Jester wrote:I'd appreciate Hamid's and Greenmorpher's input on downgrading the OS on my iMac. Thanks!
Sorry, mate, I can't help. I never upgraded so I have no idea how to downgrade. I'm sitting happily on a 2010 MacBook Pro 6,2, X.6.8 with high rez screen. It does all I want and allows me to use three of my five core programs which all require Rosetta, Canvas X, Eudora 6.2.4, and Personal Organizer 4.5. (My other two core programs are NWP, of course, and Firefox.)
I believe your best bet might be to check the some of the Mac forums, one would be DPReview Mac Forum
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/1017 to look for help.
Unfortunately, just last week, the old Canvas diehard independent Wizaerd's forum shut down. There was stuff on there about doing what you want to do but I didn’t pay any attention except to say "told you so"! (Nasty, aren’t I?)
This is a quote from DPReview'sMac forum some months ago:
imabel wrote:You cannot downgrade new macs to older OSes because many of the drivers for the different components are built into Mac's OS. You may find some of the current macbook line still shipping with 10.7, the current OS being 10.8, but you will not be able to downgrade them to 10.6. Even if you have an installer it will say you cannot do it.
So it looks as though you can't go back
if you are running one of the latest Macs. However, if you have an earlier Mac, going back to, say, 2011, then I believe you
can go back to X.6.8. Check the forums or simply google.
What was being discussed on the Wiz's forum a little while ago was to leave your machine running ML or whatever, get Parallels or Fusion or whatever for a virtual machine, install OS X.6
Server then use that for your actual work. Mr "I love you all, send money" Jobs made Server mandatory so you had to pay to retain your old stuff (there's no technical reason why the ordinary X.6.8 could not be used, I have read -- just as there was no technical reason not to include Rosetta in late OSs; Jobs made the commercial decision to not do it and, in fact, to make it impossible). However, while this was quite costly initially, the price for X.6 Server is now down to around $19. Of course, you still have to buy Parallels of whatever).
If you go on to any of the Mac forums talking about shifting back to X.6.8 you will be assailed by the fanboys. Be prepared to stare goggle-eyed at the mindless fanaticism of their responses. It’s amazing and instructive. But there are others who will be helpful, I'm sure. But I would sim;ly google first.
Cheers, geoff