Snow Leopard on 2011 mini?

No, it can't.

(59670)

Neil -- your reply is a deal-killer for me, just as I was about to click to finalize a high-end (I know, I know...) Mini order with the i7 and HD 6630M graphics, plus 8 gigs, etc. Goal was to be able to run FCP X on the road without having to carry a MacBook Pro -- I have two and they are in some ways more problematic for me in running previous FCP than a Mini properly configured.

In fact, the question I was about to ask in this forum was, "Will the HD 6630M work properly on a 2011 Mini if I temporarily dump Lion and go back to Snow Leopard, pending some bug fixes and tweaks in Lion...?" You just mooted those questions, for sure. No purchase until or unless there's a way around this conundrum.

Anyway, I have been watching LOTS of pain in these discussions from folks running FCP X under Lion, and so I had planned to drop back to Snow Leopard immediately upon arrival of the 2011 Mini. Is incompatibility of Snow Leopard and 2011 Minis final, locked in stone, or situational and over-come-able? The no-Snow is in the specs and chip compatibility of the machine, a 64-bit-kernel gotta-have issue, or based on user experience...?? What breaks it? Thanks...

New developments! Snow Leopard CAN apparently be installed on a 2011 Mac Mini, but it takes some doing and patience. It's based on the close relationship of the hardware of the 2011 Minis with the 2011 MacBook Pros and iMacs, which do run SL and have drivers for Thunderbolt and for AMD 3xxx GPU's. John Fair came up with the workaround, and others are refining it.

Here's a related thread here in the Discussions community...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3209335?answerId=15766515022#15766515022

Yes we can-can! 🙂

More it is possible the better this sounds.. just starting to plan on installing Snow Leopard server to my new mini server as (Lambert the Sheepish Lion - YouTube) Mac OS X 10.7 LION is USELESS for anything for business or my Personal Corporation as Poser and other multimedia apps require to wait for updates to support the backwards changes made in LION..

A pointer, again, to a source of lots of help in getting Snow Leopard up and running on the new Minis (it's still a frustrating experience, but there's hope!). Go to the ongoing discussion on the main thread on this topic, here in Support Community....

Can I install Snow Leopard on the new Mac Mini

yes we can can! 😁

latest postings as of Weds. 8/24 morning:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3209335?answerId=16008045022#16008045022

Incidentally, Niel - and slightly off-topic:

I hope that you get involved in the main thread on Snow Leopard on the 2011 Mac Mini, as linked above, from time to time. Progress on that issue (getting SL running at an acceptable speed on the Mini) is very possible if the most knowledgeable contributors here can point some great coders toward that topic. And, it's not a minor thing: Lion still has some problems handling some of our most important software (in my case, FCP Studio 3), and the latest high-end Minis offer some tantilizing potential solutions to the price/portability/power dilemma that some of us face in the current slowed-down economy.

The level of your contributions in Support Community / Discussions is astounding (over 150,000 points and rising); so, thanks for the time and knowledge that you contribute, here!