This tutorial shows you how to get Mac OS X 10.8.4 (Mountain Lion) running on a late-2006 Mac Mini (model A1176), which officially can only support up to Mac OS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), according to this Wikipedia article. Although I have not tested it myself, the same steps would probably work if you have an early-2006 Mac Mini.
How To Download Mac Os X 10.8; How To Upgrade Mac Os X 10.8; If you get a Mac that didn't come with OS X Mountain Lion preinstalled. If you have a catastrophic hard-drive crash that requires you to initialize (format) or replace your boot drive. If you buy an external hard drive and want it to be capable of being your Mac's startup disk. How do I get 10.8 on my Mac? Click Reinstall OS X, and then Continue. Follow the instructions on the screen, and then choose your hard disk. Click Install, and enter your Apple ID information if prompted. When the installation is complete, select App Store from. Like Lion (OS X 10.7) before it, Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) doesn't ship on a disc—it's available only as an installer app downloadable from the Mac App Store, and that installer doesn't. But, if you have never upgraded your Mac or any older version of Mountain Lion you still have the option to purchase the license for Mountain Lion as Apple lets you purchase Lion OS X 10.7, Snow Leopard OS X 10.6, and Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8).
Hardware upgrades
Mac Mini 2006 comes with a Core Solo or a Duo Core processor, whereas Mac OS X Mountain Lion requires at least a Core 2 Duo, so you will need to upgrade the processor on your Mac Mini first before continuing. Although it is possible to patch the installer to run on a Core Duo, I would still recommend upgrading for a straightforward installation experience. Compatible processors can be found on eBay for as low as US$20 and available at a wide variety of speeds – 2GHz, 2.16GHz or 2.33GHz. A detailed step-by-step guide on how to upgrade the processor can be found here.
Optionally, to make the whole process worthwhile, it is also recommended to upgrade the RAM. Although the Mac Mini 2006 comes with the Macmini1,1 firmware which can only support up to 2GB of RAM and will not boot if more than 2GB is installed, you can install up to 4GB (2 pieces of 667MHz laptop DDR2 SDRAM) by updating the firmware to Macmini2,1, originally meant for the Mac Mini 2007 family. The steps are summarized below:
- Download the newer firmware from here http://www.mediafire.com/?lfangrn69rxln3q and extract it
- Put the extracted files in /System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware Updates folder. Check the permissions of the files, or just do a chmod 777 on the files to be safe.
- Run the following command in terminal:
sudo bless-mount /-firmware/System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware Updates/EFIUpdaterApp.efi-payload/System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware Updates/LOCKED_MM11_0055_08B.fd-options '-x-apple-efi payload0-data' -verbose - Turn off the computer by shutting it down from the Apple menu.
- Wait for a few seconds and press the power button until the power LED flashes. Wait until the flashing stops.
- At this point the firmware upgrade is completed. You may see some distorted pictures on the screen, which is normal. Simply turn the Mac Mini off by pressing the Power button, and turn it back on
- After a reboot, the Mac Mini should recognize 4GB of RAM.
- If the machine doesn't boot up or doesn't recognize the extra RAM, check that the memory modules have been securely inserted. If it still doesn't work, try to do a PRAM reset.
The machine can only use around 3.3 GB out of the total of 4GB that is recognized, due to limitations of the 32-bit processor. And while you are at it, take the time to upgrade the hard disk (a 2.5″ SATA drive) to an SSD, preferably 128GB or more. The final configuration, 2GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD, will make your Mac Mini 2006 machine performance more or less in line with the Mac Mini 2009, a much later model.
Preparing the installation
Before you proceed you will need to upgrade the OS on your Mac Mini to Snow Leopard 10.6.8, the last officially supported version. Next, get your Mountain Lion installer media ready – which can be a .DMG image or an actual DVD. After that, download MLPostfactor 0.3 from here, needed to patch the original Mountain Lion installer disk, which does not support the Mac Mini 2006, to run on your machine.
As at the time of writing this article (May 2015), MLPostfactor 0.3 only supports Mac OS up to 10.8.4. Versions 10.8.5 or above are not supported, so make sure that your installer is of the right version.
To make it easier to switch the boot partition without holding the Option key, you may also want to install a boot manager such as rEFIt.
Bypassing MLPostfactor limitation
Here comes the trick. The user interface for version 0.3 of MLPostfactor apparently only supports OS X Lion (10.7) and will refuse to run on 10.6. I tried to trick it by changing the system version number in /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist but things would still not work – MLPostfactor started but could not find Install OS X Mountain Lion.app in the Applications folder even though the installer was clearly there. A workaround would be to use MLPostfactor 0.2, which can run on Snow Leopard, to upgrade the system first to 10.7, and from there upgrade it to 10.8 by running MLPostfactor 0.3 again. I did not attempt this method because it seemed time consuming and most importantly, I had no installer disc for 10.7.
