Can I install Snow Leopard on the new Mac Mini

@Pisalek...O.K. I will download Geekbench and run it and post results as you requested. The results will be for the now downgraded new Mini running SL. I am confused though about the comparison you would like? Get the already known Geekbench results for a MBP which has the same hardware and graphics profile as the new Mini? I'm not sure that will end up being an apples to apples comparison since the new Mini is an i7 Core Duo with 8 MB of RAM and I don't think there is a MBP with that profile unless there was a new MBP introduced along with the new Air's and Mini's.

Karl, the miracles are mostly hidden in the leeetle magic Apple chips and code that tell your Mini how to use your i7. The problem is the missing code in Snow Leopard that your Mini needs to access all of the chips and peripherals and software that you want to use. The magic isn't in the obvious specs about RAM and CPU, it is (was!) in the little phrases that are missing from the new OS and from those other "enabler" chips that direct commands to the right places -- places that Apple doesn't think that we need to go, anymore, for our own future good and for the future improvement of the Universe.

In this case, maybe it's more like an old bridge along a comfortable road that we're used to driving with our Macs; we need to get to the old places, while Apple wants us to use the new "improved" bridge and the new wider roads -- all of which are potentially faster, go to cool new places, and are there for a purpose, to allow our "improved" Macs to do new things with crisper, faster code and with somewhat altered hardware, without needing to accommodate old code and "old actions" and the old turns in the road that Snow Leopard enabled. We'll probably see the point and learn to like the new scenery, eventually. Right now, some of us still have to get to the old places (I want FCP Studio 3 to run smoothly on my Mini!) even if the old road and bridge been partly disassembled.

So much for stretched metaphors, but there's some truth in it. The new road from Apple ain't fully paved yet. A few code patches, well-written, will get us over the gaps in the old road and bridge, then we get to choose, and even take BOTH paths. For a while.

We get to do that -- if we can find the way. No trolls, just old roads that aren't on the new maps anymore. Ah, progress...!

If you look at my previous posting you can see that I understand fully what is happening with the hardware.

But my respons was to khorning about his doubts of there being any MBP with similar specs to the new mini.

We are still searching for a solution to get the mini i7 att 100% speed. As I've mentioned before, the hackintosh community might have something we can use.

We all know what this is about.

It's about converting iPad and iPhone users into Mac buyers. And doing that in cheaper systems (to build) with higher profit margins, too.

Unfortunately, Apple is alienating its existing base of customers in doing so. This is a common corporate mistake, chasing a new market at the expense of an existing market of loyal repeat-buyers. This rarely produces a better bottom line.

This also creates a significant new burden for 3rd party developers and suppliers, which can generate extra revenues, but at a cost. Perhaps they will just wait to see if Apple caves in and restores the functionality we all want and expect. If so, everyone loses.

Here are the post new Mini OS step-back Geekbench results as promised...not sure about how it compares to others. Sorry about the edits and formatting...I tried to enter an "image" of the Geekbench results, but I have no place or way to upload it to the web for a link reference, so this is edited plain text.

Most of this stuff is waaayyyy over my head but I am learning a lot! 😁

Summary:

Geekbench 2.1.13 for Mac OS X x86 (32-bit)

Geekbench Overall Score = 1875

Integer Processor integer performance score 1291

Floating Point Processor floating point performance score 2397

Memory Memory performance score 1897

Stream Memory bandwidth performance score 2053

System Information:

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Build 10K549)

Model: Macmini5,2

Motherboard: Apple Inc. Mac-4BC72D62AD45599E Macmini5,2

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2620M CPU @ 2.70GHz

Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7

Processors: 1 Threads: 4 Cores: 2

Memory: 8.00 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Processor Frequency:2.70 GHz

Bus Frequency: 100.0 MHz

L1 Instruction Cache: 32.0 KB

L1 Data Cache: 32.0 KB

L2 Cache: 256 KB

L3 Cache: 4.00 MB

BIOS: Apple Inc. MM51.88Z.0075.B00.1106271442

Message was edited by: khorning

Message was edited by: khorning

khorning wrote:

Here are the post new Mini OS step-back Geekbench results as promised...not sure about how it compares to others. Most of this stuff is waaayyyy over my head but I am learning a lot! 😁

Sorry, but graphic is not loading. Please check.

Thanks for fixing it!

GULP...if I read the summaries on the Geekbench website correctly, my new Mini out of the box (if I had tested it) would have scored in this ballpark...quite a loss so I do hope ultimately there is a way to gain some of the hardware's potential back in Snow Leopard.

Mac mini (Mid 2011)

Intel Core i7-2620M 2.7 GHz (2 cores) = 6980

Actually, great work on that posting! That's what we needed to see.

