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Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Microman - 03-29-2012
I can't take it any more with the beach balls.
This Late 13" 2006 Black Macbook, cannot now run the latest update of LION.
I need to know how far to go back.
Tiger?
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Gilbert - 03-29-2012
I don't know if it has exactly that but everymac.com helps me out to know the minimum and maximum supported OS for all machines.
Good luck!
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Robert M - 03-29-2012
Micro,
I'm not sure if there is a good answer. Optimal performance doesn't equate best user experience. For example, one OS may perform a touch slower on a given machine but offer some very useful features or overall improvements. In the end, those features may be more beneficial than the slight improvement in performance.
Robert
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Lew Zealand - 03-29-2012
If you have 2GB or less in your Blackbook, I suggest Snow Leopard as Lion is a real memory hog. I use 10.6.8 in my Early 2006 Blackbook with the max 2GB is it works fine for me. A 7200 RPM drive with the OS in it's own 50GB partition and all my data in the remaining 450GB also helps keep the speed up.
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Article Accelerator - 03-29-2012
The mactracker application is very useful for that sort of thing:
http://www.mactracker.ca/
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Buzz - 03-29-2012
Tiger is probably your best friend, as is.
With 3GB max RAM, and integrated graphics sucking a piece of that, too, it doesn't give you tons of head room.
Leopard and SL are nice, but to de-beachball the laptop, you likely need to toss in a SSD if you're gonna run w/ them. Lion will be too much of a fight to try to tame; way more trouble than it's worth.
A speedier HDD may help a bit, as the stock drives were pretty sluggish, and the bus is only SATA I, but if you're gonna pop the top, a small, 60/90/120GB SSD will easily max out your real life I/O throughput, then maybe use an external FW drive for extra data beyond what you carry on the SSD.
Some Mac laptops have more room to "grow" than others.
Good luck.
///
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Microman - 03-29-2012
MacTracker on my iPhone states that the original was 10.4.8, and Max OS would be the CURRENT OS, so I assume they are thinking lion.
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Black - 03-29-2012
I don't think it's just Lion that's the RAM hog.
Sometime in later versions of Snow Leopard RAM seemed to have started getting used in droves, likely to coincide with the way something was handled in Lion. Wish I had more precise info than that.
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - Chakravartin - 03-29-2012
I wouldn't go above Leopard on that Mac even with the RAM maxxed out.
It's just not up to anything more.
Even Leopard is likely to stress it, but it fixes a lot of lingering issues that Tiger has and lots of software requires Leopard (as the minimal supported OS) so Leopard is probably best for it.
...But if you only have the stock 1GB RAM then you should not go above Tiger. Later versions of the OS need much more RAM to operate well.
Re: Is there a list of Macs and what is the Last OS they should use for optimal performance - BernDog - 03-30-2012
If you were going to go to Leopard, wouldn't you be better off going all the way to SL? I thought there were all kinds of optimizations done in SL when they stripped out all the PPC code.