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Upcoming Mac Pros and Snow Leopard?
- Thread starter JesterJJZ
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It won't happen. The new MacPros will have Lion preinstalled when they are released late late July/early August. Snow Leopard will be discontinued in mid July and will not have the drivers to run the new MacPros so it will not run on them. If you want to run Snow Leopard along with Rosetta for PPC compatibility, you'd be looking at the current MacPro.
I watched the keynote on Lion and to me, the features I could do without. I would rather have an almost year old new current MacPro that runs Snow Leopard with Rosetta instead of a brand new MacPro coming soon stuck with Lion only. I can always boot Lion on an external drive and experiment and have the option to go Lion when I want to. This is my preference. If you are for the latest and greatest without looking back, then by all means wait a month for the next MacPro and move forward with Lion.
I watched the keynote on Lion and to me, the features I could do without. I would rather have an almost year old new current MacPro that runs Snow Leopard with Rosetta instead of a brand new MacPro coming soon stuck with Lion only. I can always boot Lion on an external drive and experiment and have the option to go Lion when I want to. This is my preference. If you are for the latest and greatest without looking back, then by all means wait a month for the next MacPro and move forward with Lion.
A small chance this may not be true
While in the past this was always true - the fact that you need to install Snow Leopard first and then install Lion over it when you do a clean install. Opens the door slightly for a chc at the New Mac Pro to be able to run Snow Leopard.
But more than likely you will have to use the install disks that come with your new machine (or will there be install disks with new machines since that would mean there would be Lion discs)
I think it will be interesting to see what actually happens.
While in the past this was always true - the fact that you need to install Snow Leopard first and then install Lion over it when you do a clean install. Opens the door slightly for a chc at the New Mac Pro to be able to run Snow Leopard.
But more than likely you will have to use the install disks that come with your new machine (or will there be install disks with new machines since that would mean there would be Lion discs)
I think it will be interesting to see what actually happens.
You don't actually. You need to have the latest Snow Leopard installed if you buy Lion from the App Store the regular way, but once you have the package, you can just go do clean installs on any box you want.
Edu and multiple seat licenses for larger corps, will work the same as before (physical media, clean installs, or that's how it looks right now).
Unless Apple radically changes their methodology, the oldest OS version that will run on your boxes, is the one that comes with it when you buy it (as you pointed out).
For new hardware that's usually an unreleased version of whatever the current point release happens to be, with new drivers for the hardware in question; which will make the "standard" build, the next update.
In other words, if for the sake of argument you buy a new Mac, while everybody is on 10.6.5, you will have an unreleased version of OS/X (including your install/backup media), which contains 10.6.5 with a different build #. By the time 10.6.6 rolls around, all those drivers will be part of the mainstream build.
If your new computer comes with Lion, it will probably not be running Snow Leopard unless you install it on a VM. If Apple is indeed holding up release of new hardware like the new MacBook Air in particular, waiting on Lion, then you can assume that they really want everybody on Lion as fast as possible and may go out of their way to make any kext transplants very difficult or impossible, to backport to older versions of OS/X.
FCP 7 will continue to work on Lion, according to Apple's official press release circa yesterday. That one was possibly not planned on, but became officially supported due to the uproar amongst pros who were using Apple's, what is it again, oh right, "pro" software and can't just drop everything and wait on FCP X to catch up on all the features that got left out.
Being unable to run Rosetta on the other hand, isn't going to make anybody storm the Apple mothership with pitchforks. It's more like, oh well, it's been a realllllllly long time now, if you still haven't upgraded or have some ancient legacy software, try to get over it, the world has moved on.
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Hopefully this will be the case, or someone will figure out how to infuse the needed drivers into a SL build to work. After testing DP4 of Lion, I am not at all convinced about it over SL.
I'm betting that by the time the next Mac Pro rolls out, you'll have been using Lion for a long time already.
I'm betting that by the time the next Mac Pro rolls out, you'll have been using Lion for a long time already.
Lol.
With all the magic I've seen you wizards pull, I'd be surprised if someone doesn't figure out how to install Snow Leopard on a machine that came with Lion installed on it. If the boot drive fails, and you replace it, doesn't that mean you'd have to install SL first, like I keep hearing?
I'm betting that by the time the next Mac Pro rolls out, you'll have been using Lion for a long time already.
I usually like ti wait till the .4 or .5 release before updating to a new OS, gives some time to work the kinks out.
You didn't hear? 16-core Sandy Bridge Mac Pros with 2GB of Video RAM and Thunderbolt built-in...coming soon.
I know as much as the next guy, which isn't that much.
Unsubstantiated rumors though (time-line in particular).
There's more recent information that the SB-E LGA2011 parts have been pushed back to Q1 2012 by Intel (here, and others if you search). Though not confirmed by Intel, I suspect this one may be valid due to the complexity of those parts, and that Intel likely doesn't want to have the same type of problem as AMD did with the TLB bug.
And 16-cores will suck at 1.6GHz. Even with SB-E architecture. More exited about 6-core SB with extra cache and turbo headroom. But I won't really be buying until the 3d chips drop in a couple years.
From what I've seen, a few of the enterprise variants of the LGA2011 Sandy Bridge parts will also offer up to 8 cores on a single die (I have seen information that the desktop LGA2011 versions will only top out at 6 cores per die).
This sort CPUID lineup could help keep yields up too (i.e. 8 core parts with 1 - 2 failed cores during the binning process + nanosurgery could easily turn them into sell-able 6 core enterprise or enthusiast desktop parts).
I'm not sure if core counts greater than 6 will be restricted to the MP CPU variants or not on the LGA2011 socket, but it's certainly possible (not seen enough details to determine if this is the case or not).
I think Apple would sell more new Mac Pro's if they allowed SL to go on by choice. Us so-called "Pro" Mac Pro users tend to be way more picky about certain compatibility than the average mac consumer. I for one would prefer the choice especially since I have a Lion GM drive on my 2010 MP and it isn't quite there yet. It may take months for some developers to get Lion compatible updates.
Imaging, cloning, and external boot volumes have always been the cause of running older versions of OS X than what shipped with the hardware. There is a chance to run Snow Leopard but that depends entirely on the the hardware.
They have decacore Xeons, but they are for servers not workstations
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Humm do a buy a new MP Mac Pro or a car....
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Humm do a buy a new MP Mac Pro or a car....
That entirely depends on the work you do, more cores is better than more clock to me....