In its announcement of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on Thursday, Apple failed to mention that a handful of Macs that will be cut from the fold when the next generation operating system debuts this summer due to end of support for older Intel integrated graphics chipsets.



From AppleInsider:

Certain Macs made from 2006 to 2008 that incorporate Intel's GMA 950 and GMA X3100 integrated graphics processors will not be supported (machine translation) by Mountain Lion, which means that Apple's newest version of OS X marks the end of the software road for owners of these computers, according to French Apple blog MacGeneration.

Integrated graphics chipsets are used in power-critical applications like laptops that have run times limited to the size of their batteries. Some Apple laptops, and subsequently Mac mini and iMac models that use a reworked mobile logic board, incorporate the integrated graphics model to be more energy efficient. The trade off for this efficiency is processing power, as integrated solutions are not as fast as discrete power-hungry GPU's, and is most likely the reason why OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion no longer supports older models.

  Mountain Lion signals end of OS X support for older Macs