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With any new operating system release, there’s a certain amount of hand-wringing from users running an older version — but for now, it seems as if the new OS X Mavericks will work on any Mountain Lion-friendly hardware.
Ars Technica reported Tuesday that Apple’s forthcoming OS X Mavericks doesn’t appear likely to require Mac hardware any newer that that already in use with the current operating system, OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.
Although anything can change between now and this fall, a forum post on MacRumors claims the system requirements for the just-released Developer Preview for OS X Mavericks 10.9 are identical to those for the existing OS X 10.8.
• iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)
At least for now, Apple appears to be breaking from its recent tradition of dropping support for older hardware with each new OS X release, although it certainly helps that Cupertino no longer ships Macs that don’t support 64-bit processors.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens when OS X Mavericks is actually released later this year, but those with a slightly older Mac appear to be safe for now.
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