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Installing Snow Leopard on 2012 MBP?
- Thread starter theBostonian
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I will save you some time: IT IS NOT GOING TO WORK. Even if you get it to boot (unlikely) chances are it will not function in a manner that you would want to use daily.
No, Lion only supports Windows 7 under Bootcamp. Mountain Lion will most likely support both Windows 7 and Windows 8.
No, but most of us already figure it wouldn't because the hardware changed enough and there were no device drivers (kexts) for that new hardware.
Thanks for confirming it, and removing any shadow of doubt
"I swapped a hard drive and it doesn't work". Gee lets just give up. Extract updated kernel extensions for the chipset, video, and bluetooth from the lion build that comes with the new machine, change a few details in the info.plist files and inject them into 10.6.8 and boot the new machine. This stuff isn't hard to do with a bit of imagination.
yly3, it won't work.
(I'm answering the post since it's the frst one that pop in google for this thread. It might help others looking for the same answer.)
There is two major reason for this.
As another poster mentionned, you would need the kext (drivers) for the internal component of the 2012 MBP that aren't included in Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I beleive that other than the graphic card (geforce 650M) and the Ivy Bridge architecture, nothing should have been changed. But I can't confirm this as I do not have a 2011 MBP nor a 2012 MBP.
In the hypothesis that they use the same chips for ethernet, wireless, webcam, bluetooth, infra red, audio keyboard, trackpad, light sensor, all you would need are the following two things (which might not exist yet).
1- A Mac OS X 10.6.8 kernel compiled to run on Ivy Bridge architecture. Google "Ivy Bridge kernel for Snow Leopard" and you should find something. I've seen this in the hackintosh community.
2- An nvidia GeForce 650M kext for Snow Leopard 10.6.8. Again, Google is your friend, but I've never seen that as of yet.
If the 2012 MBP ethernet/wireless/etc are not the same as the 2011 MBP, then you would need all of those kext too for Snow Leopard 10.6.8. In that case, you can forget about it, the custom kext community is based on hackintosh (PC that runs Mac OS X, not Mac that runs earlier version of OS X), so it is very unlikely that you would find an Apple webcam/trackpad/keyboard/light sensor kext for Snow Leopard since they're Apple branded parts, not third parties like the ethernet/cpu/gpu, etc.
Now the possible problems with this, is that a future Mac OS X update might crash your installation. So installing updates would be disadvised.
It is very important to repeat that Apple will not support Snow Leopard on this machine, and using a modified kernel would be in violation of their Mac OS X their of use. If you ever have to go to an Apple Store seek Apple Support, you would have to reinstall Lion on your laptop before going at the appointment, otherwise they will void your warranty. (you'd better off installing Lion on a second hard drive that you swap in the MBP in case of a problem.)
(I'm answering the post since it's the frst one that pop in google for this thread. It might help others looking for the same answer.)
There is two major reason for this.
As another poster mentionned, you would need the kext (drivers) for the internal component of the 2012 MBP that aren't included in Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I beleive that other than the graphic card (geforce 650M) and the Ivy Bridge architecture, nothing should have been changed. But I can't confirm this as I do not have a 2011 MBP nor a 2012 MBP.
In the hypothesis that they use the same chips for ethernet, wireless, webcam, bluetooth, infra red, audio keyboard, trackpad, light sensor, all you would need are the following two things (which might not exist yet).
1- A Mac OS X 10.6.8 kernel compiled to run on Ivy Bridge architecture. Google "Ivy Bridge kernel for Snow Leopard" and you should find something. I've seen this in the hackintosh community.
2- An nvidia GeForce 650M kext for Snow Leopard 10.6.8. Again, Google is your friend, but I've never seen that as of yet.
If the 2012 MBP ethernet/wireless/etc are not the same as the 2011 MBP, then you would need all of those kext too for Snow Leopard 10.6.8. In that case, you can forget about it, the custom kext community is based on hackintosh (PC that runs Mac OS X, not Mac that runs earlier version of OS X), so it is very unlikely that you would find an Apple webcam/trackpad/keyboard/light sensor kext for Snow Leopard since they're Apple branded parts, not third parties like the ethernet/cpu/gpu, etc.
Now the possible problems with this, is that a future Mac OS X update might crash your installation. So installing updates would be disadvised.
It is very important to repeat that Apple will not support Snow Leopard on this machine, and using a modified kernel would be in violation of their Mac OS X their of use. If you ever have to go to an Apple Store seek Apple Support, you would have to reinstall Lion on your laptop before going at the appointment, otherwise they will void your warranty. (you'd better off installing Lion on a second hard drive that you swap in the MBP in case of a problem.)
I've tested - I found an ISO of Snow Leopard 10.6.7 and imaged that to USB, booted from it. Well, I saw an Apple logo and it didn't change for 5 minutes. The most interesting thing is that I didn't get a Kernel Panic (log info, I got one when I tried installing Mac OS X Server 10.6)Can anyone test on a non-retina 2012 model ? It has got to work
I assume you need to take out the SSD from the MID 2012 MBP, plug it into another machine either by USB dongle or directly inside the machine which officially supports 10.6. After that, use or original CD or Internet Recovery to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard. After installation and setup (intro+setup steps) take out the ssd from the device you were installing Mac OS X on and placing it back to your 2012 MBP. Good luck!
I assume you need to take out the SSD from the MID 2012 MBP, plug it into another machine either by USB dongle or directly inside the machine which officially supports 10.6. After that, use or original CD or Internet Recovery to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard. After installation and setup (intro+setup steps) take out the ssd from the device you were installing Mac OS X on and placing it back to your 2012 MBP. Good luck!
It’s more complicated than that, though it is possible — with caveats.
It’s something folks over on the Early Intel Macs forum have looked into, sporadically, over the last couple of years.
Some discussions worth looking over:
It might also be worth nominating this thread to be moved over to the Early Intel Macs forum so more folks who’ve tinkered with this combination can chime in.