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l008com · Oct 23, 2011, 03:22 PM

Has anyone done it? I'm thinking about it. I'm so tired of fighting with Lion, I just want to go back to the good told days of an OS that works with me, not against me.

I know downgrades aren't nearly as seamless as upgrades.
The biggest problem I can forsee is that 10.6 mail might not be able to read my 10.7 mail database. But just about all of my mail is on IMAP servers so that shouldn't be a problem. I may have the same problem with Address Book, but I can easily export my groups as vcards.

Hmm the more I think about it, this might end up being pretty seamless after all.

I will be making a .dmg of my hard drives first, so if things to very wrong, I can just forget the whole thing and go back to Lion. But I'd love to hear from some people that have done it first.

Big Mac · Oct 23, 2011, 03:45 PM

I don't think it should be too hard. Wipe the drive, reinstall SL and restore. I doubt the Mail database format changed much, nor Address Book, although I could be wrong. Of concerns in that category I'd be most concerned about iPhoto.

Sorry Lion hasn't worked out for you. It's an intriguing release to me that I haven't gotten to try yet, but I understand the great many issues involved with it.

l008com · Oct 23, 2011, 03:46 PM

I'm not going to wipe the drive, i'm going to do an archive and install. Lets not get crazy now.

Big Mac · Oct 23, 2011, 03:51 PM

Oh okay. Will the SL installer know to do an Archive & Install in response to seeing Lion installed? (I don't know why Apple had to simply the OS installer interface so much that I even have to ask that question.)

l008com · Oct 23, 2011, 03:54 PM

I betcha it will work fine. Well, I'm sure I will have some apps that freak out because suddenly they can't read their own pref's files but, we'll see. I sure will miss Mail.app conversations though :/ but not as much as I currently miss expose & spaces.

Big Mac · Oct 23, 2011, 03:56 PM

The changes to Expose and Spaces are what nailed it for you that you want to downgrade?

l008com · Oct 23, 2011, 04:00 PM

There's no one thing that makes me want to go back. It's everything. There is so little gained and so much lost. So much of my daily workflow is slowed WAY down by all the new "features" like Mission Control that doesn't show you all of your windows like Expose, or scroll bars that don't have arrows for mouse users. My Mac Pro is not an iPad, no matter how much you try to make it look like one. GUI elements that make a small 10" screen easier to use, just add steps to your workflow when you implement them on large screens with plenty of space (thinking of iCal's calendar list with that one). The only thing I'm really going to miss is mail's new conversation view. Maybe I can find a 3rd party plugin for that.

Waragainstsleep · Oct 23, 2011, 04:30 PM

The only thing that really bugs me is the loss of my four finger horizontal swipe ton get the app switcher. (Yes, I know I can add it back via 3rd party software)

I have had issues with some full screen behaviour but apparently thats only me.

l008com · Oct 23, 2011, 04:32 PM

Nope I have another thread about some full screen issues too. I have a TV connected to my laptop as a second screen, and I can't get full screen video on it. Every time I choose to go full screen in QT player, it moved the video over to the tiny 13" built in screen instead of my big TV.

I really wanted to keep this thread focused on 'How' not 'Why', but it's so tempting to bad mouth this OS.

chabig · Oct 23, 2011, 04:48 PM

Originally Posted by l008com

I betcha it will work fine.

I don't think any OS X installer will install over a later system. I think Big Mac is right--you'll have to wipe and install. Then just migrate from your backup.

I would be concerned that your mail won't go backwards, though. I think a smarter way to go back to Snow Leopard would be to keep you Lion drive cloned and install Snow Leopard on a separate drive. Then migrate over, keeping the Lion clone intact just in case.

l008com · Oct 23, 2011, 04:51 PM

It's IMAP, so all the mail is on the server. I have only a few folders of 'local' mail that I'm certain Mail.app could import with it's import feature. I suspect I can archive and install over a newer system, now I really want to give this a shot, just to see if it will work.

So the only feature I'll miss is conversation view in mail. Does anyone know of any conversation view plugins for older copies of Mail?

