Skip to Content
Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual
book

Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

by David Pogue
October 2011
Intermediate to advanced
928 pages
34h 56m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

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. Those old PowerPC Macs (PowerBooks, iBooks, PowerMacs, eMacs, and pre-2006 iMacs and Mac minis) have finally fallen off the Mac OS X upgrade path. You need a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7, or Xeon chip inside; if you have a 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.

    Tip

    OK, technically, you can install Lion onto a Mac that has Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)—by doing a clean install. See The Setup Assistant.

  • Free hard disk space. You need at least 10 GB free to install Mac OS X 10.7. You need a little more space if you install the Developer Tools (Saving a report

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Chuck Toporek, Chris Stone, Jason McIntosh

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449314828Errata Page