OS X Mountain Lion Officially Drops Support for Some Older 64-Bit Macs
With Apple having seeded the golden master build of OS X Mountain Lion to developers earlier this week, the company has locked in which Macs will support the forthcoming version of the operating system. While the machine requirements have been known for some time, the seeding of the final public release is a good time to remind users which machines will support Mountain Lion.
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)
Ars Technica has more on Apple's decision, including discussion of why Apple has dropped support for some early 64-bit Macs that do support OS X Lion.
Apple declined to tell us the reasoning behind leaving some of these models out of potential Mountain Lion upgrades, but we suspected it was related to an updated graphics architecture that was designed to improve OS X's graphics subsystem going forward. Our own Andrew Cunningham suspected the issue was related to graphics drivers, since the GPUs not supported under Mountain Lion had drivers that were written before 64-bit support was common.
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 no longer supports loading 32-bit kernel extensions (KEXTs).
The report notes that some of the GPUs used in early 64-bit Macs were deprecated before 64-bit KEXTs were in common usage, and thus they were never upgraded from their original 32-bit KEXTs. With the affected machines now being a number of years old, Apple apparently decided that it was not worth investing the resources to upgrade those drivers to 64-bit in order to support OS X Mountain Lion.
Popular Stories
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in early December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as...
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we sometimes get rumored feature leaks so far ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different – already we have some idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup.
If you plan to skip...
WhatsApp is set to end support for iOS versions older than iOS 15.1 from May next year, removing the chat platform's compatibility with several iPhone models in the process.
From May 5, 2025, WhatsApp will no longer be compatible with iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus models. Users with those devices won't be able to access the encrypted chat service after the specified date unless they ...
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch for 10 more months, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
An imaginative iPhone 17 Pro concept based on rumors
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models so far:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro ...
Apple is expected to kick off 2025 by launching an all-new smart home hub, also referred to as a "command center," as early as March.
The hub is expected to feature around a six-inch display that can be attached to a tabletop base with a speaker, or mounted on a wall. The device is said to run a new "homeOS" operating system with a customizable widget-focused home screen, and it is expected...
On this week's episode of The MacRumors Show, we discuss the recently leaked design of the iPhone 17 "Air" and iPhone 17 Pro.
Subscribe to The MacRumors Show YouTube channel for more videos
Earlier this week, a report from The Information's Wayne Ma revealed that the iPhone 17 Air will have a thickness of between 5mm and 6mm, which would make it the thinnest iPhone ever. In comparison, iPhone ...
Despite being released over two years ago, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 continue to dominate the wireless earbud market. However, with the AirPods Pro 3 expected to launch sometime in 2025, anyone thinking of buying Apple's premium earbuds may be wondering if the next generation is worth holding out for.
Apart from their audio and noise-canceling performance, which are generally regarded as...
Although Black Friday has ended, Cyber Week is here and you can find great deals on numerous Apple devices right now. This includes big savings on AirPods, Apple Watch, MacBook Air, iPad, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
Specifically,...