Big Mac · Oct 23, 2011, 04:52 PM

1008com may well be right. SL may be smart enough to detect that the user is trying to install an older version of OS X on a disk with a new version present and do an Archive and Install, but the problem is that Apple simplified the installer starting with Leopard so much that the user doesn't actually know what the installer is going to do. But then again it may not be that smart and refuse to install.

l008com · Oct 23, 2011, 04:54 PM

With Snow Leopard, all installs are archive & installs. We'll see, maybe tonight. Or maybe tonight I'll go on a 3rd party utility search. I always used to shy away from 3rd party hacks (thank APE Enhancer for that one; our hack doesn't make your mac crash, it's your macs fault that it crashes all the time with our software installed).

Big Mac · Oct 23, 2011, 05:02 PM

Oh, okay. I thought SL does an upgrade install if it thinks it can do so.

CharlesS · Oct 23, 2011, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by l008com

I'm not going to wipe the drive, i'm going to do an archive and install. Lets not get crazy now.

Snow Leopard doesn't have an Archive and Install.

l008com · Oct 24, 2011, 05:38 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Snow Leopard doesn't have an Archive and Install.

Pretty sure that's all it has, like I said before.

Big Mac · Oct 24, 2011, 08:19 AM

We're all right, sort of.

SL doesn't have a separate Archive and Install option. It has a normal installation mode that you can't alter, which combines Upgrade and Archive and Install into one operation.

CharlesS · Oct 24, 2011, 05:34 PM

I take it neither of you have actually tried it then.

The Snow Leopard installer can be easily shown not to do an Archive and Install, since after an install there is no archive folder containing the old system anywhere on the disk. Furthermore, on my machine at least, the Snow Leopard installer refuses to install on a disk that has Lion on it. You're going to have to nuke and pave...

Big Mac · Oct 24, 2011, 06:10 PM

Charles, the explanation I read in various places is that the normal install that SL does is a surreptitious Archive & Install, but one that first moves the old OS, installs the new, then migrates old files to the new installation and deletes what's of the old in finishing up.

l008com · Oct 24, 2011, 06:17 PM

He is right, neither 10.5 or 10.6 will lets you install 'over' 10.7. They both want you to reformat the drive first. What complicates things more is that my user folder is on a separate disk. It's a shame you can't choose home folder location from the start, when you are importing or creating new users during setup. It would make doing the SSD + HDD thing a lot easier. If and when I actually give this a go, i'll post my results here.

infowarrior · Oct 24, 2011, 06:52 PM

Would the same apply if I bought a new Mac laptop that comes with Lion? Can we blank the drive and install 10.6 onto a new piece of Apple hardware w/o problems?

l008com · Oct 24, 2011, 06:53 PM

Nope. New hardware can't run an OS that is older than what it ships with, except in rare cases when the mac was made before the new OS was released. If you have a new Mac, sadly you are stuck with Lion.

l008com · Oct 25, 2011, 10:41 PM

Gave it a shot tonight. First attempt isn't going well.
So I made .dmg backups of both drives. Then I netbooted and installed a fresh 10.6.3. I did have to erase my boot drive but not my user drive. So once it booted, I went to import my admin user from Time Machine, but it was actually able to recognize that it didn't need to move any files to import my users that were on a different disk. So I imported all users. So far so good. I logged into my admin user. Things seemed well. So I ran software update to get it up to 10.6.8. After that, things got a little crazy. Basically, my computer started freezing up every 5 seconds, for about a minute. Made it very hard just to reboot. When I did reboot, I've been unable to get it to boot off the network, even after resetting PRAM. At first, I figured I might be having some issues because my 5770 isn't supported under 10.6.3, but it actually worked on 10.6.3 and this craziness started on 10.6.8. I might have to pop out the boot drive just to get this thing to boot off of a network volume. At this point, I'm just going to restore both drives from my .dmg backups and save this project for another day. Its just so tempting to do this, every time you go to activate Expose's "all windows" and get Mission Control instead

Wiskedjak · Oct 25, 2011, 11:20 PM

Apple has never been friendly to downgrading.

l008com · Oct 26, 2011, 01:18 AM

And the ultimate downside of trying to do what I did... I gave up, restored all the data, and now time machine is backing up 100GB of data, just about filling up my time machine drive. Funny how restoring a drive from a disk image backup still leaves time machine thinking all of the files are new.

