Upgrade leopard to mountain lion without paying snow leopard or lion?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.

So, Is it possible to upgrade leopard 10.5.8 to mountain lion 10.8 without paying snow leopard or lion?

In a word, no.

Today Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 is only available as a download from the Mac App Store for $20.

To get the Mac App Store, you must purchase a $25 (price you were quoted) Snow Leopard OS X upgrade on disc, and update it to 10.6.6, or later.

Total Cost $45.

OS X 10.7 Lion was originally released as a download-only from the Mac App Store for $30. (Still requires Snow Leopard 10.6.6 or later - you were quoted $25.) to upgrade to Snow Leopard then Lion and stay on Lion OS X 10.7 for the moment.

Total cost = $55.

OS X 10.7 Lion was eventually released on a flash drive at $70 (versus $30 download-only price.)

So you could buy the Lion upgrade and remain on that version without purchasing Snow Leopard. "Savings" from not purchasing Snow Leopard = $25

Total Cost = $70.

Or you could buy the Lion flash drive and then you could download Mountain Lion.

Total Cost = $90.

Today, just a week after introduction of OS X 10.8, Apple has not announced Mountain Lion availability on a flash drive.

They could eventually, but there's no way of knowing at this point. We're not employees here, just users like yourself.

So if you don't need to upgrade right away, wait a while to see what happens.

Recent OS X upgrades are still a 'deal', even if the Snow Leopard upgrade just sits on the shelf and collects dust after being used for an hour during installation, and then never again.

To fully appreciate the low price of Apple OS upgrades, compare them to Windows upgrades:

$25 for a Snow Leopard upgrade plus $20 for Mountain Lion together are still only about half the $90 street price of a Windows 7 upgrade from a prior version. Windows 7 upgrades had a $120 list price when first issued in 2009. Windows 8 will debut in October, and that upgrade cost is rumored to be $40.

I'd also suggest a RAM upgrade to at least 4GB (and 6GB or even 8GB RAM if your system supports it) to boost overall Lion or Mountain Lion performance. Check RAM upgrade prices from reliable vendors of Apple-compatible RAM such as Crucial.com and Other World Computing (www.macsales.com).

Message was edited by: kostby

i found this super helpful. thanks!!

Where in the App Store can one purchase the Snow Leopard OS X upgrade on disc?

Call 1-800-MY-APPLE. Not online anymore, just phone.

So, to recap (and to make sure I'm clear on this), if I'm currently running OS X 10.5.8/Leopard and want to upgrade to 10.8/Mountain Lion, I can purchase 10.6/Snow Leopard for $25, install it and update to 10.6.6. (or whatever the latest version of Snow Leopard is), go to the Mac App Store, purchase and download 10.8/Mountain Lion for $20, and I'll then be running Mountain Lion for a grand total of $45?

Yes.

I made a bootable USB flash disk for OSX 10.8, but I couldn't install it on my system drive on my macbook pro running OSX 10.5. My question is, can I format/erase my mac hard drive and install OSX10.8 on a fresh hard drive using my bootable flash usb disk then restore my old files, user settings and applications, ... etc. from my Time Machine backup?

I made a bootable USB flash disk for OSX 10.8, but I couldn't install it on my system drive on my macbook pro running OSX 10.5. My question is, can I format/erase my mac hard drive and install OSX10.8 on a fresh hard drive using my bootable flash usb disk then restore my old files, user settings and applications, ... etc. from my Time Machine backup instead of upgrading leopard with snow leopard then upgrade to M.Lion?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.

Apparently no one in this MacBook forum has an answer, since many of us have MacBooks that do NOT meet the minimum specifications for Mountain Lion.

You might get a response if you repost your quetion in either the MacBook Pro forum or the OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion forum, or both.

Be certain your MacBook Pro meets the minimum Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 specs:

https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/os_x_mountain_lion

To update to Mountain Lion, your Mac must be one of the following models:

• iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
• MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
• Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

Hi Kotsby

Thankyou for your reply, but I was asking about the technique. So instead of buying snow leopard, can get a mountain lion bootable usb disk format the mac's Hard Drive and install M.Lion from USB flash disk then put the applications and informations that were originally on the Hard drive before format from Time Machine using migration assistant.

Yes, I understand your question is about technique, and I don't have that answer.

You need to understand a bit more about how Apple Support Communities works:

You're NOT very likely to get any knowledgeable responses to your inquiry when you post it as an additional comment in this MacBook message thread because:

1) the original message title "Upgrade leopard to mountain lion without paying snow leopard or lion" does not accurately describe the precise installation and upgrade technique questions you have

and

2) This is not the main forum for the MacBook Pro computer you have.

What to do next???

Post your inquiry as a new question with a very descriptive title in the OS X Mountain Lion community forum:

https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/os_x_mountain_lion

You might also post it as a new question in the MacBook Pro community forum:

https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro

I hope this is not to late and is helpful to you!

K so if you want to upgrade to Mountain Lion but dont want to spend the money just do this:

WARNING: MAKE SURE YOU BACK UP YOUR FILES BECAUSE THE METHOD IS GOING TO WIPE YOUR HDD CLEAN OF EVERYTHING!

1. Make a USB Bootable drive that has Mountion Lion on it

2. Plug in the USB and restart the computer

3. When the white screen comes up on boot, hold down the option key and choose the USB that has mountain lion on it.

4. Go to disk utility and click on your main HDD. Choose Mac Journaled and click erase.

5. After it is done erasing you then quit disk utitlity go to the picture of mountain lion and click on it. Follow the steps for set up and that should work. If you have any questions just reply.

Myninjaninja