My relief came when I read this article which showed me how to use MLPostfactor from the command line. Apparently there is another MLPostfactor.app folder inside the original MLPostfactor app which can be invoked using the following command to patch the installer:
Surprisingly, there is no version check in the command line version of MLPostfactor and this method actually works to create the 10.8.4 installer partition. There are a few other commands that need to be done to patch the installer partition – refer to the original article for details.
Using MLPostfactor from bash script
A simpler way would be to use the MLPostfactor script written by pjherron available from github. With this script, the steps to upgrade to 10.8.4 from 10.6.8 on your Mac Mini can be summarized as below:
- Download MLPostFactor 0.3 and unzip it to desktop
- Copy the ‘Install OS X Mountain Lion.app' folder from your 10.8.4 installer disc to the Applications folder
- Create a 8 GB or larger partition on the target drive to host the patched installer. The volume label should be Install and it should be automatically mounted at /Volumes/Install
- Create another partition, 20GB or more, on the target drive where you will install 10.8.4. Alternative, if you do not need the original Snow Leopard partition, you do not need to create this partition and can simply choose to install on the Snow Leopard partition later, losing all existing data.
- Run the upgradesl2ml.sh script and give it 30 minutes to an hour to complete. When done, reboot the machine and choose to boot from the 10.8.4 installer partition just created
- When prompted, choose to install 10.8.4 on the partition created in step 4, or simply overwrite your Snow Leopard partition. It is highly recommended to format the partition and perform a clean install – do not perform an upgrade as there are known issues.
- Let the installer run. The process will either end in an error or a white screen – this is normal. Reboot the machine when this happens.
- Choose to boot from the 10.8.4 installer partition again (not the partition where you installed 10.8.4 to).
- When the installer finishes starting up, choose MLPostfactor from the Utilities menu and let it repair the partition where you've just installed 10.8.4
- When the repair is done, reboot your system and choose to boot from your fresh Mountain Lion partition. It should boot normally
- Done, you can now enjoy Mountain Lion on your Mac Mini 2006!
If the installation is successful, the About This Mac dialog should show something similar to below:
Common issues
In my experiment, the final system runs fine without major issues. Application such as Firefox, Skype or even xCode and the iOS simulator could run well. VLC player works well to play normal DivX or Xvid videos. The only major application that is problematic is Dropbox, which couldn't even install due to error ‘no mountable filesystems' when mounting the installer DMG. Tuxera NTFS can install and appears to work but will later cause random kernel panic when browsing NTFS partitions in Finder. I had to resort to removing Tuxera and learn to live with read-only NTFS support for now.
If your dock in Finder appears to be transparent after the installation, open Terminal and run the following command to fix it:
Read here for other useful tips and tricks.
Other than the above issues, my installation of 10.8.4 on the Mac Mini is stable and serves me well as my daily work machine. My next attempt would be to install 10.9 (Mavericks) or 10.10 (Yosemite) on this computer. As far as I know, although there are proof-of-concept attempts, nobody has managed to get a stable working system yet, presumably due to challenges in getting graphics drivers to work properly.
See also
Upgrading the SSD in a mid-2012 Macbook Air
Keyboard issues in GRUB bootloader on a Mac Mini booting Mac OS, Windows and Ubuntu Linux
Apple have always been impressing the crowd with their software and hardware enhancements over the year. To add a feather to that cap, Apple has redefined the operating system experience with the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.
Overview
The Mac OS X Mountain Lion released after being in the Beta version run for a very long time. The Mac OS X Mountain Lion is much more efficient and technologically sound enough to secure your data much stronger than the previous Mac OS Versions, claims Apple. The user interface is said to be improved and much sleeker in the aesthetic appeal.
License
Official Installer
File Size
4.43GB
Language
English
How To Update Mac Os X 10.8
Developer
Apple Inc.
Apple has made sure to take in the views and considerations of the Beta version users and the tweaks made through this update are a strong testimony to it. The environment is fabricated with a much easier user experience to tackle all the problems efficiently and smoothly. The Wi-fi performance is also tweaked up to give you seamless connectivity and improved upload and download speeds.
Mac Os X 10.8 Download Free
The Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 also houses a better and stable operating system with its release so to give the user the hassle-free experience. There has been a lot of speculations that a huge amount of data can be sent over the internet before the release. Apple made that true with the release of the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.
Some of the very much looked up to feature in the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 is
1. Stable Operating System
The stability in the Operating system is a much looked upon the issue in the software framework of Apple. With tons of reviews and inputs from the user, Apple has finally cracked the code and has increased the stability of the operating system with the release of the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8. The framework has been worked upon and the tiny attention to details has been given to enable the smoothest user experience for Apple.
