OS X 10.8 no Support For 64-Bit Devices

Apple’s Mountain Lion upgrade page displays a confirmed report that the company is restricting several 64-bit enabled Mac Pros, iMacs, and MacBook Pros from getting an OS X 10.8 upgrade. Apparently, the said restriction seemed to be related with graphics issues. At the first Mountain Lion developer preview, developers have released a list of hardware requirements which show inconsistencies with some early models of 64-bit Mac. Consequently, Mountain Lion developer previews are not running on early models of iMacs, MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, and other hardware. Though Apple has declined to explain the reason behind all these, it was suspected that the issue has to do with the graphics drivers. GPUs which are not Mountain Lion supported have drivers that were identified before 64-bit support became common. While Mountain Lion works well with any 64-bit kernel running Mac, this kernel does not support 32-bit kernel extensions loading. Moreover, Macs built with older versions of EFI and are not 64-bit clean are not capable of loading Mountain Lion’s 64-bit only kernel. Apple believes that it’s better to place a death sentence on these older machines instead of investing their resources into performing drivers’ update on older GPUs. The desire to improve the graphics system of OS X by having updated graphics architecture has already hit the road and does not show any signs of pulling over.