Update: This article was written in early 2012. Since then, there are great apps like MLPostFactor that make good on this prediction. See this article for an example and details.
If you’re catching this article via search engines, it’s a follow-up to my previous article on the potential for Mountain Lion to run on machines below the system requirements.
Media reports are now that the graphics chipset — not the kernel — are what is holding up Mountain Lion on older Macs. OpenGL 4 support may be the culprit. This would likely lock out systems that have an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT, Intel GMA 950, and ATI Radeon X1600. All of which were long-ago abandoned by their respective silicon manufacturers, leaving Apple on its own in terms of coding OpenGL 4.0 support.
Apple has stressed to others that Mountain Lion Developer Preview requirements are preliminary. It’s possible Apple may simply make OpenGL 4 an optional feature, and not a hard requirement, thus allowing all Lion systems to upgrade to Mountain Lion.
I personally haven’t used Mountain Lion… yet. I wanted to tackle some issues before embracing those pesky NDAs.
The good news is, it appears that in the worst-case scenario, Mac Pro owners will be able to use an XPostFacto-like tool to bypass the Machine ID checks, along with a graphics card upgrade.
Contrary to some online myths, you can upgrade an original, first-gen Mac Pro with the graphics cards that are out there today. While first-generation Mac Pro models are limited to PCI Express 4x, the 16x cards out there today will gracefully downgrade. You’ll lose a bit of performance, but nothing that should inhibit OpenGL 4 compatibility.
Unfortunately, if the OpenGL 4 “requirement” sticks, all other older Macs that have ancient graphics may be left out in the cold, even if a comparable Mountain Lion system that is faster, makes the cut.
I’m sure all users out there would prefer an OpenGL 3, Mountain Lion system to being stuck at Lion, but keep in mind, Apple does a lot of API upgrades with each OS release. Apple may offer developers APIs that require OpenGL 4, hence the hard requirement.
And that’s where we get back to the “preliminary” status that Apple has since stressed. Apple may be gauging feedback to see if OpenGL 4 will make the hard requirement cut.
Considering that the Mac Pro can work around the issue, my personal bias may be turning a bit more favorable to the fact that OpenGL 4 will make the cut.
Update: This article was written in early 2012. Since then, there are great apps like MLPostFactor that make good on this prediction. See this article for an example and details.