New Mac with Mavericks, I want downgrade to Mountain Lion

jmgaco wrote:

And I want to say that actually Apple don´t sell Mountain Lion Server 10.8 , so it´s imposible buy a legal copy.

Technically, the server companion software for Mountain Lion is called OS X Server 2.0. Unlike with versions prior to Lion, it is not a separate server OS but an add-on package of server-specific application tools to make accessing the server features now built into the OS easier.

You can only buy Server 3.x (the equivalent companion for Mavericks) from the Mac App Store, but I'm told that if you call Apple they may sell you a "redemption code" for 2.0 you can use to get it instead.

At the risk of hijacking this thread, I have a similar question.

I've got an iMac (2013) I purchased from B&H Photo Video. It had ML installed on it when it arrived, but the first thing I did when I got it was upgrade to Mavericks. Now I want to go back to ML. How do I do that? Do I boot into the recovery partition, erase the Fusion Drive, and then launch the OS X installer? Will it automatically install ML because that's what was on it when it came from the factory?

Take an external drive and install Mountain Lion on it, boot from it via USB, and install Super Duper. Then clone the external USB drive you booted from to the internal "Mavericks" drive using Super Duper again. Bye, Bye Mavericks.... It's that easy... Done.

Buy a copy of VM Fusion or Parallels and install Mountain Lion and Server as a Virtual Machine. That way, you have the best of both worlds.

Unfortunately, Mountain Lion is not licensed to be run in a virtual machine if the host OS is different. The host OS has to be the same (i.e. Mountain Lion) to be in compliance. The license permits you:

Hi Király

You've been able to VM Mac OS since 10.5 Server. See below screen grab. This was taken in WM Fusion 6.

Therefore jmgaco can install OSX Mountain Lion and then Server 2.0. It was the client editions of 10.6 and below that virtualisation was prohibited.

Hi Andrew,

The VM software may support 10.x installations in a VM with 10.y as the host, but that doesn't mean that it complies with Apple's SLA. It's up to the end user to ensure compliance with Apple's license, not the VM software.

Apple could have omitted "that is already running the Apple Software" from the license terms, which would have allowed 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9 to be installed in a VM with a different OS X version as the host. But Apple did, for whatever reason, include that restriction.

End users may choose to ignore this or any other part of the licensing terms, but keep in mind that posting about how to violate Apple's licensing agreements violates these discussion boards' terms of use.

Király,

I fail to see how I am violating the terms of these discussion boards and categorically state that I have not condoned any form of piracy, or breaching of OS X EULA or any other Apple licensing agreements for that matter. I would appreciate an apology from you for the insinuation. I have merely stated that there is a perfectly legal way to perform the task that jmgaco wishes to complete providing the correct licenses have been purchased. it is a piece of software that you can purchase from Apple's retail stores, and a selling point is the virtualisation of 10.7, 10.8 and 10.9 plus server editions of 10.5 and 10.6. Link provided for you to read http://www.parallels.com/uk/products/desktop/

Now, due to a bug introduced in a VM Fusion 4 update, an option to install the client edition of Mac OS X 10.6 within a Virtual environment was available. This was quickly disabled in a new update, as Apple insisted VMWare remove the Client virtualisation setup option. This is important because the Client virtualisation option violated the EULA of the Client edition of Mac OS X, not the EULA of Mac OS X Server (virtualisation of Server edition was permitted in 10.5). VMWare had breached the Client EULA, not the end user, therefore your argument about end user responsibility on this doesn't hold water.

10.6 was also the last version to have a dedicated server edition. Steve Jobs made a lot of noise about there only being one version of 10.7 at the AWWDC. Server was announced as a paid addition (an in-app purchase if you like). R C-R refers to the same purchase in his post. Amending the EULA of 10.7 to allow virtualisation, (you cited the relevant section yourself) therefore makes sense because of this important change to Mac OS X. So why change the EULA, permitting the installation of OS X 10.7 and above, in a virtual environment on a Mac, to then state that the said action then breaches the EULA? This would be thrown out of court in Europe, Germany in particular. The OS X EULA exclusively forbids the installation of OS X on anything other than a Apple computer (Steve Jobs further presided over this when he put an end to the Mac Clone market).

Therefore, there is nothing wrong with jmgaco from purchasing either Parallels Desktop 9 or VMWare Fusion 6 and creating an installation of 10.8 with Server 2.0 within a virtual environment on a Mac running 10.9.

If you have a problem with this answer then by all means report me to the discussion moderators. I'll be perfectly happy to discuss my response with them.

You haven't addressed my point at all, and I'm standing by what I said before. The virtualization permission in the OS X 10.8 SLA says that the Mac running the virtual machine has to be already running the Apple Software. "The Apple Software" mentioned in the 10.8 license is defined (in section 1A) as 10.8 and its component parts; not any and all other software that Apple has ever and will ever release. A Mac running 10.9 as a host is not running "the Apple Software" that the 10.8 license requires in order for 10.8 to be installed in a virtual machine.

If the sentence "that is already running the Apple Software" was absent from the SLA then I would agree with you. But it is there, and it can't mean anything else.

Bottom line is, if you want to run 10.8 in a VM, then you have to be running 10.8 as the host; not 10.anyting-else. Anything else is not in compliance with Apple's SLA. Even if it is ruled in a court in Germany or elsewhere as unenforceable, we still can't talk about it on these forums.

I am in the same boat.

i just got a new Mac Pro and I need to use Smoke for Mac.

Autodesk does not supoort it because of something Apple changed in the archive structure and the licenser wont start.

Soooo i HAVE to go back to mountain Lion.

License talk asside, will it work ?

I am more concered Ml does not support my D700 cards.

Linked above,

Install OSX Restrictions

Last Modified: Apr 19, 2012

If that's not helpful, either you have an older Mac Pro that came with Mountain Lion (or older) or you didn't process the implications of the document Eric linked to.

In the former case, you will be able to revert to Mountain Lion by either restoring to a backup prior to upgrading to Mavericks, or booting into internet recovery mode (hold command-option-R at startup), erasing the hard drive and reinstalling the system your machine originally shipped with. (Assuming it shipped with Lion or later... if not, you'll need to use whatever older boot disks you have to do the same job with an older system.)

In the latter case, in which case your Mac Pro shipped with Mavericks, you will probably not be able to revert to Mountain Lion. Even if you could obtain a Mountain Lion installer linked to your Apple ID, you would not be able to install it on a machine that shipped with a newer system.

guys..I am a veteran Mac user...I know how to do things.

Of course I do have all OS installation images since...I dont know, Tiger or someting.

And of course I do know HOW to install it on an external drive, heck i can do that with like 700mb/s now

Thats not the point.

Maybe its the wrong thread , I was looking for some technical insight if the driver architecture of Mountain lion can cary the new hardware ... thats all.

I know you dont want people do that...but I am sitting on a 7000 buck hardware right now that is not able to run the software I need to pay for the hardware..

its a tiny bit of a dilemma 😉

i guess i am on my own from here on....

I ll keep you posted..