Getting Ready for Lion

ByMike Moffit

With Mac OS X Lion slated for release this month, it’s important to make sure your Mac is ready if you’re planning a day one upgrade. With some Mac users predicting the operating system’s release as soon as next week, there are several easy steps to verify your Mac’s compatibility for when Lion roars to life.

The first step to ensure a smooth install is to verify that your Mac is actually compatible with Lion. Like Snow Leopard, Lion is an Intel exclusive release meaning any older PowerPC machines (G4, G5, etc.) are incompatible. If you’re using a PowerPC machine, you’ve likely already identified that it is incompatible with Mac OS X 10.6 and consequently will not work with Lion either.

Unlike Snow Leopard, however, Lion marks the first recent release of OS X not fully compatible with all of Apple’s Intel based machines. In order to run Lion, your Mac must have at minimum an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. This means Lion is unfortunately incompatible with the first generation of Intel Macs dating from mid-2006 and earlier. It’s important to double check your Mac’s processor—especially if you fall into the early 2006 Intel crowd—as Intel’s early nomenclature can be deceiving at first glance.

The first generation of Intel machines sported Core Duo processors, but lacked the all important “2” signifying two processor cores on a single chip. To verify your Mac’s processor, click the Apple logo in the top left of your screen, and select About This Mac. In the resulting dialog box, your Mac’s operating system, processor and memory will be prominently displayed.

Once you’ve verified your machine’s processor has the brawn to boast Lion, the next step is to run Software Update. Apple released Mac OS X v10.6.8—likely the last version of Snow Leopard—late last month. The main purpose of this update was to prepare compatible Macs for the upgrade to Lion. In fact, following the update’s release users verified the update is mandatory for a successful 10.7 install.

To bring your software up-to-date, revisit the Apple logo in the left corner of the screen select Software Update (if you verified your Mac is already running v10.6.8 while checking its processor skip this step.) Software Update will launch and scan for newer versions of OS X and other applications.

Though you can always be selective about which updates you install, when prepping your machine for Lion it’s a smart idea to install all relevant updates in addition to Mac OS X v10.6.8. For instance, Apple recently updated several of its iLife ’11 applications for enhanced Lion compatibility. When performing any software update, we always recommend running a full Time Machine back-up prior to installing—just in case.

After you’ve updated to Mac OS X v10.6.8, you will want to consider freeing up space for Lion. Like its real life big cat counterpart, Lion requires a fair amount of space to roam—about 4GB. While it’s advisable to leave 10% of your start-up disk free at all times, you’ll want to confirm you have at least 10GB of available space. If you’re seriously cramped, consider moving seldom accessed files to an external hard drive or even deleting them all together. Also, that Miley Cyrus album you inexplicably downloaded after the company holiday party last year? Yep, time to go. If you’re unsure as to what’s clogging your Mac’s hard drive, try an inventory app such as Disk Inventory X for a helpful visual aid.

Once you’ve given your machine’s hard drive an overdue spring cleaning, it’s time to consider whether you are personally prepared for Lion. A huge step forward for OS X on nearly all fronts, it is hard not to be excited for the new OS. However, it is important to consider—especially if you rely on your Mac for business—some of the old features Lion does away with to make room for the new.

The most notable omission for legacy Mac users is undoubtably Rosetta. Previously enabling native PowerPC software to run on Intel based machines, this technology has officially been dropped from Lion—effectively rendering it incompatible with all PowerPC software. If you’re not in a position to upgrade aging versions of Quicken or other pricey creative apps, you will almost certainly want to hold off on upgrading.

While Apple has afforded its developers ample time to ensure their apps run flawlessly on Lion, not all third party software manufacturers have made their software Lion compatible. RoaringApps is a community based repository of Lion compatible software listings. Though not every Mac application is indexed, the compatibility status of many major apps are listed. It’s a great idea to cruise through the site and check it against your Applications folder before you install Lion.

After you and your Mac are ready to upgrade, it’s wise to perform one final Snow Leopard Time Machine back-up. While the Lion installation process is toted as the easiest OS X install ever, there’s always the remote chance of failure. For your data and sanity’s sake, take the time to run a full back-up to restore from, in the event something goes awry.

If you have a spare external drive and want to keep those Snow Leopard memories alive, apps like SuperDuper can create a bootable replica of your internal drive. This process also effectively preserves Rosetta support for those needing a PowerPC app every so often. Simply plug in the external drive and boot from it to use your machine in its exact state prior to upgrading.

Upon completing these steps, you and your Mac will be ready to upgrade to Lion once its released. Follow us on Twitter and we’ll let you know the moment it hits the Mac App Store. For more information on Lion click here.

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