Can a 16“ MacBook Pro be reverted to an OS before Catalina? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

The 16" MacBook Pro cannot run anything earlier than Catalina.

Sometimes you can “downgrade” the operating system on a new Mac to an earlier version of macOS, but you should never count on it.

If that Mac is completely new hardware (like the new 16" MacBook Pro) then Apple never adds driver support for older versions of macOS.

If you order a Mac which could run an older version of macOS, even though it comes installed with a newer version of macOS, it might be able to downgrade.

For example, if Apple released a minor update to the 2019 MacBook Air line, and you ordered a new MacBook Air and it arrived with Catalina on it, you might be able to install Mojave on it. But you would never be able to install High Sierra on it (in fact the 2019 MacBook Air cannot run anything older than 10.14.5).

Solution 2:

No - the Mac Pro (about to ship) and MacBook Pro 16 have T2 chips that lack any firmware support to run anything but Catalina. Since Catalina has been available for testing since June 2019, it’s going to be hard for a software company for professionals to say they can’t support it 6 months after the beta period started.

You can run older OS in a virtual environment, but if you absolutely cannot bring your work to 10.16 it’s better to not buy the latest hardware until you know your software can support 64 bit only operating system.

• Avid - http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Compatibility/macOS-Catalina-support

They say coming soon as of 1 December - will be interesting to see if they can support the monster Mac Pro on release day.

Solution 3:

No as it won’t have shipped with it. It won’t boot to alternate installers so only recovery options to install. So only Catalina upwards. There maybe a way to do it but not officially. You could maybe use VM Ware Fusion to run Mojave in Catalina but not sure if that would be a particularly seamless experience.