Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Internet Recovery and Mavericks
- Thread starter smokesletsgo
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yes... 2010+ Macs have firmware that connects to Apple's servers and first downloads the recovery utility, then after that uses the utility to download the OS. When you do that Apple's servers see the serial number of your machine and give you the OS that came with the machine from the factory.
If you mean to start over say if you install a new drive, then no... you would not need to do that. Once you have a Mavs system up and running, you want to use this tool from Apple with a 1GB USB key to make a recovery tool. This would give you essentially a Mavs recovery partition on a USB key. So you could put in a new drive and use the utility off the USB key to format the new drive then DL and install Mavs directly without Lion or anything else in between.
Or if you have a locally attached USB drive Time Machine backup you made with Mavs, that would also have a recovery partition on it that could be used to restore the OS.
I think doing a "Recovery" with the original installed OS makes sense...for those that want it, as not everyone wants the latest, greatest OS X. However with that said, it would be nice if it gave you an option of the original OS or the current available OS.
Beats the whole point of having INTERNET RECOVERY built-in if you can't install latest version of OS X since it's free.
I agree. Not everybody also wants the new iOS 7.0... they can easily opt-out by not upgrading. But when making a system restore - they don't have any choice but to restore to 7.0.
I wasn't meaning to argue about what is best, I was only attempting to explain how it works now and what the options are.
i'm not a stranger to these options.
Ok, so if I upgrade or clean install Mavericks on my new iMac which came with Mountain Lion I can then use the CMD-R to reinstall Mavericks again later, correct? Do you know if there's any association between this install of Mavericks and my Apple ID since I had to download it from the store in the first place?
The reason I am asking is that when I go to sell this machine in 3 years I'd like to know if I have to default back to Mountain Lion. If I do, I might just return this iMac and reorder later on when Mavericks will be available for pre-install/Internet Recovery.
Correct... a command-r boot after you install Mavs will reinstall Mavs since you now have a Mavs version recovery partition. When you do that, you will prompted for the AppleID you used to download Mavs from the App Store.
As far as your second question, yes, technically selling the machine with Mavs on it violates Apple's terms of use for the OS, but now with Mavs free... as a practical matter I don't think the Apple Police will be out in force trying to enforce the licensing terms of a free OS update.
The only downside is if the new owner wants to reinstall Mavs he would not have your AppleID to do so. Of course before reinstalling, the new owner could just go to the App Store and "purchase" his own Mavs for free with his own AppleID.
Ok, so this is the same as when I sold my last iMac. I could have left Mountain Lion on that one but I opted to reinstall Snow Leopard (what it came with) so I wouldn't have any entanglement with the old machine.
I wonder if the new owner will care if I left Mountain Lion or Mavericks on this machine in 3 years since by then we'll be on Mav+++ (or something like that)?
Thanks for your help Weaselboy!