How can I install Lion 10.7 on my new Haswell MBA?

[NewBench]

Just purchased a second Haswell MBA 13" (base spec model).

One of the main apps I use is Sky Go (in the UK) which doesn't support Mountain Lion (god knows why).

How can I install 10.7 (Lion) on my brand new Haswell MBA which is running 10.8.4 Mountain Lion?

 

[bbkr]

Haswell support is not (and probably won't be) included in Lion.

However you can trick Mountain Lion to identify itself as Lion. There is big chance that your app will install (even from AppStore) and work.

All you need to do is edit in sudo mode /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist and replace all occurrences of

<string>10.8.4</string>

with

<string>10.7.5</string>

and restart your computer.

 

[mattferg]

Just purchased a second Haswell MBA 13" (base spec model).

One of the main apps I use is Sky Go (in the UK) which doesn't support Mountain Lion (god knows why).

How can I install 10.7 (Lion) on my brand new Haswell MBA which is running 10.8.4 Mountain Lion?

I use the Sky Go app on ML and it works just fine?

 

[TC25]

However you can trick Mountain Lion to identify itself as Lion. There is big chance that your app will install (even from AppStore) and work.

How will this modification affect all the other apps on the MBA who will now think they are running on 10.7.5?

 

[NewBench]

I use the Sky Go app on ML and it works just fine?

What MBA do you have? Are you running 10.8.3 or 10.8.4? Did you install the new Haswell MBA update?

I know a few people have been able to run Sky Go on ML but for the most part, and according to Sky's forums, it doesn't work.

Also - are you watching through the Sky Go site or through their desktop app? Can you watch live tv or just downloaded/on demand?

 

[bbkr]

How will this modification affect all the other apps on the MBA who will now think they are running on 10.7.5?

You may get opposite problem. Some apps check minimum required OS X version right after start and may report system as too old because they require 10.8 identifier.

Some apps may have different algorithms for different OS identifiers - for example app won't send messages to notification center if it sees 10.7 because app knows that it wasn't there yet in Lion.

In rare cases app may crash because it communicates with new system APIs/libraries in the old way due to misleading OS identifier.

And - last but not least - system updates may miserably fail and break things.

The workaround I gave is last resort.