Q: HowTo revert new MacBook Pro, Mac Pro or iMac to Snow Leopard

Thank you for doing all that @zirkenz. Truly epic!

I'd be curious about the results of an Xbench test.

System Profiler will show you how your RAM, HD, processor, etc. post up

Activity Monitor (set to show all processes) can give you a sense of the processes running ... I sort it so the most intensive CPU processes are at the top. There are also little graphs depicting how your memory is being used.

Something like MenuMeters will show you a view of each of your cores/threads and how hard they are working...

You can try booting into Safe Mode and running Geekbench....

But it sounds like your next step would be re-installing Lion (or installing Lion to a bootable external drive) so that you can see if your Geekbenches are working alright under Lion.

Usually if OSX doesn't like the machine it's running on, it won't even boot or it will kernel panic almost immediately. It's amazing to me that Apple would cripple the ability of its own software to run on its own compatible machines while others are getting OSX to run fantastically on machines it was never designed for. Is this Apple intentionally controlling how its computers are run to a whole new level? An automatic leftover from a habit of control? Or is it really some other problem (e.g. hardware)?

Xbench scores also low. I really belive that they did something when building this imac or i have a bad part in the computer.

But at least i was able to do roy's method so a win there i.e i did something i thought i could never do being over my head and all.    I will post my notes and pics soon.

Now that i have done it twice it was actually pretty straightforward. I don't understand your geekbench scores but if you are getting correct scores now with the ssd installed, i suspect your scores should actually be much higher. The benchmark is based on stock with minimum ram that comes with it. Adding Ram, faster hard drive, running a 64 bit test, etc would result in higher scores. So i wonder how much of a performance hit you are taking or perhaps your system was not locked down or neutered by Apple but i do suspect that you should be getting higher scores with the ssd installed. No one else has reported in, i wish they would so we can see if this is a trend,especially if they bought the system late aug and it came with lion.

TARGET DISK MODE INSTRUCTIONS

Make sure you make a lion recovery thumb drive by downloading and using the apple lion recovery assistant from the support site before doing this.

You need a mac running SL (host), the system being downgraded (other system) and a firewire 400-400 or 400-800 or 800-800 cable. Download the combo updater v 1.1 from the support site and place it on your host desktop.

1. System being downgraded (other system) should be off. Connect the firewire to the host and other system.

2. Boot The other system while holding down the T key until a firewire logo appears on other system.

3. You will see a firewire logo on the other system and HD of the other system will mount on to your host desktop. Launch Disk Utility from the host system and either partition in 2 if you want to dual boot or erase the other system's HD for a one partition SL install. If you partition into 2 and delete the lion partition later, you will be left with 2 partitions that can't be joined together unless you create a bootable clone of your SL partition and restore/reinstall (see all my postings).

4. Pop in the Mac Box Set SL (and perhaps the upgrade retail disc) disc in the host system optical drive, double click the installer, select the other system HD as the destination and let it do its thing. Your host system will auto boot but it will boot off the other system's HD. Let it finish installing and go through set up.

5. Then run the combo updater.  shutdown the host, power down the other system, disconnect the firewire cable.

6. Turn on the other system. It should boot SL 10.6.8, then run software update. If you partitioned it into 2 lion and SL then when restarting hold down the option key and select the SL partition.

7. Download and run geekbench 32 bit free version and post score with your system specs here.

Note: You may not get the geekbench scores that is benchmarked for your system after you downrade by either TDM or Roy's methods.

Nice "Target Disk Method" instructions @zirkenz. And if you ever need to roll out virgin OSX installs, you know how to do it

Here's the page I was comparing my Geekbench to http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2011/02/macbookpro-benchmarks-early-2011/

This fella says that Geekbench doesn't account for graphics cards, storage devices etc, so he doesn't even list SSDs vs. 7200rpm stock drives, etc. I'm supposed to be getting 5900 and I get 5915 (MBP 2011, i5 2.3GHz 2415M, 10.6.8 downgrade).

I can boot off my Lion external drive later and run Geekbench again to see if I get the same results booting over USB! But I've got too much open right now to futz with it

With Geekbench, it shows you the individual scores and breakdowns and information about your model. Did you find other benchmarks that indicated if, perhaps, some one part of your rig isn't performing? Perhaps the number of cores or threads, the memory, Bus Frequency, BIOS (that's where they might have messed with your firmware but c'mon Apple!)... if it's down in Integer Score, Floating Point Score, Memory Score, etc, that would be harder to suss out. I mean, if every category is just slower, that's one thing, but if one score is bringing down the others or if you're "missing" a component compared with other folks with your machine, that should tell you something.

@zirkenz, think of it this way: if OSX has the ability to detect your motherboard, firmware and then somehow throttle your processor, why doesn't Apple do the same thing to the happintosh community and cripple their machines too? Just googling for geekbenches, you come up with folks getting stellar benchmarks on all kinds of rigs... it could be that you're missing a driver (kext) somehow but we can't really talk about that here without confusing the heck out of people. It also wouldn't make much sense since your processor/model originally shipped with Snow Leo 10.6.x Sandybridge support: meaning all relevant drivers should be present.

And what if it's something silly like you need Geekbench 64bit to test your extra cores (It looks like Xbench may only come in the 32bit variety so it would make sense if it were low too....)

