My MacBook Air Refuses to Upgrade to OS X Mavericks, HELP!

MacBook Air late 2008 should be able to run mavericks. But 2GB of RAM is borderline acceptable, you need 4GB, particularly if you have programs running in the background.

What is the Model Identifier of the MBA?

About This Mac / More Info / Hardware Overview.

Mavericks is not compatible with Macbook Air1,1.

No, it means that Lion 10.7 is the latest version of OS X that it will run.

But 2GB of RAM is borderline acceptable, you need 4GB, particularly if you have programs running in the background.

MacBook Air RAM can't be upgraded.

So does it mean my MacBook is useless?

You can run OS 10.7 ( Lion). But with just the specified minimum 2 GB RAM you may find the the computer to be slower than you like.

You should be aware that many applications that are compatible with OS 10.6 will simply not run in OS 10.7 and higher. So upgrading the OS from 10.6 will also require getting new versions of some of your apps.

My wife has a MacBook Air that is currently running Lion. However, it's original 80 Gig 4800 rpm hard drive was replaced with a SSD from OWC. It's performance with Lion is acceptable.

If your MacBook Air had the optional SSD, you may also find that the Lion performance will be acceptable.

You should make an external hard drive backup before uprading. You could also do a trial install of Lion on the external beforehand.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Air-Retina/Apple-MacBook-Air-2008-Drive-I nternal

It is true that older software written for the PowerPC platform will not run in Lion, as Rosetta is not available. However, there are increasingly newer versions of software that won't run in Snow Leopard. See: http://roaringapps.com/apps?index=a

No, Lion is 10.7.

Lion can be purchased here: http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion

I'd double check that, since Apple's Logic Pro works with Lion. It's been my experience that most apps that run in Lion, also run in Mountain Lion.