Can I install Snow Leopard on the new Mac Mini

FYI, in my (oh, so humble) opinion, the most important thing anyone's said here in the past few posts (okay, except Cathy, but you're always GOOOD!) was what iXod said...

iXod wrote:

I have successfully installed SL on a 2011 mini (2.7 GHz i7 processor option). I have been using it for several weeks now and have had no problems at all other than the slow-down mentioned by others in this discussion thread. The mini otherwise functions like SL on my old 2006 mini (CoreDuo 1.83 GHz) only a bit faster and lots more RAM.

Nailed it, iXod! I'm having pretty much the same result -- SnoLep runs well for me, at about 40% slooowwww -- but at a speed that I would have thought was just fine on a Mac not long ago. We will get past this, and it's just Apple doing what they've ALWAYS done, which is to launch new machines that don't support previous OS versions, usually because of specific code and support chip changes in the hardware that are needed to run the new OS version at its best speed. We -- all of us, here -- are just working around that, and we'll succeed, and this is NOT an example of Apple being (someone said, here, 'way over-the-top not long ago, "Steve Jobs is the Gaddhafi of the computer world...") unforgiveably evil, thoughtless, and most likely active agents of the Devil, or certainly Adobe!! 😁 We ARE having fun, now...

and our Macs will be joining us, shortly.

Yes we can can! 😁 FREE THE SNOW LEOPARD 14,000 ! etc etc etc

We are now well past 15,000 views on this thread, and rising at a fast clip.

Everyone I've talked to at Apple or at various software companies, in calls and emails, agrees that running Snow Leopard on Lion machines will happen, and that "this is just the way it is" for now, and not part of some draconian Apple plot. Therefore, it's a solveable problem, and we WILL be running Snow Leopard at close-to-or-FULL speed, soon, on the various "Lion" machines.

I've just invited Roy Miller (who's perfected some Snow Leopard fall-back installation protocols) and Zirkenz (who has posted here, in the past) to visit us from another thread here on Support Community discussions to share some of what they're been developing. Stand by! It's good stuff!

And, again, a reminder:

The slowdown and other problems encountered in running Snow Leopard on any "Lion designed" Mac (like the new 2011 Mini) is not due to Apple building some evil poison-pill code into the Macs or into Snow Leopard installers; it's just that Snow Leopard lacks the resources that it's expecting to find when it tries to run on those new machines.

There are lots of little pre-Lion-supportive code snippets in the chips of older Macs, and different chips and motherboard connections are now running the new "Lion" Macs. All of those little hooks and helpers are missing, when Snow Leopard goes looking for them on those new Macs. So, Snow Leopard struggles because it's strangled -- not by intent but by the machine it's running on.

And, that's why it's taking a bit of time for "virtualization" companies to come up with a smooth solution that allows Snow Leopard to run as a "virtual machine" on a Lion-designed Mac, and for other folks to write and code some work-arounds and build code bridges to help Snow Leopard dash over all of those hardware gaps in a reliable way.

We'll get there! Really! And soon.

Yes we can can! 😁 FREE THE SNOW LEOPARD 15,000 ! etc etc

I did some searching on the Parallels forums regarding running Snow Leopard within Parallels:

It seems that Apple does not license their consumer OS' to run under virtualization and Parallels respects this limiitation. Apple only licenses the respective Server versions to run under virtualization.

Hence, Parallels would only run Snow Leopard Server under virtualization.

For some reason that is obscure to me, there are discussions there that Apple DOES allow Lion (in addition to Lion Server) to run under virtualization, and that the new version of Parallels 7 does advertise its ability to run Lion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbiBGISHN1M

Perhaps Apple can be convinced to allow Snow Leopard to run under Parallels 7, and then an update of Parallels 7 can take advantage of this ability:

NoPod

Accurate. I'm told that Parallels is approaching Apple for permission to allow an exception for Snow-Leopard-under-Lion.

Also, if I understand it properly, Apple's usual "server-version-only" virtualization restriction that was the rule in the past is NOT applicable to Lion -- it wasn't part of the user agreement -- and so, as you noted, Parallels is providing (and heavily publicizing) its ability to run Lion with Lion.

> And, that's why it's taking a bit of time for "virtualization" companies to come up with a smooth solution that allows Snow Leopard to run as a "virtual machine" on a Lion-designed Mac, and for other folks to write and code some work-arounds and build code bridges to help Snow Leopard dash over all of those hardware gaps in a reliable way.

> Steve J.

- - -

My personal situation:

I have no desire to run SL virtually in any way; that is just one more level of complexity. I will boot SL natively on my 2011 mini and if there is no solution to make it come close to the GeekBench numbers this mini achieves when booted under Lion, so be it. I can live with it until Lion (or the next Cat) is pallatable enough to me to use.

As it is, the SL mini is quite usable. I'm not rendering 3-D images or transposing video files, or such.

iX

NoPod, virtualization isn't necessarily "one more level of complexity" and it won't slow things down much if at all. It might be, to the contrary, an interim solution that lets you run Snow Leopard at full speed by filling in some missing-code gaps with a couple of crutches. Note that this is just IMHO.

Sorry, that was a response to iXod. I was in the wrong posting when I hit "Reply."

😁 We ARE having fun, now...

and our Macs will be joining us, shortly.

