New Mac with Mavericks, I want downgrade to Mountain Lion

The problem is, we can't know until it's been verifiably tested. What we know is this:

1. Older systems are often (though not stricly always) capable of driving newer hardware
2. Hardware that hasn't changed, and is just shipping with a newer system now, should work fine with the older system

We cannot tell you more than that. I'm not familiar with the history of the Mac Pro line, so I don't know anything about the one you have, what system it originally shipped with, etc. If this is truly the brand new Mac Pro, and if that hardware has never shipped with Mountain Lion, then I'd guess your chances of success are just about zero.

So, now we know...

It does not work going back to ML on a new MacPro6,1

The installer wont start , obviously.

But I had to try the external boot option.

I went back to the the studio and got me a nice SanDiskExtreme 64GB stick.

Then i installed ML on that one using our ML production system, upgraded it, installed Smoke , CUDA and everything I need to work and rebooted from that stick.

Worked fine ... on the MacPro 5.1

But here at home It does not boot from the drive.

All right...

I have to find a work around then until Autodesk gets back on track.

Sorry to hijack, but I have different problem that Apple can't explain. I just recieved yesterday a Refurbished 2012 Mac Mini, the reason I purchased it is because right on the product page for it, it said refurbished products are shipped with the original OS and software. But when I recieved it there was Mavericks on it. so I phone apple and they said that is weird. He said try Com,Option,R to recover back to factory software, but when I do that it says Mavericks is the original software. I have two other Macs in my house that are running mountian lion can I use one of there installers. The Apple Care Guy figured that apple must have updated it when they refurbished it. Thanks.

I upgraded to Mavericks and Apple told me I could install (downgrade) to Mountain Lion. I bought it for $20+, ran the installer, and after trying to process it, an Alert appeared saying " OS X 10.8 can not be installed on this computer." It's what came with it when I got it, it's what Apple C/S said to do, and it didn't work. I have 8GB of memory and Mavericks is hogging it just to run Firefox.

I saw the message [quote]

Abdabtele

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. [/quote]

I have no idea how to do that; I guess what I needed to do was clone my OS before upgrading to Mavericks. I have a copy now (at least I think it's a restorable back up) but the purchase from Apple was a waste of time.

I'm not a power user, and this is a macbook pro from mid 2012 (it can only have 8GB). I got a mac to not deal with OS issues or reinstalls of the OS, etc.

.stupid me.

It still seems that the original question was never fully answered. I'll echo the same original question.

I just ordered a brand new 2012 version of the Mac Mini i7. Just to be clear - this is not the new 2014 model, even though I bought this Mac Mini brand new in 2014. Okay, now that this is clear, since this model has not changed since 2012, is it possible to retrograde to Mountain Lion? Why? Because I have software that will not run on Mavericks. I just found this out after I made my purchase. I can always return it, but I prefer to keep it rather than buy an older used machine. I know that it will be shipped with Mavericks pre-installed. But seriously, there must be a way to get around the firmware... This must be an irreversible setting. Has anyone tied this? Let's not pretend that it isn't possible. It is a setting, thats' all. It's not like I want to screw Apple, I just want to roll back to a version 1 step back, that's all. Come on! It's still an Apple product. Anyone got any ideas?

You might want/need to check with Apple. When I purchased my 2010 refurbished Mac in 2012, it came with Lion preinstalled even though the original OS was Snow Leopard. I used the chat during the ordering process and was able to get them to include the machine specific SL install disks. Not sure how that would work with a digital delivery OS, but you could ask Apple if it would work if you were to use internet recovery (Command + Option + R) immediately, erased/formatted the drive, and then chose to reinstall the OS. Not sure what would be considered to be the original OS on this type of machine.

@jmgaco and @Phillip K: so did you finally able to downgrade your mac mini to mountain lion? Because I have the same problem here and wondering if I could downgrade my mac mini that came with mavericks into mountain lion... Have some issue between Mavericks and my sound card.

Yes! I can confirm that this works. I have successfully written OSX 10.8.5 on my pre-installed (Mavericks) Mac Mini 6,2. In fact - I had the good people at the Apple Store do it for me. So to all the nay sayers, here's the news that it works. Yeah, I know it states that this is not possible, but in fact it is on my machine at last. So far my machine appears to be running normally. My guess is that my new Mac Mini will run faster than it did on 10.9. Happy I made the effort.

Hi Thomas_r

Sorry to drop out of the blue, reviving & hijacking such an old thread all in one go..

Thing is, i've got a 2013 27'' iMac i bought w/ M.Lion installed which i've kept at M.L. 10.8.5 so i can use iTunes 10.7 instead of iTunes 11 or 12 ( nutshell: allows select dark background/great for my eyes, sizing album covers to useable size AND has Artist' album stacks if set to view in Artist.. ) thing is, as much as i have no desire to use iTunes 11 or 12 ( did try them.. ) at this point i think i'd like to upgrade my iMac's OS to Yosemite if not El Capitan

1 - Upgrading my OS to Yosemite can i install a Parallels virtual machine with Mountain Lion in it ?

2 - That done, can i leave iTunes 10.7 ( the one in the virtual machine/M.Lion.. ) playing away my playlists while i use Yosemite doing something else ?

3 - All this through the one & only USB audio/DAC interface which then connects to my hi-fi as is the case now ?

I have absolutely no idea how heavy virtual machines are, my iMac has a 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5 w/ 24GB of Ram configuration, will that struggle to listen to iTunes in the virtual machine while.. i don't know.. browsing Amazon on Safari/Yosemite

So sorry my questions must sound really inadequate & i've never highjacked a thread before but your answer above kind of indicated you might be who knows the answer to my doubts. I thank you for your patience !!

Nuno

I can't answer anything VM related as I've not had the need for it, but...

You would not need a VM; you can create two partitions on your computer: one can have ML and you can upgrade/install El Capitan on the other partition - you will have two independent OS installs on your machine. Unless you've downloaded Yosemite previously, it is no longer available at the app store, so you'd have to go with El Capitan.

As for your music: you can either be booted into ML or EC, as far as I know, you need to be booted into the OS you want to listen to your music within; of course, I do not know how the VM would work.

FWIW, I have two different OS versions on my iMac - an older one (Mavericks) for my movie editing/rendering as the software is no longer supported in the newer versions.

Hi nuno1959,

Sorry but Mountain Lion is only licensed to be run in a virtual machine if the host OS is also Mountain Lion. Running it with a Yosemite host or any other host other than Mountain Lion is a violation of the the software license agreement.

You can partition your hard drive and make a dual boot setup like babowa suggests.