Downgrading 2012 MBP's to 10.7.5

We've been informed by Apple that any downgrades of OS would be in violation of their licence terms, unless you can do a deal with them to purchase new OS licences.

I have not tested such a config so i'm unsure if it would actually work.

Interesting. Our Apple rep has informed us that it's something they turn a blind eye to.

I think you're both correct on some level. From my previous conversations with Apple over the years, downgrades aren't looked happily upon on non supported hardware and it's "not supported" if something doesn't work. License wise, it maybe possible to downgrade legally. Macbook 9,x shipped originally with 10.7 and it seem like the latest BootROM does support 10.7.4 so you should be okay. Is this on multiple machines?

I will second Jared's comments - In the past Apple has allowed downgrades on capable hardware.

Our account rep even sells us current OS Licensing to upgrade older clients to their most current capable version.

Apple really frowns on this and it's often a bad user experience - due to video/graphics and network drivers typically changing with new hardware. If you're a provider, on an Apple engagement, and the client asks to downgrade, you're forbidden to do so...

The key is knowing how far back you can go. Apple KB HT1159 should be bookmarked. You can safely roll back as far as the "Original Mac OS X included" version listed for the specific model[color=red]...BUT...you need to go up one dot-revision since the "Original Mac OS X included" version is typically a unique build.[/color]

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1159

Apple KB HT1159 was updated last week, so it includes the MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012) model, showing it shipped with 10.8.1 originally[color=red]...SO...in this example you will need a 10.8.2 build that included the Combo Updater.[/color]

Or go to back further, MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) [the 15" model] originally shipped with 10.7.4, [color=red]so your 10.7.5 build should work fine as long as you applied the combo updater to it.[/color] :)

Apple is always going to take the "You're not allowed to do that" or "We don't support that", depending on your SE or Rep, but the reality is a model can be rolled back...just have to understand what to look for. You'll just need to protect your Apple SEs and Reps by not involving them whatsoever.

PS#2, @cbrewer, we have rolled back every model that we've received (excluding the models that were introduced last week) to 10.7.5 with no issues...we're talking several hundred multimedia production folks. Thanks to Steve Wood and others for beating this into my head...

Don

Don - are you leaving the Mountain Lion recovery partition or rolling that back to Lion as well? I've left all of ours with the original Mountain Lion recovery partition FWIW.

We initialize the drive at imaging time, so no Recovery HD (security concerns; users can get to other users' data when booted into Recover HD...even though it's a moot point if user has admin rights <g>). There is some good info if you want to image Macs and include the Recovery HD, but we haven't gone down that route yet:

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=5655

It would be great if we could have the option to "Include Restore HD", but with versioning concerns, not sure that'll ever happen. :)

Don

Don,
So then I take it you aren't using FileVault 2 with your computers? Or do you have some sneaky way of making that work without the recovery partition?
Mike

Ahhh… the question that keeps on giving ;-) It pops up whenever hardware is refreshed by Apple, or a new operating system is released. Apple's official position is that you cannot install an operating system version that is an older build than that came with the computer. Most times there is a technical limitation for this. For example, there may be newer video or wireless, or other drivers available in the new operating system build than in older versions or builds. Usually this causes instability. In addition, don't expect to receive any AppleCare support for computers downgraded to previous versions of OS X.

The only time that we can *usually* make an exception to this is when a new full version of OS X is announced. For example, when OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion was released back in July, there were no new hardware introductions made along with it. This resulted in the entire hardware line, even though it may have been shipping with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion after July, to be allowed to downgrade back to OS X 10.74 (and later 10.7.5).

Now that updates to the hardware are occurring post OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion release date, these downgrades are no longer available on refreshed hardware. The 13" Retina, the new iMac, and new Mac Mini will all be released with OS X 10.8 pre-installed, and will not run on any flavor of Lion. I would imagine that the Mid 2012 MacBook Pro's being sold now *should* be able to run Lion, as they originally shipped with custom build of 10.7.3, but it was so close enough to the Mountain Lion release that you can't be sure. My guess? Apple may not have included all the drivers in the 10.7.4 and 10.7.5 combo updates for the mid 2012 MacBook Pro release. If you can get one of the custom builds listed in the Apple Knowledge Base article Don posted earlier, and then go from there to 10.7.5, I would imagine you would get a more reliable image for that model.

Good luck,

~Ted

@mpermann wrote:

Don, So then I take it you aren't using FileVault 2 with your computers? Or do you have some sneaky way of making that work without the recovery partition? Mike

Nope, we are exploring 3rd party solutions for encryption. When the time comes we'll push out Recovery HD along with the solution...after heavy LAB testing of course.

Don

We've been having similar issues with some of our 2012 MacBook Pros that are running 10.7.5 or 10.7.4. They've been running 10.7 since they arrived in June so they were never downgraded from 10.8. They get a kernel panic style message when waking from sleep and then reboot automatically. It's been sporadic and hard to duplicate consistently. We've been told by Apple to try turning off the pref to wake for network access. Haven't seen if that makes a difference... has resetting the NVRAM been consistently fixing it for you?

@andrew_stenehjem Have you tried applying the 10.7.5 Combo Updater?

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1582

Yes, we've applied the 10.7.5 update but that hasn't seemed to solve it from the reports I've gotten.

JAMF took down their very useful Article on building images.
Just curious if your image was crated on the latest hardware?

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=5412

Ours was created on the same MacBook Pro (2012) model that it's being applied to.