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Question about going back from 10.8 to 10.6

  • February 5, 2013
  • 9 replies
  • 56 views
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I just received two new 15 inch Mac Book Pro's with 10.8.2 on them but my company standard (and netboot image) is 10.6.8. I tried to erase the hard drive and install 10.6 but it will not allow me to do so. Also my server is running 10.6 (test server running 10.7) and I cant get a .nbi file to work due to this being 10.8.2. What are my options here if any to get this machine on our standard 10.6.8 image?

    9 replies

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    • cbrewer
    • Esteemed Contributor
    • February 5, 2013

    You'd probably need to return it and buy a used computer. The current generation of MacBook Pros (except 13" retina) can go back to 10.7.5, but not 10.6.

    R
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    • rich.trouton
    • Hall of Fame
    • February 5, 2013

    Neal,

    There's no way to get 10.6.8 running on a new 15 inch MacBook Pro. The earliest OS you're going to be able to possibly run is probably going to be 10.7.5 because the 15 inch MacBook Pros originally shipped with a custom build of 10.7.4.

    Thanks,
    Rich

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    • alexjdale
    • Contributor
    • February 5, 2013

    Let management know that if they want to truly support Macs, they have to be prepared to keep up on OS versions. Apple often ships hardware that only supports the current OS version at the time.

    Snow Leopard is already unsupported at my company, and has been for a while now. It's not even really a choice in my mind.

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    • rderewianko
    • Honored Contributor
    • February 5, 2013

    We're just finishing our roll out to Mountain Lion, and once thats done we won't support anything OTHER than Mountain Lion...

    Also, heres the reference of the earliest version of osx each mac can have.

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

    - RD

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    • NealIV
    • Author
    • Contributor
    • February 6, 2013

    Wow thanks everybody. This stinks.

    mm2270
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    • mm2270
    • Legendary Contributor
    • February 6, 2013

    Its been that way for years now. New hardware revs typically are not able to be reverted to an older OS than what they originally shipped with. There are exceptions to that general rule, but going from 10.8 to 10.6 is too far of a jump. The OS has changed fairly dramatically in the last 2 major releases.

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    • NealIV
    • Author
    • Contributor
    • February 6, 2013

    That being said what are your processes to upgrading these machines to 10.8? I know that Macs have to be compatible first and foremost but do you just download the upgrade to 10.8 then push it through Casper or manually go to each machine one by one?

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    • rderewianko
    • Honored Contributor
    • February 6, 2013

    We've gone about it as self service, and let our users upgrade for the first two months on our own. We wrote up an internal how to for them to follow. For us, the machines that were incompatible with mountain lion were given an upgrade...
    Phase two was tackling people that aren't necessarily around all the time.
    Phase three was everyone else

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    • sgrall-pfg
    • Contributor
    • February 6, 2013

    Apple has a number of older Late 2011 15" MacBook Pros available in their refurbished store. See: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro/15

    Any model made in 2011 should take a 10.6.8 image, as long as the 10.6.8 Combo Update was installed at some point. October 2011 (Late 2011) MacBook Pros (those available on that site) don't officially support 10.6.8, but in my testing, it worked fine.

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