Can I install Snow Leopard on the new Mac Mini

@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.

Wait...R U telling us that we can install Rosetta in Lion???

If so, that will solve all my problems and I can go back and claim my Mini server that I returned....

Please tell me this is true

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.

Have you given Plex (my recommendation) or even Boxee or XBMC a try as a replacement for Front Row? SO many better options out there in my opinion.

Thanks, Hardax...Plex does look interesting. Does it have a remote or can it be manipulated using the Apple remote ala Front Row?

I believe it has it's own app for the iPhone and iPad but the Apple remote works perfectly with it. Im actually using it right now! The ultimate combo would either be an Apple remote along with Remote Buddy software or a Harmony remote (I use that as well with Plex in my home theater).

Thanks again, Hardax...more questions. I use an EyeTV HD to DVR TV programs and Front Row recognized them and their playback control could be managed with the Apple remote. Can Plex handle that? How about VIDEO_TS folders on the drive? I don't use an iPhone or iPad so no problem there. Last question, is Plex just software or does it have its own box?

Thanks for some great info, and we might want to stick a little more tightly on the core issue on this thread -- getting Snow Leopard up and running at something approaching full speeds on the Mac Mini 2011. Please don't stray too far afield in this thread; perhaps consider starting another one on the "Mini 2011 as Home Theater" or something more appropriate (there are some extensive threads already running on that here in Support Community Discussions). Thanks! And your topic is very interesting, so stay close by here.

There's a reason to keep it focused! -- as of this morning, this thread is now very close to 10,000 views! -- presumably, mostly by people looking for a way to get SL up and running on their 2011 Mini. We want to keep progress moving and "buzz" generated on that topic if we hope to get a good coder to come up with some solutions. There IS a solution somewhere out there, waiting for someone to write it.

Incidentally, for those of you looking to get max graphics and video production heft out of your Mini, there's an active Support Discussions thread here at

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3213645?answerId=15896182022#15896182022

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

Agreed Steve. Churning, have a look here: http://forums.plexapp.com

This forum should answer all your question. I am there under the same screen name. You can private message me with questions.

Hi khorning,

If it is only frontrow you need then you can copy it over from an existing SL installation !!!

Several files / folders to be copied and then a restart is needed and your FrontRow is running under Lion!

See here for instruction video:

http://www.cultofmac.com/use-front-row-in-os-x-lion-video-how-to/106874

Cheers

Steve...you are right and I do apologize for making my problems/questions a distraction here. I will stick to the focus of the thread from now on. Clearly the 10,000 viewers of this thread are hungering for a way to run SL and still get the processing power from their new Minis along with some of the features that Lion forgot. It was this thread that helped me make SL happen agan on my Mini and I do appreciate that very much. Please forgive me for these last two distraction/responses...I promise they will be my last. 😊

Hardax...thanks for the link. I'll see you over there.

Mac7d...thanks for the help. I did try that solution but it leaves a less than full-featured Front Row app...no iTunes capability for television show and music purchases playback.

Khorning, you guys are princes. Thanks. FYI: 9,527 views on this thread as of 4p CDT on Monday 8-29.

All those views Steve and all we got was a "Helpful Answer" 😉