On July 1st Apple released the golden master version (GMV) of Lion to developers – usually the last non-public version of OS X before the official release. If you want to update as soon as it is available, now is the time to check your hardware and perform a few system cleanups to ensure you’ll be ready to download Lion on release day.Macworld runs through what you need to do to prepare. Most Macs from 2006 and newer should be able to install and run Lion without difficulty; the minimum hardware requirements are 2GB of RAM, 4GB of free hard drive space, and an Intel processor that is at least a Core 2 duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon. Furthermore you must have a recent update of Snow Leopard (OS 10.6.6 or better) as Lion will only available from the Mac App Store, which debuted in that version of Snow Leopard.
Photo by Corey Leopold.
You don’t necessarily want to skate by on the bare minimum of requirements, so it may be time to consider additional RAM, or if you might be better served with purchasing a new Mac with Lion preinstalled. If you’re unhappy with the speed of your Mac running Snow Leopard, an upgrade may be in order.
After you’ve made sure the basic requirements are met it is a good idea to backup, run all Apple software updates, and check for updates for any third-party software you use. You should also disable FileVault if you use it as Lion includes a new approach to file encryption. See the Macworld full guide below for details.
Get your Mac ready for Lion [Macworld]
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