Downgrade OSX on new Macbook

[Aaron]

I've received one of the new Late 2013 Macbook Pro and it has come with Mavericks preinstalled. Initial testing has shown that Mavericks is really not suitable for our environment right now, but it won't boot any of my 10.8 images/boot disks. A quick search tells me that Apple are basically saying "don't" - but has anyone had any luck with forcing a downgrade?

[mm2270]

I don't think you'll be able to. The new Macs have new hardware in them that will only work with Mavericks because its the only OS to include the drivers for the new hardware components. This type of situation is SOP for Apple. Past OSes don't have support for the new hardware in almost all cases.

[Aaron]

I guess, but past OSes didn't have deal breaking bugs that make it unsuitable in a corporate environment. At least with Mountain Lion I had a few months before it was standard. Although that might be more a supplier thing.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

[bentoms]

As @mm2270 said: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2186 & http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1159

Aaron, I do feel your pain. Normally there is a 3 month window post an OS release before new hardware is released that requires the new OS.

This time it was same day. :(

[perrycj]

Yup what @bentoms][/url and @mm2270][/url said. Unfortunately, Apple hardware in general can only boot to the OS X Build number it comes with or higher. It's just a thing Apple does. Trying to put any other version of OS X on it will essentially cause it to KP on start up or just not boot at all.

[jwojda]

my understanding is that it has to do with the fact that they bake the drivers into the builds, since the lower build numbers don't have the drivers, you can't go backwards. This same thing allows you to take a hard drive from one machine and plug it into another and have it boot fine. Though, with apple making everything onboard and non-serviceable, that argument is no longer valid.

[mm2270]

@Aaron I wasn't implying that it made sense what Apple does or that its easy at all to deal with. My perspective on this seems to be that Apple is getting more aggressive about new hardware only working on the OS it ships with. They used to be a little more lenient some years ago. Seems to be getting worse, so I think this is just something we'll need to continue to deal with this, as long as we want to continue to support Apple's devices.

[rtrouton]

For those that remember Lion's release in July 2011, Apple released new MacBook Air and Mac Mini models in July 2011 that could only run custom builds of 10.7.x. This time around, it's the MacBook Pros.

[alexjdale]

It's something that you need to expect and plan for, unfortunately. If you believe there will be a problem, you may need to bump up your inventory numbers around the time a new OS ships so you have extras. This has been a real risk for a while now, I wouldn't say Apple is getting more aggressive about it.

[mm2270]

@alexjdale - I guess it depends on what you mean by "for a while now" If one is a recent addition to the world of managing Apple's devices, then its true that its been this way, possibly from the beginning based on that perspective. Given I go back to pre OS X days managing Macs, I can recall a time in the early OS X days when new hardware often worked with the previous version of OS X. If not a full version back then at least with the previous point release. But yeah, for a number of years now its been the way it currently is. Part of that is because of additions to OS X that make it far easier for Apple to justify this practice, such as Recovery HD and Internet Recovery options. Used to be that there was a reasonable expectation that a retail copy of OS X on DVD (remember those? :) ) would boot most recent hardware. Now, the only thing that will boot any Mac is the OS and build it ships with and higher. Going backwards even one point release or, heck even to a standard release of that same build version, has become a non option.
Generally speaking this isn't too big a deal, except in cases lille this when a new OS releases simultaneously with new hardware. Then its a pain because there is extremely little time to vet and prepare for inclusion of the new OS.

Our tactic the last couple of years has been to do just what you stated - try to anticipate these moves and tell our vendors to stock up on existing hardware prior to any new announcements, assuming we can make such a prediction, but Apple's product events are becoming a bit more predictable, so that's not so hard. At least then we have a time buffer before we're forced to start buying the new model.

[blkeller]

To answer the original question, I tried everything I could to shoehorn the very latest version of Mountain Lion (10.8.5 w/ all updates installed) onto a new MacBook Pro Core i7 2.6Ghz 15-Inch (Dual Graphics - Late 2013 Retina Display), a.k.a. MacBookPro11,3. The farthest I could get was the dead-end message at boot time, "This version of Mac OS X is not supported on this platform!" This was after forcing 10.8.5 onto the machine via imaging.

external image link

[donmontalvo]

Forked by Apple again. Board-ID be danged.