Is anyone else getting this page reset in the middle of creating a reply? Then the dreaded message "An unexpected error has occurred" displays on the web page. Right under the Apple Support Communities banner. (Yes, it's a web site error, not my OS or browser...)

All text lost, must begin again. SEVERAL TIMES.

XUG?

I think I'll not reply any more.

iX

iX, does that happen when you're replying, or perhaps when you're editing your reply to improve it, after posting it?

The reason I ask that is that it's not unusual, here, for someone to lose a connection if they're tying up one of the channels on this board while they're repeatedly revising a message, etc.

Not, of course, that I'm speaking from experience. I'm always brief. LOL

However, I've speculated that the software that runs the posting process -- or perhaps one of the sysops -- steps in and bumps someone off who's been on too long, if and when there's a constraint of some kind on the forum network. Like, say, a surge in log-ins and views, here, or in the Apple website as a whole.

We gotta come behind the Apple Store in priority level! I don't know about you, but I haven't spent much money while in Community Support, lately. 😮

Just curious: do you know the rationale behind Apple's decision to allow Lion to be used in virtualization, when previously they only allowed the Server versions to do such?

Your telepathic powers are obviously working! I've been looking into that for the past couple of days (along the lines of what you originally posted)..

I was thinking that one possible path out of this cul-de-sac would be to write to Tim Cook at Apple, lay out the problem and the extent of it, ask for an exception that would allow the running of Snow Leopard under virtualization on Macintosh hardware only (part of the rationale behind the "no virtualization" rule is that it discourages Hackintosh-ing and multiple simultaneous virtual Mac functions on one machine, whether Mac or PC) - and see if he'd pass the issue along to someone else for consideration with a nudge toward solving it. That would allow Parallels to get fully involved, and we'd have a solution tomorrow!

But, to answer your question directly: no, I don't yet fully understand all of the motivations for the original virtualization ban, nor the rationale for the sudden permission for Lion to be run under virtual machines. Maybe, just maybe, Parallels simply asked nicely, and somebody looked into it, decided that it was an outdated restriction dealing with an unimportant problem, and relented.

Yes, Virginia, there are several Santa Clauses at Apple, beginning with St. Steve Jobs Claus; but you have to find them, then get lucky and get to them, and then ask, and they have to notice the message and get interested -- and (here's the hard part!) we have to give up the cynicism and beeee-leeeve that Apple really, in general, tries to do the right thing, or the first several steps will never happen.

Hey, I know it's kind of early for Christmas, but... Halloween is NOT gonna offer a solution!

Since we have been evaluating Parallels Server, I have actually talked to a Parallels developer, and reading between the lines I am pretty sure that the only-server-allowed-to-be-virtualized was a licensing decision not a technical one. For those of us who have been around for a really really long time (I go back to NeXTStep 2.1 in 1991) the division between os x client and os x server is a marketing distinction not a technical one, too. Apple is in the process of abandoning their enterprise customers -- cancelling the xserve was a biggie, and this lack of transition period between 10.6 and 10.7 disproportionately impacts enterprise/education users, and I think that the licensing decisions about Lion and Lion server are also part of that we-don't-care-about-enterprise decision. Instead of spending development money on refining, maintaining, and creating new server management tools -- and charging a hefty $500/copy for server licenses -- they are going to just dump all the server stuff into the client and stop new development on it.

Anyway, this is getting off topic. The point remains that if there is a scheme that works to get us to running snow leopard on shipped-with-lion macs, and Apple virtualization licensing policy were to be the only thing standing in the way, then we have an excellent chance of getting Apple to change the policy -- simply because they don't seem too attached to the policy now.

Very nice, well-thought-out response.

Somewhat intrigued by one point that you didn't make explicit: so, if I follow you properly, one conclusion that could be drawn is that the "Server-version-only" virtualization rule was probably created to help preserve the Server-version's perceived premium features and "value added" -- another capability distinction vs. the client version -- to help justify the premium for Enterprise buyers?

Not complaining; if it's true, that's a familiar software-hardware marketing and pricing ploy. Interesting.

You seem very certain that Apple is intentionally abandoning the Enterprise just as they're starting to win back some attention from it, which seems counterintuitive to me. So, Apple is deciding to become a consumer-products company? Perhaps "spin off" or devote fewer resources to the Mac segments, eventually?

By the way, I don't want to sound dubious; I'm just fascinated. Since that's off-topic, here, wanna point me to a link or source where I can begin to learn more about this? Back to the future.

(..."microwave popcorn"...?)

Ok, I think the answer is here, but I've sort of lost the thread. For the mac mini buyer who MUST run Snow Leopard now, but will eventually upgrade to Lion, I see two choices --

• buy a 2010 mini from somebody who still has one around, or ebay, etc., upgrade it to Lion when ready
• buy a 2011 mini, downgrade it to SL now, upgrade it to Lion later

Clearly, once you get to Lion, you want the newer, faster 2011 machine. So the question is this -- what is the speed of a 2011 mini running SL vs a 2010 mini running SL? We already know that the 2011 running SL is a lot slower than the same machine running Lion, but that's not the choice.

So is the 2011-hacked-to-SL slower than the 2010-running-SL, and if yes, how much slower?

The 2010 mini is NOT cheap -- $849 from amazon -- so the question is how big a hit is the downgrade on the 2011 compared to the 2010?