What to Do if Your Mac Can't Run Mountain Lion

With each successive version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system, more Mac hardware gets left behind. The recent release of OS X Mountain Lion (v10.8) is no exception.

There are some good reasons why Apple might drop support for older hardware. For example, Apple might want to clear our legacy code to make its software run more efficiently on newer computers, and some brand new or updated features of the OS may run much better on newer hardware.

On the other hand, one could argue that it's also in Apple's best interest to enforce scheduled hardware obsolescence so the company can generate revenue from new hardware sales.

Whereas Microsoft makes the operating system but not the hardware—and thus generates more profits by continuing to support very old PCs with each new version of Windows—Apple makes both the hardware and the operating system. At $29.99 per OS upgrade (or apparently $19.99 annually beginning with Mountain Lion), it's clear that Apple stands to make a lot more money by getting customers to buy a $1000+ Mac every 5 or 6 years (and perhaps a few OS upgrades in between) rather than merely sell them $100 worth of OS upgrades over the same time period.

And so with Mountain Lion, Apple has dropped a lot more hardware.  Every Mac made before mid-2007—and even some 2008 models—are no longer supported by Apple's latest desktop operating system.

So what can you do if your Mac is no longer supported?  I've written an in-depth article covering which models are supported by Mountain Lion, which Macs max out at Lion, and why Snow Leopard may no longer be completely safe to use—and what you can do if you're stuck with an unsupported Mac. Read the full article on The Mac Security Blog:

What to Do if Your Mac Can't Run Mountain Lion


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