Can I upgrade to Mountain Lion on my iMac?

[Gass]

Hi,

I have a question. I have a mid-2010 27" iMac. Model iMac11,3. I'm currently running Lion. Can I safely buy and upgrade to Mountain Lion? Will it work? Or does it work only on newer machines?

Thanks for help.

 

[Ice-Cube]

I have the same model as you. It works fine with Mountain Lion.

 

[GGJstudios]

Hi,

I have a question. I have a mid-2010 27" iMac. Model iMac11,3. I'm currently running Lion. Can I safely buy and upgrade to Mountain Lion? Will it work? Or does it work only on newer machines?

Yes, you can.

You can find specs on all Apple products, including maximum OS X version, by visiting EveryMac.com.

System requirements for OS X Mountain Lion

 

[J71]

Yes, you will not have problem running Mountain Lion on your Mac. I just recently updated both of my Macs to 10.8 and one was a 2008 24" iMac.

 

[MrMacMack]

Depending on the apps you run, how much multitasking you do you along with how much memory you currently have installed, you may notice a slight degrade in overall performance. 2GB will work, but it will be slow. 4GB or higher will be a lot better.

 

[nightlong]

My late 2007 iMac with 4 GB RAM is running ML as smooth as SL.

 

[Hermes Monster]

I'm not sure of the specs on yours, but my 2010 21.5" suffers a little since upgrading to ML - I get the beach ball more and more with what used to be routine tasks.

Also one of the main features I wanted to use (desktop mirroring) isn't available for my model, so may not be for yours - my fault for not reading up fully I guess

If you can, I'd stick to Lion as long as possible, unless you really want iMessage and notification centre

 

[stchman]

I'm not sure of the specs on yours, but my 2010 21.5" suffers a little since upgrading to ML - I get the beach ball more and more with what used to be routine tasks.

Also one of the main features I wanted to use (desktop mirroring) isn't available for my model, so may not be for yours - my fault for not reading up fully I guess

If you can, I'd stick to Lion as long as possible, unless you really want iMessage and notification centre

Did you do an upgrade or a clean install? I've heard clean installs are the way to go.

 

[Hermes Monster]

Mine was an upgrade - the clean install seems like a lot of effort from what I've read if you have the time and the know how, then it may be worth a try

 

[DJLC]

We've got four 2009 iMacs at work. Upgraded all of them to 8GB RAM, and they all run ML very well. Some were upgrade installs (from Lion, which was upgraded from SL), some were clean installs. Didn't seem to make any difference in my case.*

*But before some smarta** pipes up, I know that it can make a difference. Sometimes.

 

[benwiggy]

Did you do an upgrade or a clean install? I've heard clean installs are the way to go.

A "Clean" install means wiping the disk, installing the OS, importing your data but NOT importing any of your old settings or preference files, and resetting everything manually.

If you wipe the disk and migrate EVERYTHING, then there's no point in doing that as you've brought over everything that might be causing a problem.

OS X is designed to upgrade "in place", leaving your user data, settings and apps alone. That's what it does by default.

If you have a problem, and you've tried everything else, then maybe try a clean install. But whatever a clean install might fix, there are usually easier and quicker ways of making the same fix.