Snow Leopard installations seem to be a go for the direct upgrade skipping Lion

May 13, 2012 00:31 GMT  ·  By

With WWDC 2012 only a month away, anxious Apple fans may want to know straight up which Macs are supported by OS X Mountain Lion and which aren’t. There’s also a software side to this and, luckily, it appears Lion won’t be a requirement.

A recent test conducted by the people engaged by Apple in Mountain Lion development has revealed that upgrading is possible from a Snow Leopard machine without the need to go through OS X 10.7, aka Lion.

Upon its release to the public, OS X 10.7 Lion required Snow Leopard version 10.6.6 installations to access the Mac App Store and download the new cat from Apple’s servers.

With the Mac App Store available on Snow Leopard machines, Apple should not require customers to go through Lion in upgrading their systems to Mountain Lion, and recent tests seem to support this theory.

So far, the development previews issued by Apple internally don’t require the interim Lion OS for clean installations or upgrades from Snow Leopard.

The current system requirements for upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion haven’t changed since the launch of the first development preview in February.

According to TechRadar and OS X Daily, this is what you’ll need this summer to upgrade your Mac (provided that Apple doesn’t alter the requirements by then).

Basic requirements (applying to all supported Macs):

· 64-Bit Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better required · Ability to boot into OS X 64-bit kernel · Advanced GPU chipset required · Internet connection required to download and install OS X 10.8

Detailed requirements (hardware support):

· MacBook Pro - you'll need to have either a 13-inch from mid-2009 on or a 2.2/2.4GHz 15-inch or a late 2007 or newer 17-inch · MacBook - 13-inch 2008 in aluminum, early 2009 or later · MacBook Air - it needs to be ate 2008 or newer · Mac Mini - it needs to be early 2009 or newer · iMac - it needs to be mid 2007 or newer · Mac Pro - it needs to be early 2008 or newer · Xserve - early 2009

In releasing its Mountain Lion developer previews to testers, Apple has carefully outlined the systems that don’t support the software.

Any Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook shipped between late 2007 and late 2008 (Model Numbers: MB061*/B, MB062*/B, MB063*/B, MB402*/A MB403*/A MB404*/A, MB402*/B) will not be supported.

The same goes for the Mid-2007 Mac mini (Model Numbers: MB138*/A, MB139*/A) and the late 2006 (white) iMac (Model Number: MA710xx/A), and the original MacBook Air (Model Number: MB003LL/A).