Unable to install Lion on new iMac Late 2012

[david_yenzer]

We got some new iMac Late 2012 machines in recently and in the interest of keeping all operating systems the same (Lion) and not having four machines only having Mountain Lion to start off a frenzy of "gimme gimme" and forcing us to prematurely install Mountain Lion everywhere - we would prefer to backrev them to Lion. And yet we seem to have run into Mac's.........desire to have all new hardware on Mtn Lion......are there any tricks that you're aware of to get these new machines to the ancient and obviously outdated year-old Lion OS?

[rtrouton · Accepted solution]

No, 10.7.x will not be able to run on the Late 2012 iMacs.

Apple has a listing of what versions of OS X shipped with various Mac models. They will not be able to run an OS that is earlier than the OS X version that originally shipped with the machine:

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

[david_yenzer]

Interesting - we've had new Macbook Pros that have been coming in over the last few months with Mountain Lion on them and they imaged back to Lion just fine. Maybe that's what the Later Mac OS X column means for MBPs that shows 10.7.4 and 10.8, whereas for the new iMacs it's 10.8.2. That doesn't seem ideal for our situation, but Apple knows best, right? Thanks for the info.

[frozenarse]

The "Original" column is the one you need to be worried about.

For the Latest Macbook Air (Mid 2013) is that a special build? I think the build for 10.8.4 on the AppStore is 12E55....

[stevewood]

Most likely, yes the build on the Mid 2013 MBA will be a special build. The rule of thumb is, anytime a new piece of hardware comes out, it is a special build until the next rev of the OS.

So in this case, the Mid 2013 MBA is most likely using a special build that will not be merged until 10.8.5.

[gachowski]

The 2013 airs are on a different build of X.8.4, testing right now don't have the build # sorry.

C

[nevens]

MacTracker is your friend for noting minimum OS requirements.

We're in the same boat as we're just starting to get Casper online. We've been doing thick images and aren't in a hurry to build a new Mountain Lion one. What we're doing is booting from an external, using disk utility or CCC to force our old Lion template on, then running the 10.8 update on top. Most folks aren't even noticing they're running 10.8 yet, because we're not advertising it. Any changes they notice, we're calling "new features on this iMac".

[hkim]

For Apple build info

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