Can I order an iMac without High Sierra pre-installed?

Question

Can I order an iMac without High Sierra pre-installed?

Dear Apple people,

I'm in the market for a new iMac, but I don't want to have High Sierra pre-installed.

Why? Because I’ll be running some audio hardware with the iMac that currently does not have drivers for High Sierra, so the new OS would effectively make my hardware obsolete.

Is it possible to order iMacs with a back-dated OS? I've searched various forums for info on this but I can't find anything. I understand that I could otherwise partition the hard drive and run an older version of Sierra on the partition, but I'd like to avoid that if possible.

Thanks for any input! 🙂

Posted on Dec 13, 2017 6:28 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Baby-Boomer-USofA

Level 9

58,098 points

Dec 13, 2017 7:08 AM in response to Pauls-Boutique

NOPE! Your recourse would be to check Apple's refurbished Macs website.

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Answer 2

Dec 13, 2017 7:08 AM in response to Pauls-Boutique

Pauls-Boutique wrote:

...

As I suspected... so I'll need to create a hard drive partition for running an older version of Sierra. Not a big deal I suppose. Worse things happen at sea 😉

If it is a new Mac, nothing older than the OS it was shipped

with can be installed.

A refurb model that was before High Sierra was released should

be possible.

You could install an older macOS in a virtual machine, I believe.

Whether you hardware and software would function well enough

under virtualization would be the only question.

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Answer 3

Dec 13, 2017 7:08 AM in response to woodmeister50

woodmeister50 wrote:

If it is a new Mac, nothing older than the OS it was shipped

with can be installed.

Really? I didn't know that... good thing you mentioned it. I was under the impression you could install any older version of the OS on a separate partition of the hard drive.

Time for a rethink. Maybe a reconditioned Mac is what I need after all.

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Answer 4

Dec 13, 2017 6:51 AM in response to Baby-Boomer-USofA

Thanks for the quick reply, appreciated!

As I suspected... so I'll need to create a hard drive partition for running an older version of Sierra. Not a big deal I suppose. Worse things happen at sea 😉

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