Unlike Windows PCs and their rich heritage of legacy support (for better or for worse), historically it's been pretty spotty which Macs can run a downgraded OS. Obviously this is because Apple's control of the entire hardware + OS silo allows them to force development forward without worrying about stragglers, whenever it suits them. Unfortunately, this is always a problem for folks with old software or companies with large deployments who need new hardware. In my case, managing multiple OSs throws another unneeded variable into workflow support. So... I'm very excited for the possibility of Apple actually releasing Leopard before new hardware announcements. This means we have a decent chance of being able to continue to run our standard Leopard builds on the new machines we're budgeted for in Sept (without having to scrounge around for old stock).
Then again, there's an Apple event rumored for Sept 9. Nobody's really talking about new Macs, rather new multimedia, but with my luck they'll do a minor almost-insignificant CPU bump just to change the firmware from supporting Leopard. Fingers crossed!
Last edited by donikatz; 08/20/09 11:59 PM.