CharlesS · Oct 26, 2011, 11:18 AM

Once you go Lion,
You won't go back, but not from lack of tryin'.

l008com · Oct 26, 2011, 10:44 PM

I'm going for it again right now. I'm going to do it the hard way. I'm just going to make new users with the same names as my old users, and then manually copy over all of the files in the home folders. Shouldn't be too hard. Shouldn't run in to many problems either.

Big Mac · Oct 26, 2011, 11:06 PM

Good luck l008com.

l008com · Oct 27, 2011, 01:37 AM

Progress is slow, as my Fios went out right after I installed the new old OS. So I can't update any of the older apps to get anything working. But it does seem to have worked, aside from updating my apps.

So I never realized how slow Lion is until I downgraded a Lion Mac back to Snow Leopard. In addition to having great things like Expose, Spaces, and arrows on my scroll bars, things are much faster. I just have a dock full of question marks that needs to be cleaned up.

l008com · Oct 27, 2011, 01:43 AM

My internet went out because my 10.6 Server's firewall had decided to block my computer from getting a connection over DHCP. This isn't the first time this has happened on 10.6 Server. So I can't run 10.7 server on my server and i can't run 10.6 server on my server, and I really don't want to run 10.5. Apple you are ****ING KILLING ME.

l008com · Oct 27, 2011, 07:12 AM

So I'm mostly back up and running with 10.6, aside from a ton of applications I still need to reinstall. But I have to say, the speed of 10.6 is really blowing me away. I didn't notice just how much slower Lion was until I went back. Apps open so much faster. The system boots so much faster. Really everything is faster. I really have very little good to say about Lion at this point.

l008com · Oct 27, 2011, 07:32 AM

And Safari is super fast again. Lion's safari is so laggy, that I actually DID notice. And I've been sending Apple tons of feedback on how buggy Lion's Safari is. It likes to randomly hang, and then as it un-hangs, it will reload every open window. So if you had anything open that isn't accessible directly from it's URL... bye bye.

angelmb · Oct 27, 2011, 10:17 AM

What are your Mac specs.?

Update to at least 10.6.3 so you will get Edward Hopper's Nighthawks desktop picture fixed.

ClaraT · Oct 27, 2011, 03:04 PM

Hmmm. . .glad I found this thread. As an extremely happy Leopard (10.5.8) user, not really wanting to upgrade to Snow Leopard, let alone Lion, it's affirming my desire to stay put.

Having said all that though, I'm hitting those "you need Lion" to install this app or to get this new bell or whistle. So can someone point me to a thread or article about what the drawback will be to NOT upgrade to the latest OSX? Should I just stay put? I'm about to get the 4S iphone, so does that have any bearing?

While this thread has been very helpful in learning that you can go back thanks to 1008com, I'd like to avoid ever having to do this rewind.

l008com · Oct 27, 2011, 03:52 PM

You should upgrade to 10.6. Its much newer, ahas much more software support, and there aren't many GUI changes from 10.5.

CharlesS · Oct 27, 2011, 08:21 PM

Leopard was terrible. I'd get off of that ASAP. Snow Leopard was much more stable and better performing.

Lion has a lot of UI changes that are... strange. Some people love them, some people hate them. You should go to an Apple Store and play with a demo machine to see what you think of the changes.

One thing about Lion is that it includes a lot of really nice features for developers, which means that you're going to see a lot of third-party software requiring Lion. Snow Leopard does too, particularly Grand Central Dispatch and blocks. Add in the fact that the App Store disallows any app that doesn't require at least Snow Leopard, and I'd be quite surprised if you could find much current software that would still run on Leopard these days.

jmiddel · Oct 28, 2011, 12:42 AM

Well, I can't say that I had many bad experiences with Leopard, but I agree totally that SL consolidated and optimized things under the hood. I am using it currently and am very content, Can't even remember the last crash. Is it not a cheap $29 upgrade? I'd like to do Lion, but it does not support an app that I use dozens of times a day, Windowshade.

l008com · Oct 28, 2011, 12:51 AM

I thought expose and spaces are what I missed the most. But now that I've been using it again for a day, I really like the overall speed boost, and rosetta, the most. It was a huge hassle downgrading, but it was totally worth it. The sad part is that if/when I buy a new 27" iMac, I'll be stuck using Lion again :/

angelmb · Oct 28, 2011, 03:11 AM

What irks me about Lion is Boot Camp supporting Windows 7 and nothing else. I've tried to like Windows 7, I really have, but it is horrid.

