Will upcoming Lion machines be able to downgrade to 10.6?

[filemeaway]

I understand that this is somewhat speculative at this point. I've found a support doc from Apple warning not to attempt to downgrade, but the doc obviously doesn't mention Lion.

So speculatively, does anyone have an educated guess whether or not this will be possible; namely, to downgrade to 10.6 on a machine that ships with Lion? For the record, I'm thinking specifically about a Mac mini. I'd be willing to go against Apple's recommendation, as long as the machine was stable (I wouldn't be using it with crucial data).

Thanks in advance for any input!

 

[miles01110]

It does not matter if a machine ships with Lion; it will only matter when a new generation or refresh of machines comes out after Lion is released. The current generations will be able to roll back to SL without issue if Lion shipped pre-installed today. If they refresh the MBAs after Lion is released, you will not be able to roll back without issues on the new machines.

 

[Intell]

The only way you can get Snow Leopard on a Mac that ships with Lion is by using Snow Leopard restore discs from the same Mac model on your Mac. The Snow Leopard retail disc will not work, because I think those are only 10.6.3 and they lack the needed drivers for the newer Macs.

 

[ctyhntr]

I spoke with someone at Apple technical support and was told the same thing. The Retail Disc only goes up to version 10.6.3, and doesn't have the specific drivers for the newer models.

I'm in the same boat, I'm helping a school setup bootcamp on a new batch of macbooks (for the fall semester). They're waiting for the hardware refresh before ordering. They thought they could wipe out Lion, and re-image with Snow Leopard. When Microsoft pushed all the OEMs to ship Vista, it was a common workaround in the corporate environment to re-image and put a stable copy of XP.