Can My Mac Run OS X Lion?

FairerPlatform’s Ron Carlsen says:

Is time to upgrade? When Apple’s next-generation desktop operating system arrives this Summer, OS X Lion will leave some Intel-based Macs behind. Further,… because the Rosetta PowerPC emulation layer, which translates G3, G4 and Altivec instructions, is also going away, you won’t be able to use legacy versions of many apps, such as Photoshop CS 4 and Microsoft Office 2004, a double whammy.

Carlsen has helpfully posted a list of OS X Lion compatible Macs ordered by date of introduction and model identifier number:

Mac mini (Mid 2007, Macmini2,1)

iMac (Late 2006, iMac5,2)

Mac Pro (all models)

MacBook (Late 2006, MacBook2,1)

MacBook Air (all models)

13-inch Macbook Pro (all models)

15-inch MacBook Pro (October 2006, MacBookPro2,2)

17-inch Macbook Pro (October 2006, MacBookPro2,1)

Zero Intel Core Solo, Core Duo or PowerPC Macs are compatible

Carlsen cites a Wikipedia entry saying that any Intel Core 2 Duo Mac is OS X Lion compatible. However, if you try to install Lion on a Core Solo or Core Duo Mac, it won’t let you perform the installation, but he notes that’s just an arbitrary roadblock thats probably easy to get around. About that; even though they will be officially supported, the earliest Core 2 Duo models listed above, especially Apple’s consumer-grade, low-performance Mac mini, MacBook and MacBook Air, likely wont perform well with Lion. And as always, whatever you’ve got, more RAM and a better graphic card are going to make Lion run more smoothly.

For the full commentary visit here:
http://fairerplatform.com/2011/04/can-my-mac-run-os-x-lion/