With the launch of Mountain Lion confirmed for later today, the question on the lips of many Mac users is ‘Will my Mac run Mountain Lion’? The high minimum requirements of Apple’s latest version of OS X actually rule out quite a high percentage of what many people will still regard as quite recent machines, so I’ve put together this guide so that prospective upgraders can tell at a glance whether it’s worth shelling out to download Mountain Lion when it becomes available.
Compatibility of older Macs with Mountain Lion is dependent on two criteria: the age and spec of the graphics card, and whether or not the hardware supports the 64-bit processor architecture required by the new OS. Because Mountain Lion will be available as a download from the Mac App Store only, Snow Leopard will be the minimum OS required to actually get hold of the upgrade. For this reason, Power PC Macs are definitely not supported, as these were left in the dark when Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) debuted in August 2009.
In most cases the deciding factor is going to be the graphics card. The best way to confirm what Continue reading