So it turns out that I am not the greatest fan of Lion after all. Is there a way I can downgrade from the Lion OS to the Snow Leopard OS if I bought my laptop in mid 2011?
There are plenty of sites (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2389334,00.asp and http://gigaom.com/apple/how-to-downgrade-from-lion-to-snow-leopard/ are two examples) that demonstrate how to revert back to Snow Leopard if your computer is older and once operated in Snow Leopard. But my MacBook Pro is brand new, and shipped with Lion. Trying to start in recovery mode (command – R at boot) , or from the Snow Leopard disk (C at boot) just results in kernel panics. Running the Snow Leopard disk from the Lion OS results in error messages ("You can't install this version of the application Install Mac OS X with this version of Mac OS X. You have Install Mac OS X 23.1"). And the one thing that does give me access to the Snow Leopard Drive (pressing option during startup with the Snow Leopard CD inserted and choosing "Recovery HD") only allows me to reinstall the Lion OS, not the Snow Leopard OS.
What should I do?
Best Answer
Any time you have problems starting a mac with an installer - do check these three articles:
In your case - you probably have a MacBook Pro (Early 2011) which will boot from (Mac OS X v10.6.6 Build 10J567) or later. You might see the term "retail disk" which means it has drivers for all Macs that can run that level of OS - this is different from the disks that ship with macs - you almost never can use say a MacBook Air restore disk on a MacBook Pro - they just have the drivers for that one model.
Normally, you could just buy a retail copy but the last 10.6 retail copy I've seen documented is 10.6.3 and is too old. You'll need to order a replacement disk through AppleCare online or via phone (or find someone in possession of your MacBook Pro's install media for Snow Leopard)
Most Apple Retail stores are set up to image your mac from the factory builds through the genius bar and since your mac is so new, I can't imagine the seller you bought it wouldn't bend over backwards to make sure you got a copy of the appropriate disk (they might even have a service desk that could assist you)