Belegur
Level 1 (4 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Downgrading OS X Yosemite to Mountain Lion on brand new Macbook Pro Retina

Hi all...

 

Some background...

 

I'm awaiting delivery of a new CTO 13" Macbook Pro Retina and have a question or two.

 

Obviously the new machine will ship with Yosemite, but I intend to downgrade to Mountain Lion. My main use for the new Notebook is audio, and a lot of DAW software and plugins are not stable on Yosemite yet. I have a Mac Pro 6 core 3.33 tower system that I only jumped from Lion to Mountain Lion on a few months back, as I find I get rock solid performance by staying one or two OS X releases behind with all the stuff I need to run. My Mountain Lion upgrade was done through the App Store.

 

My questions...  on the Macbook Pro (this is my first laptop ever), can I simply log into my Store account and download and run the installer for Mountain Lion from my purchase history? The machine will be brand new.. with no personal info or documents etc, so is there really any point doing a backup beforehand? Will a Yosemite machine let me run an installer for an older OS X?

 

If someone has experience doing the same, I'd greatly appreciate advice on what the best way to complete the downgrade would be.

 

Cheers!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), 2.6 i5 16GB RAM 256GB SSD

Posted on Feb 7, 2015 5:39 AM

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Belegur

Q: Downgrading OS X Yosemite to Mountain Lion on brand new Macbook Pro Retina

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  • Helpful answers

  • by VikingOSX,

    VikingOSX VikingOSX Feb 7, 2015 5:54 AM in response to Belegur
    Level 7 (21,550 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 7, 2015 5:54 AM in response to Belegur

    You cannot install an older version of OS X, than that which originally ships with the hardware.

  • by Király,

    Király Király Feb 7, 2015 10:15 AM in response to Belegur
    Level 6 (9,855 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 7, 2015 10:15 AM in response to Belegur

    Hi Belegur

     

    If your software can run on Snow Leopard (10.6), you can buy Snow Leopard Server from Apple for $20 and install it into a virtual machine with Parallels or VirtualBox. There is no way to run 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9 natively on your Mac, and none of those are licensed to be installed in a virtual machine running on a 10.10 system.

  • by notcloudy,

    notcloudy notcloudy Feb 7, 2015 10:38 AM in response to Belegur
    Level 4 (1,200 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 7, 2015 10:38 AM in response to Belegur

    Question should be - why can't I purchase a mac direct from Apple with an operating system less than current?

     

    Particularly if a business can afford additional devices but not the updates required to get software in line.

     

    This is also an issue with windows computers - Small company owner needed a few more PC's for his businesses that had just completed an PC based system install that ran on XP -- they came with Vista or windows 7 (don't remember which) his businesses were large enough that he did return them and get XP PC's.     (Software was not compatible with other than XP)      Few years later - went with what used to be called "smart terminal" no PC's on the desktop - all info on a server. 

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Feb 7, 2015 10:43 AM in response to notcloudy
    Level 9 (51,432 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 7, 2015 10:43 AM in response to notcloudy

    notcloudy wrote:

     

    Question should be - why can't I purchase a mac direct from Apple with an operating system less than current?

    Because they are not offered for sale that way.

     

    Try the pre-owned market, new Macs come with new operating systems.

  • by LowLuster,

    LowLuster LowLuster Feb 7, 2015 11:03 AM in response to Belegur
    Level 6 (12,074 points)
    Feb 7, 2015 11:03 AM in response to Belegur

    It is possible to downgrade IF, and that is a Big IF, that same system, IE all the hardware in it, was sold at one time with the older version of OS X.

    But, there is always a BUT, you would need a version of that older OS X that came on that same system hardware. Finding that is the problem.

     

    But, and here is that BUT, as this is 2015 and Mt Lion is now 1.5+ year old and was replaced with Mavericks you will never get Mt Lion to run on a new Mac. Possibly Mavericks but never Mt Lion.

  • by Király,

    Király Király Feb 7, 2015 2:05 PM in response to notcloudy
    Level 6 (9,855 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 7, 2015 2:05 PM in response to notcloudy

    notcloudy wrote:

    Question should be - why can't I purchase a mac direct from Apple with an operating system less than current?

     

    Because OS X systems less than current do not contain the necessary hardware drivers to run on the newer hardware, nor will any older OS get any updates of this type. In fact Apple does not update older OSes at all, with the exception of security patches.