[JPDyson]

@Aaron what's unsuitable about Mavericks in your environment? I work for an Enterprise among Enterprises, and we're moving forward quite well.

[mm2270]

I can only speak for ourselves, but in our case, while we don't find Mavericks "unsuitable" there is one show stopper currently and a few smaller issues we're waiting on fixes for.
Our A/V product still isn't fully compatible with Mavs yet, although a new version is being tested by our security division. Some back end stuff needs to be upgraded to support this new version, so that kind of sucks, because it means a lengthy change review process before we can move forward with it. We can't release Macs without A/V, for as much as I dislike anti-virus products, so there's that.
Outside of this, only recently Cisco released a compatible AnyConnect VPN Mac client, and again, that needs to be thoroughly tested, etc. And Microsoft Lync, which we're in the process of moving to from OCS, has a few issues with Mavericks (see the thread here on the forum about that)

So its not perfect by any stretch. But I guess it all depends on the products you use, or don't use, etc. about whether or not its suitable for a given environment.

[Aaron]

Well, we're running Macs in a Windows/AD environment, so it's always been a bit of a square-peg-in-a-round-hole situation. I haven't fully tested Mavericks yet, because I've purposefully been holding out until an update comes out which hopefully fixes some stuff.

Our biggest problem is our proxies. We get our proxy configuration via a PAC script. I haven't tested manual proxy configuration yet, but basically some stuff seems to ignore the proxy and tries to connect DIRECT. Safari seems to do this intermittently. App Store just doesn't connect at all. Other Research applications which reads from the system proxy (ie: not manually specified in the application settings) also works intermittently.

Being a Windows environment, we have a lot of Samba shares. On my test Mac running Mavericks, it will drop Samba connections after about a day or 2 use and not reconnect, even if I try using CIFS. The only way I've found to fix it, is to reboot. But it only does this with one server. Of course, it's the server with the most important shares.

I haven't tested the Mavericks-killing-SMB-permissions bug yet, but to be honest I don't know if I want to.

Our AV also doesn't run on Mavericks (at least it didn't cause a kernel panic like it did when Mountain Lion first came out), and that will also probably involve a backend upgrade. Which is something a bit out of my scope.

We only just got around to finding a suitable fix for our Cisco AnyConnect in Mavericks. We have stumbled across another issue however, with VPN connections over mobile internet (3/4G) but I don't think that's restricted to Mavericks.

My main problem I guess is that Mavericks is forcing us to move faster than we would like (we are literally only now putting the final touches on a mass Windows 7 upgrade/rollout for our Windows fleet), and when I need to collaborate with network admins or sysadmins, which in turn needs to get approved by project/infrastructure managers, things get gummed up in the works. That might have a lot to do with how we handle our review process, but still, it would be nice to have some breathing room.

I was hoping to be able to wait until Apple came out with 10.9.1 or 10.9.2 before I allowed it on the network, but I guess I'm just going to have to make do. It will probably just mean some ugly hacks in the meantime.

[donmontalvo]

As @bentoms][/url outlined, and sprinkling a little salt and pepper on it...

1. Be aware of Apple's warning regarding "rolling back" an OS on a Mac:
   Don't install a version of Mac OS X earlier than what came with your Mac
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2186

2. Know how to look for the Model Name of a Mac, by doing a serial number lookup:
   Check Your Service and Support Coverage
   https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do

3. Know where to find the "Original Mac OS X included" for a Mac:
   Mac OS X versions (builds) for computers
   http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1159

[JPDyson]

Aaron, I understand your struggles. We, too, are a massive AD environment (60k). We, too, use a PAC file for our proxy settings. We, too, use exclusively SMB shares. And I have none of those problems.

Now, that doesn't mean *you* are doing anything wrong, but it does mean it's possible to roll our Mavericks in an Enterprise environment.

[donmontalvo]

@blkeller][/url If you check Apple KB HT1159 you'll see the "Original Mac OS X included" for Late 2013 model MacBook Pros is 10.9.

So you can't roll back that model father than 10.9. See my earlier post with three points.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1159#MacBook_Pro