Apple has started selling older versions of OS X through the Apple Online Store. Despite the fact that neither operating system can be purchased through the Mac App Store, you can still buy them for $19.99 each through Apple’s website. Rather than a physical disc with the software, you’ll get a code that can be redeemed on the App Store to begin downloading the OS immediately.
Offering Lion makes sense for older Macs since some Lion-capable machines cannot run Mountain Lion. Offering Mountain Lion, especially for $20, seems like an odd move since the entire line of Mountain Lion-compatible Macs can also run Mavericks for free.
Either way, if you need a copy of Lion or Mountain Lion, you can grab them now from Apple’s online store.
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Reblogged this on William's iBlog and commented:
Huh?
Actually that is untrue that “Offering Mountain Lion, especially for $20, seems like an odd move since the entire line of Mountain Lion-compatible Macs can also run Mavericks for free.” Because my brother-in-law has a early (like February) 2007 MacBook that can’t run mavericks but can run mountain lion
Re “Offering Mountain Lion, especially for $20, seems like an odd move”, I reckon charging for Mountain Lion makes strategic sense as it effectively provides an incentive to upgrade to Mavericks instead. It also makes sense that they’re keeping Mountain Lion available if there are users who need that specific flavour of OS X for technical reasons. But a user who’s just after ‘some upgrade’ will presumably choose the free option.
Could be for compatibility, since I know a few apps which mess up with the new Mavericks, For example, Adobe Lightroom 4 and some other Adobe apps. That’d be why they offer Mountain Lion
Offering mountain lion makes since in a corporate environment, since you would typically want all users on the same OS release, however this would require Apple to offer downgrade support for the latest hardware, drivers etc, I’m not certain that they do this.