System requirements for OS X Lion and Mac OS X v10.6

Summary

Learn the system requirements for OS X Lion and Mac OS X v10.6.

Products Affected

Mac OS X 10.6, OS X Lion

OS X Lion system requirements

To use Lion, make sure your computer has the following:

  • An Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
  • Mac OS X v10.6.6 or later to install via the Mac App Store (v10.6.8 recommended); you can install without Mac OS X v10.6 by using an OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive, available on the Apple Online Store
  • 7 GB of available disk space
  • 2 GB of RAM

If your Mac does not meet these requirements, you will need to upgrade your Mac before installing Lion.

For more information, see OS X Lion - Technical Specifications.
 

Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard system requirements

To install Snow Leopard for the first time, you must have a Mac with:

  • An Intel processor
  • An internal or external DVD drive, or DVD or CD Sharing
  • At least 1 GB of RAM (additional RAM is recommended)
  • A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
  • At least 5 GB of disk space available, or 7 GB of disk space if you install the developer tools

For more information, see the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Installation and Setup Guide.

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