OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support For Some Older 64-bit Macs

[Phillip Swanson]

Apple seeded the golden master build of OS X Mountain Lion to developers earlier this week, and with it an official list of macs that will support the new operating system is available as well.

Your Mac must be one of the following models:

• iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
• MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
• Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

The list excludes a number of capable 64-bit MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros, which will unfortunately be excluded from upgrading to OS X 10.8. While Lion will run on any mac with a Core2 or newer 64-bit intel processor, apparent graphical limitations kept Apple from supporting the aging Macs according to Ars Technica.

“Information included with the first Mountain Lion GM now corroborates the connection to 32-bit graphics drivers as the culprit. While Mountain Lion is compatible with any Mac capable of running a 64-bit kernel, the kernel does not support loading 32-bit kernel extensions (KEXTs). Furthermore, Macs with older EFI versions that are not 64-bit clean won't load Mountain Lion's 64-bit only kernel.” — Ars Technica

Ars Technica goes on to explain that since graphics drivers are KEXTs in OS X and Apple is dropping support for 32-bit KEXTs, the older 32-bit driver relient Macs won’t be supported in Mountain Lion.

If you’re unsure if your Mac or an older Mac of yours will be Lion compatible you can run the following script in Termincal:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

All unsupported Macs will return “EFI32” according to Ars Technica associate writer Andrew Cunningham.

Source: Ars Technica

[Anonymous]

Waiting (im)patiently.

[2k1]

I'm with ya buddy

[dstorrents]

I'm bummed

Even though my computer packs a pretty good punch, according to the Terminal test, my Mac will not support Mountain Lion.

2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
11 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB

[Jdot1224]

In the clear.. Yay!

[iLoveWindows&iPhone]

the connection to 32-graphics drivers as the culprit.

It seems to me, that Apple is the "culprit" for these apparantly unworthy computers being incompatible. If Apple wanted these computers to be compatible....they would be compatible, Apple would/could find a way.

Yet they don't find a way. Not because they are lazy, or not capable....but because they want to provide yet another reason/incentive to force existing customers to upgrade their hardware.

It's basically the same deal with Siri not working on a iPhone 4. Even though the 4 is perfectly capable of running Siri, Apple doesn't allow it to.

From a business point of view, this method is genius...Forcing customers to upgrade, and at the same time, helping them justify their purchase to themselves, and perhaps more importantly....to their significant other!

From a personal point of view, it seems kinda messed up. I do not own a Mac (iMac, Air, Pro, etc), but if i did....I would be pretty upset if my still capable (and very expensive) computer, could no longer run the most recent OS 3 or so years after purchasing it....just saying.

[skram]

Should probably note. "EFI64" means you're SUPPORTED. I am, woot woot!

[mr117]

Well, my iMac 24" is "early 2008," so I guess I'm the lucky one. 'Course, if it was older, I'd have a great excuse to go out and buy a new one.

Oh, and I got betas of 10.7 to play with (from Apple), and then they offered me the same with 10.8, and I didn't bother this time. I'm not really very happy with the direction Apple is going with the OS. I liked the differences between the Mac platform and the iPhone/iPad platform(s). I'm sure I'll upgrade ($29, why not?) but this conflation of systems is irksome to me.

[ShatterBox]

I installed the GM Mountain Lion the other night and found out that it no longer supports Parallels 7 to my surprise, I installed it on a spare hard drive and just booted from that drive but it was pretty interesting that it is no longer a supported software I'm sure there will be an update by the developer but thought I would throw that out there.

Both my wife's (Early Aluminum MacBook) and of course my MBP are on the list but there wasn't anything that really WOW'd me with Mountain Lion...But again nothing wow'd me with Lion either.

[cpotoso]

As the owner of a pretty powerful Mac Pro (2 quad core Xeons @ 3GHz, 5 GB RAM) which is perfectly capable of running any 64 bit program (except for the silly 32 bit bootloader), I am quite upset about this. It is not as if I will be upgrading this machine anytime soon (it is much more powerful than any isilly machine out there, and the new mac pro's are not much better). Hence, apple is saying (as usual), scr3w you! The fact is that the machine *is* capable of running ML, as demonstrated by the hacker community that already has fixes (inelegant, requires pre-loading some BIOS emulator before the OS, but it works). If it weren't for the fact that I really like the unix-like core (I used to run exclusively linux, but got tired of the lack of useful applications), I'd be out of macs forever. I mean, we are willing to pay more (I paid $3600 for the mac pro) than a regular PC, but I also expect my machines to last (and the hardware does), and to have long-term support at least as good as any of the PC's (even 5 year old pcs can run the latest windoze). Apple s*cks.

[hank197857]

i feel your pain, ilove. i just hope mountain lion supports microsoft office. otherwise, i'm not budging. i need my office.

[H4CK3R]

Microsoft will probably update it, I'm not doubting it.

Sucks for older Mac users. That's in a way, how Microsoft beats Apple in a way. They don't drop support with every new OS release.

[Cer0]

Microsoft will probably update it, I'm not doubting it.

Sucks for older Mac users. That's in a way, how Microsoft beats Apple in a way. They don't drop support with every new OS release.

Apple has always been a hardware company. Microsoft does not issues drivers to all hardware. That is up to the makers and they drop support eventually.

The limiting of hardware helps keep things running smoothly. Allowing old hardware code to still be in there could cause compatibility issues and things won't run as smooth. This is one reason Apple drops supports on some older hardware. Some of the older computers listed behind the 2008 thresehold for ML are some of the first generations of Intel Macs. Remember OSX used PPC till around 2005.

[H4CK3R]

You do have a point, it kinda sucks that they can't at least make modified versions of it to fit the older Macs though. Some of them are almost perfect, but they miss one essential thing that keeps it from having newer versions. But I guess that's how Apple rolls. Update the hardware, drop support for older ones so people have to buy new ones. But it gets them money -_- which is Apple's obvious goal. So Apple is satisfied either way really.

[cpotoso]

The more I think about this, the more I like how MS set things up. They make the OS and others make the HW. Hence there is incentive for MS to support older models (since they will sell more OS's), whereas Apple has financial incentive to screw you.

[kyevey]

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

I ran this on my MacBook 4,1 (Early 2008) and obtained the desired "EFI64", however, (what the article doesn't say) is that it does not make the compatible list due to the Graphics Card limitation. No support for Intel GMA X3100.

Apparently, Apple thinks I need a newer computer. This makes me even more disappointed in the newly released (2012) Mac Pro.

[Cer0]

But it gets them money -_- which is Apple's obvious goal.

That is the goal of almost all businesses.

[H4CK3R]

That is the goal of almost all businesses.

That's why I said 'obvious'

[Cer0]

Not sure you understand meanings of some words and when to use them.

[bigboyz]

Sell your current Mac and upgrade..same thing you do with your phone every year or two. Not sure what the difference is or what the big deal is?? Apple is in the business of making $$ and from what I have read on here, they do it better than anyone in the game at this point. As a consumer you have the choice NOT to purchase a Mac or any other Apple product. If you have been in the game, you know Apples way..build it and they will come. Its expensive, its quality, it works haha! I wouldn't trade it in for anything and I also won't complain about simple upgrades when i can sell my current Mac and save up a few bucks for a new one. Where there is a will there is a way.