Lion-- things to know

[James Steele]

Well, if you have another Mac at your disposal you might be able to connect it via Firewire (400/800?) and boot your laptop in "Target" mode by holding down the "T" key at bootup (assuming it's still available in Lion) and then install SL that way via the other Mac. Just a thought. Of course I don't remember what Sandy Bridge means offhand, so maybe even if you successfully install 10.6.3 it may not boot. However, you could just apply the 10.6.8 combo updater immediately, before attempting to boot the MacBook.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Sandy Bridge is just a code name for the new chip that extracts money out of our pockets a few times faster than the older chip did...

[tcastle]

James,

My next attempt will be to load SL to an external drive using a friend's computer that will see SL 10.6.3. Then run the updater on that version on my drive... Then I'll see if my new MBP will recognize the 10.6.8 SL on the external as a boot drive.

If so, I'll burn a bootable DVD and try to install that on my MBP... or maybe just keep the external drive available to boot from...

It's really not that big a deal if I can't get SL on my MBP. Many of my apps are way overdo for upgrades and at about $200/app (give or take), it's not the end of the world to be current... as soon as my favorite apps will play nice with Lion. I mean, sooner or later we're all going to go through this.

Thanks for your reply...


MIDI Life Crisis: Hey, it's only money!

[dix]

This seems relevant. This confirms the new MBPs have been refreshed for Lion:

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/28/app ... os-x-lion/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[tcastle]

Interesting reading. Thanks!

[tcastle]

So... Good news.

I was able to install SL 10.6.8 on an external drive and my MBP happily boots from it.

So, I have all my favorite apps back running on my new MBP under SL... and can boot into Lion whenever I like it better. At this point, I'm really liking the touchpad gestures for surfing...

And when my favorite apps will play nice with Lion, I'll probably update.

Thanks to all for the help and advice.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=337009" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A few excerpts:

it seems to be a resource-hungry OS indeed. Out of 8 gigs, it seems to be taking almost 5 just for running. I have 3 desktops, opened Finale, iTunes, and Word, and that's about all.

I upgraded a Mac Book Pro and lost all the PPC software.

If I had known that PPC or Power PC meant that I could no longer use MS Office, I never would have upgraded. And, Apple doesn't allow you to go backwards. Tech support told me to insert my original Snow Leopard discs and I could get Snow Leopard back. I tried reloading Snow Leopard from the discs supplied with the computer and it is looking for OSX 23.1 and refuses to go any further.

If you don't use MS Office then that's different story. In addition, my wife has had some of the games she plays freeze.

you can create a new partition in Snow Leopard (probably Lion too - I haven't done it yet) without reformatting or erasing anything. Disk utility does the job. You can have both, cake and eat it - whichever is which

Lion runs smoother now. Turned out that the resource hunger was mainly due to reindexing, as Lion systemizes the data differently than previous systems.

Lion working fine here so far. I lost word and Excel, and Finale 2004

I just came home with the new MacBook Air (the largest one). Wanted to make one partition with each system...it doesn't allow anything but Lion!!!!!!!

Judging from present financial conditions, perhaps Apple should just buy the USA and rename it iMerica.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

... and this:

http://makemusic.custhelp.com/app/answe ... a_id/4448/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mikehalloran]

>I just came home with the new MacBook Air (the largest one). Wanted to make one partition with each system...it doesn't allow anything but Lion!!!!!!!<

The new Macs released with Lion do not allow this; older Macs will as long as Lion can be installed at all.

BTW, I installed Lion on a MacBook Core Duo booted in Target mode. Installation was smooth and it booted my iMac just fine. It would not boot itself, however till I restored SL. Oh well... now I know.

[Nigel Keay]

Well, if you have another Mac at your disposal you might be able to connect it via Firewire (400/800?) and boot your laptop in "Target" mode by holding down the "T" key at bootup (assuming it's still available in Lion)...

Lion started up for me in "T" mode on a new i5 Mac mini, but wasn't recognized by a core 2 duo mac mini OS 10.5.8 across a Firewire 400/800 cable. No recognition the other way round either, with the core 2 duo mac mini in "T" mode.
The cable itself is fine as I was able to hook up an early Traveler to the new i5 Mac mini.

[mikehalloran]

Well, if you have another Mac at your disposal you might be able to connect it via Firewire (400/800?) and boot your laptop in "Target" mode by holding down the "T" key at bootup (assuming it's still available in Lion)...

Lion started up for me in "T" mode on a new i5 Mac mini, but wasn't recognized by a core 2 duo mac mini OS 10.5.8 across a Firewire 400/800 cable. No recognition the other way round either, with the core 2 duo mac mini in "T" mode.
The cable itself is fine as I was able to hook up an early Traveler to the new i5 Mac mini.

I had no problem at all doing that between my wife's old Mac Mini and her new iMac 2 days ago. I also tried my Core Duo MacBook Pro as I couldn't install 10.6 from a PPC. Lastly, I tried booting it from the SL install CD - again, no problem. She still has files in AppleWorks that need to be converted before upgrading to Lion.

As I reported earlier, I even installed Lion on the MacBook Pro in Target Mode but, because it is a Core Duo instead of a Core 2 Duo, It would not boot the MacBook - it did boot the iMacs, both my 2010 and her new one just fine from T mode, however.

[bayswater]

http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=337009" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A few excerpts:

it seems to be a resource-hungry OS indeed. Out of 8 gigs, it seems to be taking almost 5 just for running. I have 3 desktops, opened Finale, iTunes, and Word, and that's about all.

This person has problems with his setup. I have Lion running fine on Macs with 1G and 2G RAM. Just to see what happens, right now, I have a Macbook 2006 with 2G running Lion with DP 7.24, Word, Address Book, iCal, Transmit, Mail, and Safari. Dashboard is on. Of the 2G, 550M is idle. About 10% CPU is taken by System process, 15% by Applications, and 75% is idle (and presumably available to DP). There is also a second user logged in running Mail and Safari. Not what I'd call a resource hog.

[mikehalloran]

>This person has problems with his setup. <

Agreed. I also have Finale with many VIs running, Word and iTunes open - closer to 2G.

Finale is the variable depending on his VIs.

[Nigel Keay]

I had no problem at all doing that between my wife's old Mac Mini and her new iMac 2 days ago.

Thanks for mentioning that. I tried again with a Core 2 Duo MacBook and the new machine, and this time T mode worked, so not sure what's going on. Perhaps it's something to do with the cable and I was lucky hooking up the Traveler - I've had problems in the past with Firewire 400 cables. I bought a 400/800 iWire cable and noticed one quirky thing; the metal insert is only 8mm long. Other Firewire cables I've got the insert is 12mm long. Weird.

[Nigel Keay]

EmagicUSBMIDIDriver.plugin wasn't in the Library/Audio/MIDI Drivers folder on the new Mac mini I just bought with OS X Lion.

I got a pleasant a pleasant surprise to discover an Intel version of that driver when I bought a Mac with Leopard installed, that meant I could keep using an old MT4 MIDI interface.

Edit; I copied it from Leopard into the MIDI Drivers folder on Lion and it's working fine.