Big Mac · Oct 28, 2011, 04:21 AM

What don't you like about Windows 7, angel? It has become my main OS. I'd prefer to be still be on OS X primarily, but 7 is great by Windows standards.

OreoCookie · Oct 28, 2011, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by ClaraT

Hmmm. . .glad I found this thread. As an extremely happy Leopard (10.5.8) user, not really wanting to upgrade to Snow Leopard, let alone Lion, it's affirming my desire to stay put.

I'd definitely upgrade to Snow Leopard, it's much smoother around the edges. E. g. Time Machine backups are a lot, lot faster and the Finder is much smoother, too. Despite all that, Leopard and Snow Leopard »look« the same from the outside. Also, the App Store also runs on 10.6 which means that you will have access to apps more easily. Plus, since a significant share of important Mac apps in available only on the App Store, they will require at least 10.6 to run.

I personally use Lion since the day it came out. I have always upgraded OS X this way and haven't had a problem. Whether you like the UI changes is a matter of taste. For the most part, you get used to them. With the exception of some aspects of Mission Control, I really like them.

Originally Posted by ClaraT

Having said all that though, I'm hitting those "you need Lion" to install this app or to get this new bell or whistle. So can someone point me to a thread or article about what the drawback will be to NOT upgrade to the latest OSX?

That is the major drawback: software you'd like to run will tend to require Lion (10.7) or Snow Leopard (10.6).

Originally Posted by ClaraT

Should I just stay put?

If you don't need these new apps that require Lion, then you're not forced to upgrade. If you want them badly, you should upgrade. The upgrade is quite cheap.

Wiskedjak · Oct 28, 2011, 07:18 AM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

That is the major drawback: software you'd like to run will tend to require Lion (10.7) or Snow Leopard (10.6).

Exactly. And, Apple does everything it can to encourage software developers to require the newest OS.

In iOS development, for example, Apple doesn't make it very easy for developers to test their software across multiple OS versions, resulting in the lazy developers opting to simply require the most recent OS for their software rather than making sure it's compatible with older versions as well (thus driving iOS customers to the most recent OS and discouraging people from hanging on to older hardware).

Thorzdad · Oct 28, 2011, 08:17 AM

Personally, I'd absolutely advise you upgrade to Snow Leopard. As for Lion...Again, personally, I'm sticking with SL for now. I haven't run into any need for Lion, and none of the "improvements" impress me enough to make the jump, despite the low cost. In fact, many of them have me more convinced to stay with SL. Of course, I don't buy apps very often, and I've yet to get anything from the app store beyond the rare free game, none of which have required Lion.

CharlesS · Oct 29, 2011, 03:03 AM

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

Exactly. And, Apple does everything it can to encourage software developers to require the newest OS.

In iOS development, for example, Apple doesn't make it very easy for developers to test their software across multiple OS versions, resulting in the lazy developers opting to simply require the most recent OS for their software rather than making sure it's compatible with older versions as well (thus driving iOS customers to the most recent OS and discouraging people from hanging on to older hardware).

That and the way they keep removing the older Mac OS X SDKs from the Xcode distribution, removing support for compiling for PPC, etc.

angelmb · Oct 29, 2011, 05:16 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

What don't you like about Windows 7, angel? It has become my main OS. I'd prefer to be still be on OS X primarily, but 7 is great by Windows standards.

The UI, the whole look and feel. It is like it's been 'designed' by the code guys themselves… I know who the guys in charge of art/creative direction for the xbox are, I wonder if Windows have ever had any.

