audio, video or publishing projects from way back, but ESPECIALLY for pro-level scanners and equipment. A lot of people don't realize that some peripherals from 2005 - 2011 and even some current scanners and the like will NOT work on recent OSX versions, and some will just never work with more recent Intel processors, somehow there is just no way of making drivers to make say a high end 2006 scanner work with a post 2009 Intel processor.
Sometimes the reason is simply that OSX no longer updates drivers for these items, or the manufacturer doesn't develop drivers past ML or something. For scanners, it's very frustrating to not be able to use a faster OS and USB 3 or something.
I've been struggling to install OSX 10.6.8 on an external FW just to use as a boot drive when I need to run an older scanner, and discovering the hard way that old OSX versions can't be installed using some more recent Macs (ie cannot install any of 3 diff OSX SL install discs using a 2011 MacBookPro running Lion, the OSX install app has the bar through it ...) God knows why Apple still charges you $20 for Snow Leopard when they're bugging me to upgrade my macs to Mavericks for free ...
Sometimes the reason is simply that OSX no longer updates drivers for these items, or the manufacturer doesn't develop drivers past ML or something. For scanners, it's very frustrating to not be able to use a faster OS and USB 3 or something.
I've been struggling to install OSX 10.6.8 on an external FW just to use as a boot drive when I need to run an older scanner, and discovering the hard way that old OSX versions can't be installed using some more recent Macs (ie cannot install any of 3 diff OSX SL install discs using a 2011 MacBookPro running Lion, the OSX install app has the bar through it ...) God knows why Apple still charges you $20 for Snow Leopard when they're bugging me to upgrade my macs to Mavericks for free ...
I was using Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard and downloaded Wonderlist for my iPhone. To link it to my Macbook Pro, it said I needed OS X 10.8 or later so I downloaded 10.9.4. Now I cannot use my Quicken 2005. I am wanting to go back to 10.6.8 if that is possible. Can that be done? If it can, how do I do it. Don't tell me to buy a new copy of Quicken, I am 78 and only use it for writing checks and cannot easily rake up the $75 for a new copy. Any help would be greatly appreciated. BTW, 10.9.4 stinks.
You can go back to 10.6.8 but get a USB portable harddrive (if you have one) to install 10.9.4 on it just for a specific application you want to use. Then you can simply re-boot back to Slow Leopard if you need to use Quicken 2005 and other applications.
EDIT: By the way, I was thinking of going back to Snow Leopard for my MBP because general system was much faster, especially with its Finder.
graydog wrote above:
[[ I am wanting to go back to 10.6.8 if that is possible. Can that be done? If it can, how do I do it. Don't tell me to buy a new copy of Quicken, I am 78 and only use it for writing checks and cannot easily rake up the $75 for a new copy. Any help would be greatly appreciated. BTW, 10.9.4 stinks. ]]
You can go back, but you'll need an external hard drive of some sort.
Here's how I would do it:
1. Use CarbonCopyCloner to clone the contents of the internal drive to the external
2. Boot from the external drive
3. Re-initialize the internal drive using Disk Utility
4. Re-install a fresh copy of Snow Leopard to the internal drive, create a temporary account to get it going, update all Apple-based software "to current" using the 10.6.8 combo updater
5. Once this is done, use Migration Assistant to "bring back over" your accounts, settings, apps and data files from the cloned backup drive. (IF that will work. I have done "backward migrations" before, but not from 10.9 to 10.6)
Of course, you're going to need your original 10.6 install DVD.
If you can't find it, you'll have to "go hunting" for other sources from which to obtain 10.6. It's not permitted to point the way in this forum, but such sources ARE available if you look for them.
You have discovered something a lot of others have found out as well -- there is no great benefit to "automatically updating" an older Mac to "the latest and greatest".
Mavericks is a D-O-G on older hardware. Lots of folks have discovered this.
Some will admit it, others wont'...
[[ I am wanting to go back to 10.6.8 if that is possible. Can that be done? If it can, how do I do it. Don't tell me to buy a new copy of Quicken, I am 78 and only use it for writing checks and cannot easily rake up the $75 for a new copy. Any help would be greatly appreciated. BTW, 10.9.4 stinks. ]]
You can go back, but you'll need an external hard drive of some sort.
Here's how I would do it:
1. Use CarbonCopyCloner to clone the contents of the internal drive to the external
2. Boot from the external drive
3. Re-initialize the internal drive using Disk Utility
4. Re-install a fresh copy of Snow Leopard to the internal drive, create a temporary account to get it going, update all Apple-based software "to current" using the 10.6.8 combo updater
5. Once this is done, use Migration Assistant to "bring back over" your accounts, settings, apps and data files from the cloned backup drive. (IF that will work. I have done "backward migrations" before, but not from 10.9 to 10.6)
Of course, you're going to need your original 10.6 install DVD.
If you can't find it, you'll have to "go hunting" for other sources from which to obtain 10.6. It's not permitted to point the way in this forum, but such sources ARE available if you look for them.
You have discovered something a lot of others have found out as well -- there is no great benefit to "automatically updating" an older Mac to "the latest and greatest".
Mavericks is a D-O-G on older hardware. Lots of folks have discovered this.
Some will admit it, others wont'...
Slow Interenet / No credit card
My internet connection is so slow that i can't be bothered downloading Mavericks.
I have an early 2009 Mini, which I upgraded to Snow Leopard using the CD. When it got sluggish I got a workshop to add 4 GB of RAM and up grade to Mountain Lion a couple of years ago. With no credit card I could not download directly from the Apple Store myself.
Some time in the next year or so I will probably change the HDD to SSD, and will get the workshop to do the upgrade to whatever OS is current then.
My internet connection is so slow that i can't be bothered downloading Mavericks.
I have an early 2009 Mini, which I upgraded to Snow Leopard using the CD. When it got sluggish I got a workshop to add 4 GB of RAM and up grade to Mountain Lion a couple of years ago. With no credit card I could not download directly from the Apple Store myself.
Some time in the next year or so I will probably change the HDD to SSD, and will get the workshop to do the upgrade to whatever OS is current then.