2. Security Enhancements
There are also improved security enhancements with this update. Apple has been a company that always believes in keeping the security details and the privacy of its customers and has maintained the same till date. The more improved security enhancements in the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 update have been top-notch with more security beefed up for browsing, uploading data and as well as downloading data from the internet. The safety protocol involved with apple mail has also greatly improved.
3. Increased Performance of MacBook
Well the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 is the dawn update for MacBook users especially. Apple focused on decoding and solving the bugs that erupted among the various MacBook users with the Beta version release of the Mac OS X Mountain lion. The Mountain Lion OS also improved the user interface of the MacBook interface.
4. Sending Huge data over the internet
The Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 had many expectations before its release out of which sending huge data over the internet was speculated. It was initially considered as a fan-made rumor but Apple made it a reality with the release of the Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Now wit the release of the Mac OS X Mountain lion, you can send huge amounts of data over the internet which was previously not allowed by the Apple Mac Servers as the Software couldn't support such a feature with its previous OS versions.
5. Fixes for Screen Saver Issues and Smart Card
The issues that popped up with the previous Mac OS versions speculated a lot of commotion among the Apple users such that apple made it a top priority to make sure that they solved the issue with the next update. The screen saver framework was improved along with the issues that popped up with the Smart card as well. The improvements in these aspects made the Mac OS X Mountain Lion top of the game and well appreciated and welcomed by the users.
There are also many more features to add up to the mentioned features, the other upgrades are minute details and those improvements haven't created a bigger impact on the user experience.
As at the time of writing this article (May 2015), MLPostfactor 0.3 only supports Mac OS up to 10.8.4. Versions 10.8.5 or above are not supported, so make sure that your installer is of the right version.
To make it easier to switch the boot partition without holding the Option key, you may also want to install a boot manager such as rEFIt.
Bypassing MLPostfactor limitation
Here comes the trick. The user interface for version 0.3 of MLPostfactor apparently only supports OS X Lion (10.7) and will refuse to run on 10.6. I tried to trick it by changing the system version number in /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist but things would still not work – MLPostfactor started but could not find Install OS X Mountain Lion.app in the Applications folder even though the installer was clearly there. A workaround would be to use MLPostfactor 0.2, which can run on Snow Leopard, to upgrade the system first to 10.7, and from there upgrade it to 10.8 by running MLPostfactor 0.3 again. I did not attempt this method because it seemed time consuming and most importantly, I had no installer disc for 10.7.
My relief came when I read this article which showed me how to use MLPostfactor from the command line. Apparently there is another MLPostfactor.app folder inside the original MLPostfactor app which can be invoked using the following command to patch the installer:
Surprisingly, there is no version check in the command line version of MLPostfactor and this method actually works to create the 10.8.4 installer partition. There are a few other commands that need to be done to patch the installer partition – refer to the original article for details.
Using MLPostfactor from bash script
A simpler way would be to use the MLPostfactor script written by pjherron available from github. With this script, the steps to upgrade to 10.8.4 from 10.6.8 on your Mac Mini can be summarized as below:
- Download MLPostFactor 0.3 and unzip it to desktop
- Copy the ‘Install OS X Mountain Lion.app' folder from your 10.8.4 installer disc to the Applications folder
- Create a 8 GB or larger partition on the target drive to host the patched installer. The volume label should be Install and it should be automatically mounted at /Volumes/Install
- Create another partition, 20GB or more, on the target drive where you will install 10.8.4. Alternative, if you do not need the original Snow Leopard partition, you do not need to create this partition and can simply choose to install on the Snow Leopard partition later, losing all existing data.
- Run the upgradesl2ml.sh script and give it 30 minutes to an hour to complete. When done, reboot the machine and choose to boot from the 10.8.4 installer partition just created
- When prompted, choose to install 10.8.4 on the partition created in step 4, or simply overwrite your Snow Leopard partition. It is highly recommended to format the partition and perform a clean install – do not perform an upgrade as there are known issues.
- Let the installer run. The process will either end in an error or a white screen – this is normal. Reboot the machine when this happens.
- Choose to boot from the 10.8.4 installer partition again (not the partition where you installed 10.8.4 to).
- When the installer finishes starting up, choose MLPostfactor from the Utilities menu and let it repair the partition where you've just installed 10.8.4
- When the repair is done, reboot your system and choose to boot from your fresh Mountain Lion partition. It should boot normally
- Done, you can now enjoy Mountain Lion on your Mac Mini 2006!
