Can I install Snow Leopard on the new Mac Mini

Michael,

and the Geekbench score is ...?

I also feel that I need to move forward and grabbed an open box iMac i7 2.93 with Snow Leopard installed for $1250. So the pride of my technical skills ;-) Mac Mini 2011 2.5GHz with added 60GB SSD and Lion (ack) will go to ebay.

MichaeLAX,

Great work! This is very interesting stuff!

No final response from Apple, yet, on releasing Snow Leopard client for virtualization. And we're at almost 21,000 views on this thread while we're waiting.

Oh, and, along with Pisalek, I'm wondering what the Geekbench scores are for you under virtualization? Any noticeable glitches in services, peripherals, or other operations?

Yes we can! 😁 FREE THE SNOW LEOPARD 21,000 ! etc etc

Congradulations John on your persistence. Which mid-2011 Mini were you able to install SL? i7 Server? 2.3 i5? 2.5 i5?

Steve: As I only use Snow Leopard within Parallels for Rosetta I see little or no point in running workbench programs to quantify its power. Also, I see that Geekbench trial version does not allow for 64-bit nor Rosetta reviews, and I am not interested in purchasing that program.

More importantly: I am curious what is motivating people on this thread to be able to run Snow Leopard on our new Mac Mini's?

In my case, as I have discussed, it is Rosetta. I scanned through all 17 pages of this thread again last night and the original questioner never discloses his reasons (and seems to have disappeared altogether from this thread). And, with only one exception, I do not see what is keeping our thread members from Lion. That one exception is Front Row, and clearly running it in virtualization is not his solution.

I did ask one specific Lion-basher on this thread to email me the problem list with Lion but he failed to do so. So I ask again: can I get a link to or a general list of the problems with Lion, other than the lack of Rosetta?

That way I will better understand why so much effort is being placed upon forcing a square peg into a round hole. Thanks.

We are enterprise, and run several different software products that our vendors have said "don't upgrade yet." This may be simply that they haven't had a chance to test fully with Lion and everything is fine, or it may be that they are reliant upon something that is missing or broken in Lion.

The last two versions of Snow Leopard were broken, too. 10.6.7 screwed up displaying and printing of a bunch of our more exotic fonts, while 10.6.8 broke the ability to print to our high-volume printer. We are just now rolling out 10.6.8v1.1 atop mostly 10.6.5.

Michael,

That's an easy answer. Lion needs a bug fix; it keeps rearranging the icons within a folder. My partner is extremely visual and organizes his work by grouping related icons into a cluster. Lion will rearrange the icons into an alphabetical grid at near random intervals. Now, I know this is not a major bug for everyone, but to my partner it is. He cannot use Lion because his workflow is severely crippled.

Now when Apple fixes the bug, we will migrate over to Lion.

Here are the threads relating to it:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3216766?answerId=16075933022#16075933022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3241846?answerId=16132633022#16132633022

MIchaeLAX, as with you, I'm mainly needing to run Rosetta.

I have a number of very specialized legacy data manipulation applications that haven't been rereleased in Universal or Intel versions, and which I need to use occasionally -- and thus my need for Snow Leopard. Also, there are some other titles that I use frequently, and which _are_ Intel or Universal, and which either run somewhat better under SnoLep or break largely or completely under Lion.

FYI -- almost 22K views on this thread; no final response from Apple. Still working on it.

Yes we can! 😁 FREE THE SNOW LEOPARD 22,000 ! etc etc etc

(or at least give us work release)

Steve: I think you will be very happy with the success of Snow Leopard within a Virtual Machine for your needs and I would love to hear your results in using it.

I had a recent dialog on another thread on this site regarding the EULA for Snow Leopard. After posting a challenge for some specific language in the EULA for SL that prohibitited its use in virtualization, the antagonist's only response was pointing me to a knowledgebase article from Parallels. This article does make the claim that virtualizing a non-Server version of Leopard or Snow Leopard was a violation of Apple licensing policies, but with no specificity.

I cannot find any language in the Snow Leopard EULA that would prohibit its use in Parallels in Lion (there is language that would prohibit its use in Parallels in Snow Leopard). And yes, the Lion EULA now has specific language allowing us to run Lion in virtualization in Lion; but such positive statement would not retroactively effect the absence of prohibitive language in the Snow Leopard EULA.

My guess is that the virtualization companies have their own licensing agreements directly with Apple for reasons that are important to them, and in such agreements they have agreed to not allow the non-Server versions of Leopard and Snow Leopard to be virtualized. However you and I, as the customers of Parallels, VMware, etc. are not parties to these agreements and hence not bound by their terms. That being said, I have not read either Parallels or VMware's EULA which may attempt to bootstrap such a prohibition on us as the user.

In continuing my guess, these virtualization companies' obligation is to include code that will not allow the non-Server versions of Leopard and Snow Leopard to install into their virtual machines.

IF my guess is correct and again I have not read the EULA of the virtualization companies, then I posit that using a "trick" to get Parallels to install Snow Leopard does not violate Apple's EULA. I operate my Lion July 2011 Mac Mini under this assumption, but I am not making any legal opinions nor suggesting any such conduct by others.

