New MacBook Pro downgraded to Snow Leopard – FCP Success?

[Steve Eisen]

You have 2 options with a new laptop. Reformat the original hard drive and install SL or Replace the original hard drive with a new SL start up.

Replacing the hard drive is very easy to do.

There should be no issues. The latest MBPros (early 2011) came with SL installed.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Ben Wharton]

Hi Steve

Well according to Apple forums, your assumption isn’t quite right. New MacBook Pros ship with Lion and will not boot up with older system discs. The only version which they will work with is 10.6.8 – which doesn’t exist as a retail disk. And so for that you need to make a new boot disk with one of the Apple Server utility programs which can integrate say 10.6.3 with the 10.6.8 update.

But again, this isn’t the issue for me. Getting it done – I have plenty of instructions on. Knowing that it works and works for FCP I don’t know. i.e. trying to find someone who’s done it, and their laptop works great and he or she uses FCP professionally appears to be a major task.

So, do you know or does anyone else know have this experience and can tell me?

Waiting and hoping 🙂

[Kevin Schumacher]

Hi,

I have a Intel Core i7, 2.2 GHz “MacBookPro8,3” with FCS 7.0.3 installed on the original boot drive that came from the factory with Snow Leopard, not Lion. I can confirm that this specific MacBook Pro is compatible in the configuration you’re asking about.

Cheers,

Kevin

[Will Burles]

Hey there, I too had this problem downgrading.
The way to get around the 10.6.8 problem is to create an install then restore the hard drive from an image of that install.

Unfortunately to use this method you will need a 10.6.8 SL computer, so if, like me you still have an old MacBook or Pro that works in some way, (I used my four year old intel MacBook that has an overheating tendancy) you will be able to do it.

All you need to do is follow this article, and it’ll work.

Good Luck,
Will

[Ben Wharton]

Hi Kevin

Thanks for your reply – so are you saying that although you got SL with your MacPro, the model you have is in fact the same model I would get if I went and ordered one right now?

Actually I just checked and so you have a 17inch laptop. I’d be getting the 2.3 15inch.

Ok, really sounding promising but STILL after one person who:

A) had a new MacBook with Lion that was behaving badly

B ) Downgraded it to SL 10.6.8 and now it works great (with FCP 7.02/3) – no wifi issues, no terrible battery life, no mega heat-up/ 6500 rpm fans.

Anyone? Been asking for 2 weeks now…:-)

Ben

[Ben Wharton]

HI Will

Thanks for the link to the instructions – I’d found it earlier. And luckily I do have a not so old iMac which can do the re-imaging for me.

But what you don’t say is what was your Mac? Was it a new laptop that was doing all those fun (bad) things under Lion? And now it works great?!

Still searchin!

Ben

[Will Burles]

I have an early 2011 MacBook Pro 8,1 13″ which I bought on the 1st of September.
The technique only works on laptops like mine which originally shipped with Snow Leopard, like the current MacBook Pros, Mac Pros and iMacs.
With my SL Downgrade I did two days ago, I haven’t had any problems so far, and have completely set it up normally with a Time Machine backup of my old computer. It’s also a lot faster than Lion was. (As well as just inherently better)
I hope you have success with the install, I screwed it up the first time by not properly putting in the 10.6.8 update, meaning my system wouldn’t boot from SL and the restore partition couldn’t reinstall Lion. That was a very fun time.
Will

[Mo Moolla]

I have a mediia studio in which live 2 Mac Pro 12 cores and 2 Mac Pro 16 cores. Also have 2×17″ MBP’s (i7 and i5)… Just got a new 15″ 17 MBP Quad Core which shipped with Lion. I immediately “upgraded” to Mountain Lion as I feel Lion is akin to Vista with lotsa bells and whixtles but very system resource heavy. Mountain Lion is great but had a few software issues with Logic etc so I decided to go back to Snow Leopard which all my other machines use. Oh boy, what a huge mistake. Firstly to do this I had to delete the Recovery System partition, then the main drive etc etc….
But the worse was yet to surface

With Snow Leopard installed all seemed good upto the point that I heard a “jet take off”… This was the sound of my MBP’s fans going into overdrive. I monitored a CPU temp of 85degrees and fan speeds of 5600k, just by running Safari and watching a Youtube vid. After much research I heard that when you go back to Snow Leopard from Mountain there are some MB issues relating to drivers. I would have to reset the firmware and this can only be done by removing the battery (which voids the warranty)… thus leaving me with the following solution: Go back to Mountain Lion.

In the process of doing this…Will keep you updated

Apps I use daily include:

FCP 7
Premiere Pro
After Effects
3D Max
Nuke
Logic Pro 9
Pro Tools

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i need instruction for downgrade to snow leopard on my new Macbook pro