I'm currently debating wether to buy a MacBook Pro 13'' right now and get it with SL installed or wait for Lion to be the default install when it's released (i'm not going to wait for early adopters to break it in if i do). If the computer comes with lion installed and I wiped the HDD to go back to SL, do you think there would be a way to go back to lion without paying for it again. Do we know if they are planning on distributing restore media with Lion pre-installed computers or are we supposed to use the new restore partition for this?
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Snow Leopard to Lion and Back again
- Thread starter podsorcerer09
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The explanation that I got from the store was that if you buy a Mac with SL anytime after June 6, you will get to purchase Lion on the Mac apps store for free. Likely facilitated by a coupon code or similar. In this way, even if you adopted Lion early and then wiped it to go back to SL, you could still re-download Lion at no additional charge since in effect you've already "bought" it. I was in the same boat and decided to just go ahead and buy my new Macbook Pro with SL on it.
For any new Mac revisions that Apple release that have Lion on them to start, I believe Apple will arbitrarily prevent Snow Leopard from booting on them. I suppose any current Mac revision that boots Snow Leopard right now will still be able to boot Snow Leopard even if they come with Lion, but if Apple releases a MacBook Air this month, I would bet that it wouldn't even be able to boot off the Snow Leopard disc.
Is there a precedent for this? When Apple started selling Macs with SL preinstalled did Leopard not boot on them anymore?
They have always stated not to install a previous version of os x on a newer mac than what came with your Mac.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2186
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2186
Typically older versions of OS X do not have drivers for newer computers. So if the new MBAs come with Lion, a Snow Leopard disc sourced elsewhere won't have the drivers to interface with the hardware, and thus you can't downgrade the OS.
I can see why that would be a problem on a new computer, but what about a computer that already boots the current version like the 2011 Pros? If I bought one of those after Lion came out SL would still have all the right drivers on it. Seems like that wouldn't be an issue.