MacBook 3.1 (Late 2007) Mt. Lion or Mavericks Upgrade

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MacBook 3.1 (Late 2007) Mt. Lion or Mavericks Upgrade

I've read a bunch of post of people asking this and saw on Apple's site that the 3.1 MacBook isn't compatible, but I was really wondering why. As far as I can tell, it should be able to run both (once I upgrade my RAM at least which I was planning on doing anyway). It's a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (which I believe is 64-bit so that should be good) 160GB hard drive with ~140GB free, and 2GB 667 MHz RAM at the moment but I'm going to max it out to 4 once I get the money. I just did a clean install with the original discs and upgraded to SL earlier this week and it runs beautfully.

So basically my question is, why isn't the 3.1 MacBook supported for either Mountain Lion or Mavericks? I know my MacBook would be the very minimum requirement for RAM, but I'm pretty sure 4 GB was an option at that time and that should be plenty. Did Apple purposely not include this model for some reason or is the processor just not good enough or something? And if it was on purpose, does anyone think Apple will decide to support it eventually? I'm really curious because I would like to upgrade at some point considering SL is the minimum requirement for a lot of things, like Flash and the App store.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 17, 2014 5:56 PM

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Answer 1

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frederic1943

Level 6

10,004 points

Jan 17, 2014 6:12 PM in response to macpack007

It's mainly the video card. The Models 2,1 through 4,1 have video cards with non-upgradeable 32bit drivers. The model 5,1 Late 2008 and newer have at least the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 64bit drivers. Mountain Lion and Mavericks require 64bit native drivers. Mountain Lion and Mavericks no longer support Intel's GMA 950 or GMA X3100 graphics processors.

While Lion used some 32 bit and a lot of 64 bit code, Mountain Lion and Mavericks are pure 64 bit, which excludes more systems than Lion did. It's not something you can add memory to, for example, as it involves the base architecture.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57470261-263/older-64-bit-macs-out-of-the-p icture-for-mountain-lion/?tag=mncol;txt

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57387846-263/will-your-mac-run-mountain-lio n/

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Answer 2

macpack007 Author

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Jan 17, 2014 6:22 PM in response to frederic1943

Darn, so there's no way I'd be able to upgrade to Mountain Lion or Mavericks no matter what, right? Since the video card can't be upgraded. How about Lion then? Would it run ok even though it uses a lot of 64 bit code? (I'm no computer guy so apologies if that's a dumb question)

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Answer 3

Jan 17, 2014 9:06 PM in response to macpack007

Lion is still available from Apple. You will have to call Apple Customer Care 1-800-692-7753 or 1-800-676-2775. to purchase it. Then within 3 days you will get an email with a code which you can use to download Lion from the App Store. Or go to http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion and purchase it there. The price is $19.99.

You must have at least a Late 2006 model 2,1 MacBook.

Lion will require at least 2gb of RAM but really needs 4gb to run smoothly.

As for third party programs see this list for compatibility with 10.7 http://roaringapps.com/apps:table

Also Lion doesn't run any Power PC programs. To see if you have any Power PC programs go to the Apple in the upper left corner and select About This Mac, then click on More Info. When System Profiler comes up select Applications under Software. Then look under Kind to see if any of your applications are listed as Power PC. Universal and Intel will run under Lion.

Before Mac switched to Intel processors in 2006 they used Power PC processors from 1994 to 2005. Power PC 601 through 604, G3, G4 and G5. Applications written for the Power PC processors need the application called Rosetta to run on Intel processors. This was part of the Operating System in 10.4 and 10.5 but was an optional install in 10.6. With 10.7 Lion Apple dropped all support for Power PC applications

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