{"id":26913,"date":"2012-07-21T09:01:34","date_gmt":"2012-07-21T07:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/?p=26913"},"modified":"2025-07-02T01:47:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T08:47:00","slug":"dont-upgrade-to-mountain-lion-until-youve-read-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/dont-upgrade-to-mountain-lion-until-youve-read-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t upgrade to Mountain Lion until you&#8217;ve read this"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/07\/LYONS.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27067 alignright\" title=\"OS X Mountain Lion\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/07\/LYONS.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"101\" srcset=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/07\/LYONS.jpg 297w, https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/07\/LYONS-293x300.jpg 293w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/a><!--[lead]--><\/p>\n<p>The recent release of the Golden Master version of <a href=\"http:\/\/mountain-lion.en.softonic.com\/mac\"><strong>Mountain Lion<\/strong><\/a> to developers means <strong>Mountain Lion OS X 10.8<\/strong> will be officially released very soon. Before rushing into upgrading though, take a deep breath and consider some of the following to ensure you have no nasty surprises:<\/p>\n<p><!--[\/lead]--><\/p>\n<p><!--[body]--><\/p>\n<p>Mountain Lion will only upgrade if you&#8217;re running <strong>Lion OS X 10.7.x <\/strong>or the latest version of<strong> Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.8<\/strong>, and you must have at least <strong>2GB of RAM<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re unsure about these 2 basic requirements, click on the Apple logo in the top left of your screen and select <strong>About This Mac<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-26934\" title=\"os x about screen\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/sft\/articles\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/07\/os-x-about-screen.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"307\" height=\"379\" srcset=\"https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/07\/os-x-about-screen.jpg 307w, https:\/\/articles-img.sftcdn.net\/auto-mapping-folder\/sites\/3\/2012\/07\/os-x-about-screen-243x300.jpg 243w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 307px) 100vw, 307px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If all of the above are correct then consider the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you have <strong>an older Mac, you may not be able to install Mountain Lion<\/strong>. Apple lists the following models as compatible with it. Anything older will not work:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p>iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid\/Late 2007 or newer) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) Xserve (Early 2009)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>You&#8217;ll need to obtain an <a href=\"https:\/\/appleid.apple.com\/\"><strong>Apple ID<\/strong><\/a>. If you&#8217;re an iTunes user, you&#8217;ll already have one but if you bought your Mac with Lion already installed, you&#8217;ll have to create one because Apple release new operating systems via the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/mac\/app-store\/\"><strong>The Mac App Store<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Have a <strong>credit card<\/strong> ready. Mountain Lion is the cheapest OS X upgrade yet at just <strong>$19.99<\/strong> ($10 cheaper than Lion). If you don&#8217;t have a credit card, you can use an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/itunes\/gifts\/\"><strong>iTunes gift voucher<\/strong><\/a>. Note that Apple Gift cards will not work in The Mac App Store.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure you have at least <strong>8GB of free hard drive space<\/strong>. If you&#8217;re need to clean some space but can&#8217;t quite identify which files are taking-up so much room, try <a href=\"http:\/\/daisydisk.en.softonic.com\/mac\"><strong>DaisyDisk<\/strong><\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/omnidisksweeper.en.softonic.com\/mac\"><strong>OmniDiskSweeper<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Back up<\/strong> your hard drive. If something should go wrong with the installation of Mountain Lion, it&#8217;s essential that you have a backup of your data. <a href=\"http:\/\/support.apple.com\/kb\/ht1427\"><strong>Time Machine<\/strong><\/a> comes free with OS X and is ideal for this or alternatively, <a href=\"http:\/\/superduper.en.softonic.com\/mac\"><strong>Super Duper!<\/strong><\/a> is another excellent backup tool.<\/li>\n<li>Note that if you&#8217;re still on Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion doesn&#8217;t support PPC Macs so <strong>Rosetta Apps won&#8217;t work with it<\/strong>. If you&#8217;re running older versions (usually 6 years or more old) of any of the following and can&#8217;t afford to upgrade them to an Intel version, don&#8217;t install Mountain Lion as they either won&#8217;t work or you will experience problems with them: <strong>Creative Suite, Quicken 2007, <a href=\"http:\/\/microsoft-office-2008-trial.en.softonic.com\/mac\">Microsoft Office 2008<\/a>, Rosetta Stone Language Software, Freehand and Appleworks<\/strong>. For a breakdown of which major apps are and aren&#8217;t compatible with Mountain Lion, <a href=\"http:\/\/roaringapps.com\/apps:table\">check here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Have some updated <strong>Printer Drivers<\/strong> handy. Since some older printer drivers require Rosetta to work, you may find that your printer doesn&#8217;t work with Mountain Lion. You should be able to find updated drivers on the developer website although if the printer is really old, you&#8217;ll be out of luck.<\/li>\n<li>Be extra cautious if you use <a href=\"http:\/\/apple-mail-update.en.softonic.com\/mac\"><strong>Apple Mail<\/strong><\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/aperture.en.softonic.com\/mac\"><strong>Aperture<\/strong><\/a>. Both applications are particularly sensitive to OS changes as was <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/how-to-fix-mail-problems-in-snow-leopard\/\">illustrated with Mail when Snow Leopard arrived<\/a>. It may be worth waiting at least a few weeks before upgrading to Mountain Lion if you rely on either or both and can&#8217;t afford to waste time re-configuring them.<\/li>\n<li>Throw away your Magic Mouse and buy a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/magictrackpad\/\"><strong>Magic Trackpad<\/strong><\/a> (about $69). Well, you don&#8217;t have to throw away your Magic Mouse but you&#8217;ll probably feel like it if you&#8217;ve ever used a Magic Trackpad. Lion has been optimized to be more like using an iPhone so you&#8217;ll miss out on many gesture features if you don&#8217;t have a Magic Trackpad although it&#8217;s not essential.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--[\/body]--><\/p>\n<p><!--[conclusion]--><\/p>\n<p><strong>If you are concerned about teething issues when upgrading, the best single piece of advice is simply wait!<\/strong> Most of the problems with Lion were ironed out within a month or so of the release and so if you&#8217;re not desperate to have Mountain Lion on your Mac immediately, take it easy.<\/p>\n<p>There are bound to be issues that arise after upgrading, so if you discover any when Mountain Lion is released, let us know in the comments below.<\/p>\n<p><!--[\/conclusion]--><\/p>\n<p><!--[calltoaction]--><\/p>\n<h4>In the meantime, don&#8217;t forgot to check out our lowdown on <a href=\"http:\/\/news.en.softonic.com\/mountain-lion-released-5-features-not-to-miss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">everything that&#8217;s new in Mountain Lion<\/a>.<\/h4>\n<p><!--[\/calltoaction]--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent release of the Golden Master version of Mountain Lion to developers means Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 will be officially released very soon. Before rushing into upgrading though, take a deep breath and consider some of the following to ensure you have no nasty surprises: Mountain Lion will only upgrade if you&#8217;re running &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/dont-upgrade-to-mountain-lion-until-youve-read-this\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Don&#8217;t upgrade to Mountain Lion until you&#8217;ve read this&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2009,"featured_media":50352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[2911],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-26913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-app-subdomain-redirectionmountain-lion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2009"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333719,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26913\/revisions\/333719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26913"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=26913"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=26913"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=26913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}