Let me know if you run your programs under Snow Leopard under virtualization and how they perform for you. I think you will find it performs much better than running the Mac Mini 100% in Snow Leopard.

Steve: remember, if you install Lion and run Rosetta in Snow Leopard in virtualization, you will always have the full power of Lion when you can use it and not just the diminished power of Snow Leopard installed as the Startup disk. And when you need Rosetta, you can always run it in Snow Leopard in virtualization.

Also, as Apple updates Lion to fix some or all of these problems, you can easily install the Lion update without having to completely reinstall Lion as the Startup Disk.

I still question the value of these tests; but here it is:

Here is the biggest issue with Lion OS.

If you run Lion on a client Mac that is bound to a Mac OS X Server Open Directory of any flavor, Mac OSX Lion will blindly accept any LDAP username and password. It logs in any madeup username and password combination and logs them into the server with admin rights. It even logs in madeup usernames without a password entered.

When this is fixed I'll revisit Lion.

LDAP flaw in OS X Lion opens major authentication security hole | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

MichaeLAX,

Those benchmarks are actually very helpful. About a 50% hit compared with Lion for running Snow Leopard under virtualization on that machine. And, of course, it's still a bit Apples & oranges, with one OS optimized for that machine (and vice-versa). But interesting. Quite acceptable numbers for Snow Leopard, actually, IMHO.

I couldn't agree more with your thoughts about the advantages of virtualizing SnoLep under Lion -- i.e., still having the advantages of Lion for the situations where it's acceptable and useful. The only real cost (except for the minor cash and time outlays involved in getting everything up and running) is the extra RAM that's tied up by the virtualization-and-Lion-and-Snow-Leopard combination. THAT is a considerable hit and can be an impediment in some high-RAM-requirement situations.

Anyway, thanks for laying out the path for us to successfully "trick" the virtualization programs into allowing Snow Leopard Client to run!

I'm still waiting for Snow Leopard Client virtualization clearance for Apple. I believe we might get it, and that will simplify things a bit, and perhaps even produce some significant speedups when the wizards at the commercial virtualization software companies suddenly discover that they have a sizeable paying audience of Snow Leopard fans willing to shell out to get out (of being cornered by Lion, that is) and who need all the speed they can get.

Yes we can! 😁 FREE THE SNOW LEOPARD 23,000 ! etc etc etc

Steve Jolly wrote:

...Those benchmarks are actually very helpful. About a 50% hit compared with Lion for running Snow Leopard under virtualization on that machine.

...The only real cost (except for the minor cash and time outlays involved in getting everything up and running) is the extra RAM that's tied up by the virtualization-and-Lion-and-Snow-Leopard combination. THAT is a considerable hit and can be an impediment in some high-RAM-requirement situations.

...I'm still waiting for Snow Leopard Client virtualization clearance for Apple. I believe we might get it, and that will simplify things a bit, and perhaps even produce some significant speedups when the wizards at the commercial virtualization software companies suddenly discover that they have a sizeable paying audience of Snow Leopard fans willing to shell out to get out (of being cornered by Lion, that is) and who need all the speed they can get.

Yes we can! 😁 FREE THE SNOW LEOPARD 23,000 ! etc etc etc

Steve:

Apples and Oranges for sure! For Rosetta applications, you can only run them in the Virtualization window; so the better comparison would be a speed test on my machine with only Snow Leopard installed.

You can always quit Parallels when you only need Lion (and Suspend Snow Leopard, which starts up again quite quickly) and free up the RAM utilized by it.

Also, could you point out to me where in Apple's EULA you feel that virtualization is barred (Snow Leopard in Lion, that is).

RIP: Steve Jobs, dead at 56 😟

As for the benchmarks -- do we know what happens when you run two SL/SLS virtual machines under one instance of Lion? If, as we suspect, 10.6 can't make proper use of all of the cores, then if you configured 2 VMs to each use 2 cores of the quad-core, and then ran geekbench simultaneously on both VMs, then maybe we'd see each VM getting as high a score as one would. It's certainly worth measuring...

I read some of this thread and it's very helpful.

I got a brand new 2011 Mini in an enterprise environment. We cannot use Lion as it isnt compatible with proprietary software we have installed. We cannot use virtualization.

So I Deploy Studio'd my 10.6.8 image on the mini and noticed some odd items immediately, which brought me to this thread eventually and I see you had the same issues...

When the mini is connected to a monitor via the HDMI-DVI connection, the mini has a ghost monitor in Sys Prefs. I can mirror them to make it work yet it's not optimal.

Also the cursor doesnt adjust correctly when moving over items. It stays as a "text insert" cursor when it should be a hand and it doesnt line up correctly with text entry points. The hand cursor stays a while then eventually turns into an arrow pointer, etc...

I tried using the Thunderbolt port and I couldnt get the monitor to light even after zapping PRAM; I used a variety of adapters - VGA and DVI - and LCDs.

There were also some graphical glitches; the dock was all messed up with broken graphics...

I'm going to try to Carbon Copy Clone my stock coeporate 10.6.8 image onto the mini and see if there are any differences that doing it via Deploy Studio...

Queation: Do you really believe Apple or anyone else will make a way for us to install SL on the 2011 Mac Minis or should I tell my boss we're screwed?

Thanks.