Interesting thread on a guy not happy with his iMac i7 scores (although still better than your 55xx) http://att.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1150348

Roy,

Does it seems feasible that you could follow all your steps as exact, but instead of using an external disk with a SLeo 10.6.8 install on it to restore the .dmg we created, could you jsut leave the "Snow Leopard 10.6.8 System.dmg" on the computer you created it on, put that computer into TDM, boot up the new iMac holding down option key, select that host computer that is in TDM and continue along the process?  This would jsut be instead of having an install of SLeo on an external drive.  This should work since you are doing a restore rather than an install, and therefore will not cause the problems assocaited with using unlike machines in TDM for an install.

Did I make sense?  I tested this methd on older imac with 10.6.8 I set-up to test this process and it worked, but that is obviously not relevant to doing it on the new iMacs (yet to arrive).

Thanks again for the help.

Josh

Merry Monday Roy

Regarding TDM (Target Disc Mode) and TDM Installs:

Historically you could literally hook up an OSX drive -- external or TDM -- to another machine and could happily boot and run from the drive, as long as the new host machine were capable of running the OS to begin with. All of the drivers are present in each OSX and the external/TDM drive would automatically detect its host at boot and boot up.

If you look in /System/Library/Extensions (look but don't touch!) this is where the highest level drivers for our systems live. You will see, for example, dozens of video card drivers for machines other than the one you are using. One would think that if the installer targets specific model Macs, it would only install those video card drivers relevant to the model, not ones for every other Mac model that the OS can support. And yet, there they are!

Maybe Apple has changed its methods with the advent of Sandybridge processors and I can't speak to Lion, but historically external systems (on USB drives, Firewire, or TDM) could be booted to any Mac that could handle the OS level. I've relied on this feature many many times.

Often the first thing I did with a new computer is remove the stock drive and put in my original drive, from my old machine, and the computer would boot right up, no problems.

I confess I never ran Geekbenches under these various conditions to see if the system were running more slowly, but I never noticed. No kernel panics, no stability issues... trust me, you would know pretty fast if your Mac didn't like your OS

I'm not saying Apple can't have changed all this but historically they seem to install a "universal system."

YMMV

Hey Roy,

Thanks again.  Your description of how to perform the restore without an external disk, and just using the existing 10.6.8 iMac(old) is exactly how I was doing it.  In the test I conducted, I merely wanted to see if the thigngs I had done from A-C were correct, but instead of using an external disk, I connected it via TDM assuming my old iMac were the new one (in TDM as external to the MBP I did the process on).  All worked perfectly.

Now the new iMac jsut has to arrive.  I have done the screen captures for most of steps A&B and revised the instructions a little for those who are having troubles...hope I can complete that soon and post.

Thanks again.

Josh

Roy,

Speaking as a "lurker" on this thread for the past few days, my thanks for your crystal-clear exposition and directions in your discussions over here. When you get time, please check in at the somewhat larger existing thread dealing with falling back to Snow Leopard on the new 2011 "Lion Locked" Mac Minis.

When you have time, we'd appreciate your posting some of your information on the "Roy Method" as applicable to the 2011 Mini.

       https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3209335?start=210&tstart=0

You are of course totally correct in your explanation of why Target Disk Mode doesn't work well in configuringan installation for a "Lion" Mac, because the OSX installer will install the software needed for the "hosting" Mac computer for which it's playing out the install, not the "target drive" Lion Mac's chips and motherboard, which appear as just a dumb firewire drive to the installer.

Zirkenz,  please bring some of this knowledge back to us over at the other thread!...

One last final comment: some of our visitors on the other thread have a problem believing that the slowdown and other problems encountered in running Snow Leopard on any "Lion designed" machine (like the new Mini) is not due to Apple building some evil poison-pill code into the installers; it's just that Snow Leopard lacks the resources that it's expecting to find when it tries to run on those machines.

There are lots of little pre-Lion-supportive code snippets in the chips of older Macs, and different chips and motherboard connections are now running the new "Lion" Macs. All of those little hooks and helpers are missing, when Snow Leopard goes looking for them. So, Snow Leopard struggles because it's strangled -- not by intent but by the machine it's running on. And, that's why it's taking a little time for "virtualization" companies to come up with a smooth solution that allows Snow Leopard to run as a "virtual machine" on a Lion-designed Mac.

Everyone I've talked to at Apple or at various software companies agrees that running Snow Leopard on Lion machines will happen, and that "this is just the way it is" and not part of some draconian Apple plot. Therefore, it's a solveable problem, and we WILL be running Snow Leopard at close-to-or-FULL speed, soon, on the various "Lion" machines.

Lots of folks are working on solutions (but few of them are as clear and elegant as the Roy Method is proving to be for some kinds of installations). Hope this info is helpful, and thanks for all of your work on resolving this frustrating situation.

@Roy Jealous of the gardening! Woot!

Yeah those grey restore discs were specific to product line... but I think they just put like a detector on those discs to keep them from booting on machines outside of their product line... The actual results of those installs were universal.

...

Okay, I did a quick comparison between the video kexts in my MBP 2011 @ 10.6.8 and a client's Mac Pro 10.6.7 and they both had the same 30+ graphics drivers (for ATI Radeon, buiilt-in Intel, and some GeForces (Nvidia)) except for one: the Mac Pro did not have the ATI6000 driver. I believe this would be installed if I upgraded her to 10.6.8 but I don't like to run Software Updates remotely like that for client systems so I'm not going to test it right now

But the timing is right because the newer machines have access to the ATI Radeon 6000 line and all came out after 10.6.8/Lion. Although the Mac Pro line is still in the 5000's at the Apple Store, I don't think they have ever shipped with built-in Intel graphics and yet drivers for on-board Intel are still present in the Mac Pro.

Now these are just video drivers and yes, it is possible that there are differences within the driver contents themselves, but while Apple does micro-manage lots of things, they don't usually do it in this case....