Hardware Requirements

For starters, you need to make sure you and your Mac have what it takes to handle Mac OS X Lion—specifically:

  • A Mac with a recent Intel processor. You need a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7, or Xeon chip inside; if you have an old Core Solo or Core Duo processor instead, you can’t install Lion. (How do you find out? Choose →About This Mac. The resulting dialog box clearly identifies your processor.)

    Basically, most Macs manufactured since late 2006 are eligible.

  • Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Your Mac has to be running the most recent pre-Lion software version, Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). (The main reason: You need the App Store to get Lion, and the App Store debuted in Snow Leopard.) Even if you already have Snow Leopard, run Software Update to make sure you have the latest version, 10.6.8.

    If you don’t have Snow Leopard, then the cost of Lion just went up. You’ll have to buy and install Snow Leopard and then buy and install Lion.

  • Free hard disk space. You need at least 10 GB free to install Mac OS X 10.7.

  • A lot of memory. Mac OS X absolutely loves memory. For the greatest speed, install 4 gigabytes—more if you can afford it. (And these days, you probably can.)

  • The latest firmware. Firmware describes the low-level, underlying software instructions that control the actual circuitry of your Mac. Every now and then, Apple updates it for certain Mac models, and it’s ...

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