Following the free OS X Mavericks release, Apple has removed the $19.99 Mountain Lion purchase from the Mac App Store. This has brought headache to owners of older Macs who were looking to upgrade their operating system to OS X Lion or Mountain Lion.
Apple typically keeps only the most current version of OS X on the Mac App Store. As a result, folks who want to purchase a copy of Lion, for example, are required to give Apple a phone call to get either a DVD or a content code via email which lets them download the installer through the Mac App Store.
The company has now made the process easier by selling the redemption codes through its online store…
As can be seen in a screenshot below, both OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion are now available via the online Apple Store, priced at $19.99 each.
After purchasing it, Apple will drop a redemption code on your email. Simply redeem it at the Mac App Store as you normally would any other promo code and the installer will start to download.
“Redemption codes are usually delivered within 1 business day but may occasionally take longer,” notes Apple.
Why would anyone want to run Lion or Mountain Lion now that Mavericks is out?
Well, if you own one of the older Macs that run Leopard or Tiger, chances are your system is not powerful enough to run Mavericks so upgrading to Lion or Mountain Lion is your only option.
Lion requires a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo or later processor, 2GB RAM, a copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.6 or later and 7GB free hard drive space. Mountain Lion requires a Mac with OS X v10.6.8 or OS X Lion already installed, 2 GB or more of memory and at least 8GB of available space.
Mountain Lion works on the mid-2007 Macs, late-2008 aluminum MacBooks, mid-2007 MacBook Pros, late-2008 MacBook Airs, early-2009 Mac minis, early-2008 Mac Pros and early-2009 Xserve systems.
If you have previously purchased OS X Lion or Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store, you can re-download it to your Macs via the Purchases tab of the Mac App Store.
Have you upgraded to Mavericks yet?