W8 DP's desktop UI is a bit more polished, then there is Metro, which may look great on paper (pun intended) but has no place when it comes to point and clic desktops, at least the way it is currently implemented. The new start button as a glorified Metro launcher/shortcut has to be the worst offender. But hey, at least they got rid off the Orbit.

Or is it maybe due I'd skipped Vista and went straight from XP to Seven… hardly my fault.

Wiskedjak · Oct 29, 2011, 09:02 AM

Originally Posted by angelmb

The UI, the whole look and feel. It is like it's been 'designed' by the code guys themselves… I know who the guys in charge of art/creative direction for the xbox are, I wonder if Windows have ever had any.

Windows does, indeed, have a team of art/creative/UX. Just because you don't like it's design, doesn't mean it's a bad design; it just means you've been drinking a particular brand of kool-aid.

I also prefer MacOS, but Windows7 is still a pretty good OS.

l008com · Oct 29, 2011, 04:39 PM

This thread is about SNow Leopard now, not Windozzzzz Pee Ceees!

angelmb · Oct 30, 2011, 10:20 AM

This thread is about SNow Leopard now, not Windozzzzz Pee Ceees!

I apologize for having derailed the thread.

Windows does, indeed, have a team of art/creative/UX. Just because you don't like it's design, doesn't mean it's a bad design; it just means you've been drinking a particular brand of kool-aid.

I also prefer MacOS, but Windows7 is still a pretty good OS.

I didn't say it was a bad OS. I didn't say those who happen to like and enjoy W7 were wrong. And I didn't, because I personally hate to be pushed into a decision. And I think it's only fair that you have the same courtesy.

Making claims out of thin air is not my style. I find that Windows is not visually powerful, nor intellectually elegant and less a timeless design. It hardly adds that element of pleasure, beauty or surprise to everyday work. Those and other aspects I took into account before saying that, to me, the Windows 7 user interface was not great by design.

We could argue about these as a matter of opinion and either you agree or disagree with my point of view, you could always back up your opinion. Instead you got the wrong assumption I was some blind Apple fanboy which I ain't. Far from it.

voicebox · Oct 30, 2011, 11:54 AM

Originally Posted by l008com

Has anyone done it? I'm thinking about it. I'm so tired of fighting with Lion, I just want to go back to the good told days of an OS that works with me, not against me.

I know downgrades aren't nearly as seamless as upgrades.
The biggest problem I can forsee is that 10.6 mail might not be able to read my 10.7 mail database. But just about all of my mail is on IMAP servers so that shouldn't be a problem. I may have the same problem with Address Book, but I can easily export my groups as vcards.

Hmm the more I think about it, this might end up being pretty seamless after all.

I will be making a .dmg of my hard drives first, so if things to very wrong, I can just forget the whole thing and go back to Lion. But I'd love to hear from some people that have done it first.

Hi there,
I installed Lion on my 2 year old 24" iMac and I have to say that I have had no problems at all, absolutely perfect!
However, I did install it over Snow Leopard on my four year old 17" MacBook Pro and my MBP then started running slow and the system became rather 'buggy'. I then discovered the following site and followed the instructions for downgrading to Snow Leopard. Fortunately I had performed a complete back up of my Snow Leopard system to an external hard drive before I installed Lion, so all I had to do was take Snow Leopard off the external drive as per the instructions. In fact, the operation was really easy.
Here is the link: Downgrade OS X Lion To Snow Leopard: The Complete How-To Tutorial | Redmond Pie

My MBP is far happier now running Snow Leopard!
I hope this helps the situation.
best,
voicebox

Insider · 08:52 PM

Lion certainly needs to go through some revisions to make it as solid as Snow Leopard. Having said that, I haven't seen any slow downs on my MBP with 10.7.2.

I probably would have waited to upgrade as I was quite happy with SL, but I wanted to get my MobileMe account converted over to iCloud sooner rather than later. I have seen some issues related to Mail under Lion that I posted here recently. That particular app overwent some major changes under Lion that probably account for the significant bugs.

I have noticed a few more system freezes than normal requiring a hard shutdown. Anyone else seeing this with Lion?