late 2013 imac, compatible with mountain lion? or audio firewire interface?

absoluteelsewhe said:

So i am thinking about purchasing a new imac. BUT I FORSEE TWO BIG PROBLEMS

1) my audio programs only work seamlessly with mountain lion. I once upgraded to mavericks with my old mac only to find everything buggy, and downgraded back to mountain lion with a thumb stick drive

If i get a new IMAC, will i be able to downgrade mavericks using a thumbstick without problems between the os and hardware? Anyone have any luck with this yet?

2) the new imacs do not have a firewire port for my alesis io 26 interface, anyone know if the firewire to thunderbolt works okay with firewire audio interfaces?

Thanks a bunch

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Both my Haswell iMacs came with Mountain Lion preinstalled.

So yes, the Haswell (late 2013) iMacs will work with Mountain Lion.

I currently use a thunderbolt to firewire 800 adapter for one of my external drives and it works exactly as if it were native firewire 800, so there's no reason why your audio interface wouldn't work as well.

absoluteelsewhe said:

So i am thinking about purchasing a new imac. BUT I FORSEE TWO BIG PROBLEMS.....

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Be sure to get one with Mountain Lion installed. Over the years with Apple i learned that the OS witch came with the computer is the lowest OS version you can install. So, NO, if your mac comes with Mavericks preinstalled, you will not be able to install Mountain Lion. There are still imacs with Mountain Lion on Amazon, so just shop around a bit....

pcd109 said:

Be sure to get one with Mountain Lion installed. Over the years with Apple i learned that the OS witch came with the computer is the lowest OS version you can install. So, NO, if your mac comes with Mavericks preinstalled, you will not be able to install Mountain Lion. There are still imacs with Mountain Lion on Amazon, so just shop around a bit....

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Umm...I disagree. I managed to get a late-2011 MBP booting natively from 10.6.8 bootable drive (the late 2011 MBPs came with Lion).

absoluteelsewhe said:

Anyone have success with a new imac reverting to mountain lion?

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You could probably get it to boot up but there will probably be problems. Apple updates the firmware as well as the OS.

pcd109 said:

Be sure to get one with Mountain Lion installed. Over the years with Apple i learned that the OS witch came with the computer is the lowest OS version you can install. So, NO, if your mac comes with Mavericks preinstalled, you will not be able to install Mountain Lion. There are still imacs with Mountain Lion on Amazon, so just shop around a bit....

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Almost true.

The OS with which the Mac shipped first is the lowest OS you can install on it.
Many Macs get later on a newer OS pre-installed than was originally pre-installed when that Mac first came out. (Especially if a major new release has come out).

The Haswell iMac is a nice example. If you get one now, it will have OS X Mavericks pre-installed but originally it was pre-installed with Mountain Lion (special build), and since no hardware is changed you can still get the special build of Mountain Lion on a new iMac Haswell.

absoluteelsewhe said:

What does special build mean??? I keep hearing that. Is that 10.8.5 with the 10.8.5 combo. Where do you get it?

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Nope, it shipped with a special build of 10.8.5 (different from the combo build)

yjchua95 said:

Nope, it shipped with a special build of 10.8.5 (different from the combo build)

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This is correct. Build 12f37 should boot the imacs but i have yet a confimed success on a mavericks imac. 12f37 can be downloaded on the internet in ahem sites. So if you do get the imac can you test if 12f37 works? 12f45 doesn't boot the 2013 imac which is the last major build of ml.

yjchua95 said:

Nope, it shipped with a special build of 10.8.5 (different from the combo build)

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Is there anywhere that i'd be able to get this build? Legally of course. If i were to pay for Mountain Lion on the Apple store would it work on a late 2013 imac?

Also, what has the OP ended up doing in this situation??

mrmeister said:

Is there anywhere that i'd be able to get this build? Legally of course. If i were to pay for Mountain Lion on the Apple store would it work on a late 2013 imac?

Also, what has the OP ended up doing in this situation??

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Legally? Afaik, I don't think so

yjchua95 said:

Legally? Afaik, I don't think so

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What if i knew someone with a 2013 imac, could i then use their recovery disk or something like that? (provided they bought it with ML installed)

mrmeister said:

What if i knew someone with a 2013 imac, could i then use their recovery disk or something like that? (provided they bought it with ML installed)

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Nope. It won't install, because there's something in the firmware of every iMac that tells it what is the minimum OS it can run on.

The first batch of late-2013 iMacs (including both of mine), when using internet recovery, would download ML. But the subsequent batches of the late-2013 iMacs could only download Mavericks via internet recovery. Trying to install the ML build from the first batch of the iMacs onto the second batch of iMacs failed too.

To the original poster:

If you want to be SURE of having an iMac that will run Mountain Lion, better not gamble and buy a new one, or you might be VERY disappointed.

Best to check into an Apple-refurbished model with specs that interest you.

Or -- consider buying one of the current (late 2012) Mac Minis. They -DO- run Mountain Lion. Mine came with 10.8.2 and they have not changed since their introduction...

build 12F37 success

mrsavage1 said:

Build 12f37 should boot the imacs but i have yet a confimed success on a mavericks imac. 12f37 can be downloaded on the internet in ahem sites. So if you do get the imac can you test if 12f37 works?

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Sorry if this is "necro-ing" a thread, but I thought I'd join (always have been a MacRumors follower) just to share that I was able to get 10.8.5 build 12F37 working on my late 2013 iMac (14,1). I installed it on a USB drive and it boots and works fine, as far as I can tell.

I tried this after previously having build 12E55 fail to boot on the same external drive.

yjchua95 said:

Nope, it shipped with a special build of 10.8.5 (different from the combo build)

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I think it was actually a special build of 10.8.4 (namely, 12E4022). Although, maybe you're talking about build 12F2029 which did seem to ship with the 21.5" Late 2013 iMacs with the NVIDIA card (I have the Iris Pro version). The only reason I care is because I spent an enormous amount of time trying to find out a way to get a hold of build 12E4022 only to figure out that build 12F37 is sufficient.