And, unfortunately, as expected -- there's a big performance hit from the drop-back to Snow Leopard.

It looks to me -- at first glance -- like your Geekbench scores are, in general, 40% or less of the speeds you'd expect to get if you were running your i7 Mini under OS 10.7 Lion -- and presumably just about that far below the scores you'd expect if it were possible to do run your i7 Mini under a fully-activated, full-speed Snow Leopard setup.

Not yet... not yet... but coming soon ...on this Channel (we hope!) 🙂

Karl, I did realize that you fully understand the situation. And, if you're looking from time to time at the "viewers" numbers for this thread, you already realize that there are many hundreds or thousands of other folks looking in on this conversation to find out if it's possible to get SL up and running on their 2011 Minis.

We have had 8,193 views, so far, as of right now... (just checked).

From time to time, a little summary of "what's up and where it might be headed" on this thread is a good idea, to keep them from giving up and going away. There will be a solution, and it will come from someone who views this thread, or someone who's on another forum in another venue or is in the Hackintosh community and just gets interested. We need to know about that solution and help promulgate it when it's worked out.

I have NO doubt whatsoever that it's possible to run SL at high speed on a 2011 Mini, It's just a question of knowledge, input and some effort from some folks who understand the challenges and who know the "back roads" to the OS. My detour into metaphor wasn't aimed at you. Thanks for your patience.

Yes we can can! 😁 FREE THE SNOW LEOPARD 10,000 ! etc etc etc.

Thanks, Steve....

I have now noticed a couple of anomalies. My Apple wired mouse (one generation earlier than the newer Apple Might Mouse) behaves oddly. Clicking an icon on the desktop, say a disc image file, exhibits an erratic "blinking" of both the cursor and the icon for the image and clicking on the image sometimes does not open the file...it takes a Control "O" on the wired keyboard to open it.

I'm still working with the Mini on the dining room table until I finish cloning it in SL state to an external drive with some Utilities (DiscWarior and Onyx) so I haven't put it back in place in its media center home across the living room under the Sony. I'm hoping a wireless Mighty Mouse and keyboard will not behave in a similar manner.

And in the DUH department, I just figured out what that whole Mac configuration is for "Sharing CD's and DVD's" so I can load disc-based software to the Mini or Air over the network from the MBP rather than the Firewired TDM that I though I was stuck with when the Air's USB Superdrive quit workng on the downgraded Mini...guess I didn't even need to buy it....live and learn!

For those of you who are reverting to Lion to save yourself and your Rosetta (PPC) apps here's something I just read over on Reddit:

"Grab a Snow Leopard install DVD by whatever means you should choose (no one is judging you.) Then go into optional installs, and choose optional installs.mpkg. From that installer package select Rosetta, and you'll be able to play Age of Empires II like me in no time!

P.S. I'm sure a lot of you knew this already, but for those who didn't like me, I thought it might be helpful!"

@Pisalek =...I forgot to mention my Mini has an internal 500GB hard drive and not Flash. I am tempetd to take it back to factory Lion and test it as I'm getting hooked on this techy stuff. 😁 I do have the Mini back in its place in the media cabinet now and with wireless mouse and keyboard my erratic peripheral symptoms have disappeared. I also re-built the directory and repaired disc permissions before that and retested with Geekbench. I thought the "housekeeping" might help, but this time Geekbench said overall score was 1809 instead of the earlier result of 1875. The only thing I did between the two was add the Utilities before cloning and re-testing.

I haven't tested it personally, but that's the look of it. I have no use for Rosetta personally so I'm not going to install it. Sorry...but it's not worth the hassle for me. I think Steve had been looking at SL as a Rosetta replacement. Perhaps he'll read this and try it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)

It's not clear to me which of my dual G5 PowerPC apps will run under Rosetta at all...

A selection:

$199 Photoshop CS3

$ ? Filemaker Pro 10

$ 79 iWork 08

$299 MM Director 2004

$ ? MS Office 2004 (Word, Excel)

For me it is Front Row. If Apple would bring it back in Lion I'd not need access to Snow Leopard. But after a few days of the Snow Leopard install on the new Mni, I am disappointed that reverting to 10.6.8 loses acess to external drives whether it is Apple's new Superdrive for the MacBook Air (USB2) or my oher Pioneer 118-L (USB/FW) which both work under Lion.

My solution for now is to partition the new Mini's internal drive and run Lion on one partition where external drives are recognizable and usable and keep the Snow Leopard OS (ala John Fair's procedure) on the other. The only problem inconvenience that, is I've fund one needs to have a wired keyboard attached to the Mini to boot back and forth from one OS partition to the other...wireless keyboard will not Option->restart and get the boot partition choice.