If the installation is successful, the About This Mac dialog should show something similar to below:
Common issues
In my experiment, the final system runs fine without major issues. Application such as Firefox, Skype or even xCode and the iOS simulator could run well. VLC player works well to play normal DivX or Xvid videos. The only major application that is problematic is Dropbox, which couldn't even install due to error ‘no mountable filesystems' when mounting the installer DMG. Tuxera NTFS can install and appears to work but will later cause random kernel panic when browsing NTFS partitions in Finder. I had to resort to removing Tuxera and learn to live with read-only NTFS support for now.
If your dock in Finder appears to be transparent after the installation, open Terminal and run the following command to fix it:
Read here for other useful tips and tricks.
Other than the above issues, my installation of 10.8.4 on the Mac Mini is stable and serves me well as my daily work machine. My next attempt would be to install 10.9 (Mavericks) or 10.10 (Yosemite) on this computer. As far as I know, although there are proof-of-concept attempts, nobody has managed to get a stable working system yet, presumably due to challenges in getting graphics drivers to work properly.
See also
Upgrading the SSD in a mid-2012 Macbook Air
Keyboard issues in GRUB bootloader on a Mac Mini booting Mac OS, Windows and Ubuntu Linux
Apple have always been impressing the crowd with their software and hardware enhancements over the year. To add a feather to that cap, Apple has redefined the operating system experience with the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.
Overview
The Mac OS X Mountain Lion released after being in the Beta version run for a very long time. The Mac OS X Mountain Lion is much more efficient and technologically sound enough to secure your data much stronger than the previous Mac OS Versions, claims Apple. The user interface is said to be improved and much sleeker in the aesthetic appeal.
License
Official Installer
File Size
4.43GB
Language
English
How To Update Mac Os X 10.8
Developer
Apple Inc.
Apple has made sure to take in the views and considerations of the Beta version users and the tweaks made through this update are a strong testimony to it. The environment is fabricated with a much easier user experience to tackle all the problems efficiently and smoothly. The Wi-fi performance is also tweaked up to give you seamless connectivity and improved upload and download speeds.
Mac Os X 10.8 Download Free
The Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 also houses a better and stable operating system with its release so to give the user the hassle-free experience. There has been a lot of speculations that a huge amount of data can be sent over the internet before the release. Apple made that true with the release of the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.
Some of the very much looked up to feature in the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 is
1. Stable Operating System
The stability in the Operating system is a much looked upon the issue in the software framework of Apple. With tons of reviews and inputs from the user, Apple has finally cracked the code and has increased the stability of the operating system with the release of the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8. The framework has been worked upon and the tiny attention to details has been given to enable the smoothest user experience for Apple.
2. Security Enhancements
There are also improved security enhancements with this update. Apple has been a company that always believes in keeping the security details and the privacy of its customers and has maintained the same till date. The more improved security enhancements in the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 update have been top-notch with more security beefed up for browsing, uploading data and as well as downloading data from the internet. The safety protocol involved with apple mail has also greatly improved.
3. Increased Performance of MacBook
Well the Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 is the dawn update for MacBook users especially. Apple focused on decoding and solving the bugs that erupted among the various MacBook users with the Beta version release of the Mac OS X Mountain lion. The Mountain Lion OS also improved the user interface of the MacBook interface.
4. Sending Huge data over the internet
The Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 had many expectations before its release out of which sending huge data over the internet was speculated. It was initially considered as a fan-made rumor but Apple made it a reality with the release of the Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Now wit the release of the Mac OS X Mountain lion, you can send huge amounts of data over the internet which was previously not allowed by the Apple Mac Servers as the Software couldn't support such a feature with its previous OS versions.
5. Fixes for Screen Saver Issues and Smart Card
The issues that popped up with the previous Mac OS versions speculated a lot of commotion among the Apple users such that apple made it a top priority to make sure that they solved the issue with the next update. The screen saver framework was improved along with the issues that popped up with the Smart card as well. The improvements in these aspects made the Mac OS X Mountain Lion top of the game and well appreciated and welcomed by the users.
There are also many more features to add up to the mentioned features, the other upgrades are minute details and those improvements haven't created a bigger impact on the user experience.
System Requirements of the Mac OS X Mountain Lion
- Minimum RAM requirement of 2GB.
- Free Hard Disk Drive of 8GB.
- Intel Multi-Core processor.
Download Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 ISO and DMG Image
The Mac OS X Mountain DMG file can be downloaded from the below link. The Mac OS X Mountain Lion is considered to be a very stable operating system and won't be much of a trouble to the users. Make sure that the minimum system requirements are met. The File size is around 4.2 GB. You can also download the DMG file of various other operating systems from the ISO River website.
Download Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 ISO and DMG Image free - ISORIVER
The Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 also houses a better and stable operating system with its release so to give the user the hassle-free experience. There has been a lot of speculations that a huge amount of data can be sent over the internet before the release.
Price Currency: USD
Operating System: Mac OS
Application Category: OS
