Netbooting New MacBook Pro Retinas and older MacBook Pros

[mallenOR]

I am experiencing a problem with the 10.9 Netboot being able to boot the newly released Retinas and older Macbook Pros (non-retinas). I built the Netboot image from the new Retinas. They boot fine, the older MBPs do not. I know the new Retinas forked 10.9, but my usual tricks aren't working. Namely, running recovery on the new Retinas, putting the install files on a USB drive, and running the Retina Mavericks build install on the MBP. Then building the Netboot image from that machine. It still boots the new Retinas, but not the older MBPs.

[donmontalvo · Accepted solution]

"Forked by Apple again!" - Every Mac Admin, every time new models are released by Apple.

Late 2013 models ship with model specific version of Mavericks (a point Steve Wood, et.al. hammers home when Apple revises their models).

Usually a dead giveaway is seeing four trailing numbers in the OS build number (thanks to Jeremy Reichman's tidbit).

Create model specific NBI's for the new model for now, so you can NetBoot these new models.

Once 10.9.1 is released, update your NBI so it can support all models that shipped with 10.9.0, so you're back to having a single NBI.

Rince, lather and repeat whenever Apple forks us again.

HTH :)
Don

[mallenOR]

Somehow I knew you were going to say "10.9.1." The process I described above has worked in the past. Not this time I guess.

Thanks for the reply.

[donmontalvo]

Yep, the least Apple can do is buy us dinner before they fork us.

PS, Do you have access to developer.apple.com? ;)

Don