Lion Upgrade no more?

Lion is no longer available in the Mac App Store. It's possible, though, that if you call the Apple Store, they may still have Lion available on the USB thumb drive, even though it's no longer shown on the web site.

Regards.

From another thread, I found this number 800-692-7753. They will check your Apple ID, and email you a code and instructions. The cost is $29.99 (as it was before) plus tax. It's a download, not a thumbdrive. It's easy to find instructions on the web for saving the image to a thumb drive (which is recommended in the event you need to reinstall)

You'd think that with as much older hardware out there, they'd continue to offer Lion easily via the store.

After dealing with Apple (on phone, online and in store) for the last 24hrs, the best thing is to call SALES, not AppleCare, direct at 1-800-676-2775. With the automated system, say "sales", then "representative". Do NOT let them send you to AppleCare. I have no idea how many people I talked at AppleCare, but they did not get the memo. As of midnight last night you CAN order Lion through sales, they will take your credit card info ($32 bucks or so) and even though they take your "shipping address" you should get an e-mail with a code and instructions in "1-3 days". Again, you need to get ahold of sales, not tech support or AppleCare.

EcosseJSL wrote:

Have a late 2006 Macbook Pro, Core 2 Duo 2.16Ghz which will not take Mountain Lion. Will take Lion though I think; question is how can you get copy of this OS as it seems to have been wiped off the face of the App Store. Should have upgraded when I had the chance... but seems strange that this upgrade path has been removed for older Macs.

Don't waste your time on 10.7, it will slow your machine, make you replace all your PPC software and for what? iCloud?

You have a old machine that's at it's end of life stage, don't bother wasting any money on it.

Ease yourself into a new 10.8 machine which Apple will hold your hand for free for three months and fix anythign for a year (or three years with AppleCare) buy all new software for it not the old machine.

If you go to 10.7 and it breaks your machine, then your looking at a premature hardware purchase or expensive Mac service as it's a waste to bother replacing the logicboard for $300 for a $500 value machine when you rather apply that to a new machine instead.

If you had a Late 2010+ I would recommned you go right to 10.8, skip the 10.7.

Apple pulled it for a reason off the AppStore depsite the millions that can't install 10.8.

Why would Lion break the machine? How come my 2007 Macbook pro is just fast with Lion as with Snow leopard? That was also so with only 2gb of RAM and demanding apps.

You are spreading FUD, sir.

EcosseJSL wrote:

....as it seems to have been wiped off the face of the App Store.

Good riddence to it too.

My advice is to stick with the fast 10.6.8 or upgrade to 10.8 directly if possible.

10.7 offeres little and will require upgrades of your third party software as it won't run PPC based software.

Plus it's slow and a memory hog. So is 10.8, but some say it's faster than 10.7.

Things to consider before upgrading OS X

However if you really want 10.7 or 10.6 disks, call Apple Sales.

Perhaps if you stopped running apps not made for OS X Lion you would have had a better experience. But, no, you simply demand that an app written and compiled for a previous OS version and a previous processor family should indefinitely be supported backwards by Apple. That kind of backwards support would really slow down things.

Every new version of OS X have been called "a memory hog" and "slow" as unverified blanket statements by a miniscule amount of users. Every time I find these blanket statements to be hogwash. Of course I never get in before several incremental updates and I encourage anyone making money with their Mac to never jump on the first version of a new OS.

As I said previously Lion ran demanding apps (musical production and graphics software) on my 2.2ghz Macbook Pro in only 2gb RAM. Granted with my max 6gb I can keep several apps loaded at the same time and retain that speed with a minimum of swap space (RAM written to and read from disk which slows down things).

You mention the need to run PPC applications, via Rosetta which is absent in 10.7 Lion. Rosetta was never fast, so I don't get how you can compare that to native apps running in Lion anyway. When I need to run PPC apps I do that on my Dual 2.0 G5 with 8gb of RAM. The best tool for the current job.

ds store wrote:

Things to consider before upgrading OS X

The in my opinion unfounded views you expressed here about OS X Lion 10.7 are thankfully absent from this article of yours, which I found well written and balanced. Given that I don't see where your blanket statements about OS X Lion 10.7 fit in. You seem to vent on technical problems you have had personally with your set of software rather than what the majority of users have encountered. Why blanket statements like as if your points are valid for everybody when they're not?

Obviously it's a vexation when an app that can't be updated for the newer OS have issues that render it unusable, but I see this as an opportunity for finding new solutions. I've had many of these as I move from OS X 10.5 on PPC hardware to OS X 10.7 on Intel. But when I make my informed migration on a clean installation of OS X Lion I encounter fewer problems and issues than expected.

I don't know about Mountain Lion, but will keep my eye on it as my Macbook Pro is supported.

Jumping in.

Peruse http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/mountainlion/, wherein is the (equally applicable to Lion and ML):

[These upgrades are] all about making your Mac and your iPhone and iPad work better together. If you haven't embraced iOS, Apple's touch-based iPhone/iPad operating system, there are some nice enhancements for the Mac itself but little that is groundbreaking [or compelling}.

So, it's just not about PPC which work w/o issues in a less than two year old OS, it's about arbitrariness and Apple's desire to make their computers mimic their iOS gadgets, which aren't. Although installed for testing purposes, I compute in SL and play with the other stuff, even though I have no such gadgets or use for cloudy stuff.

Mik B wrote:

Why would Lion break the machine? How come my 2007 Macbook pro is just fast with Lion as with Snow leopard? That was also so with only 2gb of RAM and demanding apps.

You are spreading FUD, sir.

Then you are a rare case ... Lion IS a fat cat and it IS slow. MountainLion on the other hand is as fast as SnowLeopard again.

Data? Benchmarks?

Here are my comparison data as I've now downgraded to 10.6.8:

Hardware: MacbookPro3,1 with 6gb RAM and drive is Samsung HM250HI

Tests made in 32bit kernel mode in both cases (CPU is 64bit).

Cinebench OS X 10.7.5: CPU 0.91pts, OpenGL 6.70fps

Cinebench OS X 10.6.8: CPU 0.88pts, OpenGL 6.28fps

Xbench OS X 10.7.5 CPU: 153,06

Xbench OS X 10.6.8 CPU: 150,00

In these tests Lion is faster on all points, though the tests are limited in scope. To me this nevertheless gives some numerical reference to the same experience I've had: that CPU intensive work such as Photoshop filters, Audio calculations and similar isn't slower in Lion. Rather those run a tad faster.

However, the GUI seem somewhat more responsive now in a fresh install of 10.6.8, but I can't tell how it will feel 6 months from now. Unfortunately I didn't run those tests in Lion for time constraints, but if this observation is true, that could be one reason why people would think Lion is slow. If the performance is similar in newer machines then the GUI advantage if any wouldn't be noticable, because it's very little.

I'm willing to entertain ideas for better tests, but I really think most slow Lion stories are myths rather than facts. That said I won't be upgrading to Lion on this machine again. It's Mountain Lion or staying in Snow Leopard.