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

Question

Level 1

8 points

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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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

124,034 points

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.

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Answer 2

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

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.

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Answer 3

notcloudy

Level 4

1,258 points

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.

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Answer 4

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

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.

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Answer 5

LowLuster

Level 6

12,105 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.

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Answer 6

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

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.

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