Q: Lion on a Nehalem Mac Pro 5,1?
I upgraded to a Nehalem Mac Pro and am running Mavericks. I am using a main drive, data drive and backup drive. Can I load Lion on a 4th drive so I can use some apps that won't run on Mavericks? I put a CD with the Lion installer on it and got a message that said "This version of Mac OS X is too new to run 'Install Mac OS X' from Mac OS X 10.7." Is the problem that the disk is incompatible or is the installer incompatible or is Lion incompatible with the processor?
Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
Posted on Dec 22, 2014 12:53 PM
Any Mac Pro other than the 6,1 Late 2013 can run 10.6.8 or Lion.
Mac OS X versions (builds) for computers - Apple Support
There is no CD for Lion, it won't fit and burning your own DVD rarely works well at all so if you have the installer from your Apple ID (Lion required email and calling and waiting a couple days) use Lion DiskMaker on flash or even a small partition on one of your hard drives.
Not much has changed since Lion, this article was updated for Yosemite
http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/16/make-os-x-yosemite-boot-install-drive/
you might want to look at www.roaringapps.com for compatibility chart of OS X versions and apps.
Posted on Dec 22, 2014 1:13 PM