Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

parajba

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 19, 2008
501
265
I'm about to pull the trigger on an MBA i7/8GB/256GB but I was wondering whether I should wait for Mountain Lion. Or will Apple give me the discs when ML is available? Will the installation wipe out completely the current OS leaving the MBA like a genuine new laptop shipped with ML, or leave it like if it's been "upgraded" (like a Windows machine, with consequently slower performance). I would like to do a fresh install when ML comes out.
 

mentaluproar

macrumors 68000
May 25, 2010
1,762
209
Ohio, USA
There are no disc drives in a macbook air. Whenever you need to reinstall or upgrade the operating system, it does it over the internet.

OSX upgrades work cleanly, and your upgrade will be free. Sometimes, migration assistant can be a bit irritating, but you won't be using that in this situation. Mountain lion will install from the app store on your mac. It will fetch the files from the internet, reboot a few times, and done. Performance will be just fine, especially since you will not have had it long enough to load up with bloat.

I can tell you are coming from a windows machine based on your question about upgrade performance. I was the same way. My old iMac I upgraded from leopard to snow leopard to lion and I never did a clean install. The system was incredibly fast and never had a hiccup. You'll be fine. :)

PS: NICE specs!
 

jackosx

macrumors member
Oct 14, 2007
43
0
There are no disc drives in a macbook air. Whenever you need to reinstall or upgrade the operating system, it does it over the internet.

OSX upgrades work cleanly, and your upgrade will be free. Sometimes, migration assistant can be a bit irritating, but you won't be using that in this situation. Mountain lion will install from the app store on your mac. It will fetch the files from the internet, reboot a few times, and done. Performance will be just fine, especially since you will not have had it long enough to load up with bloat.

I can tell you are coming from a windows machine based on your question about upgrade performance. I was the same way. My old iMac I upgraded from leopard to snow leopard to lion and I never did a clean install. The system was incredibly fast and never had a hiccup. You'll be fine. :)

PS: NICE specs!

How do you do a clean install when buying ML from the App store? is there any way to get the install image mounted on a thumb drive?
 

mentaluproar

macrumors 68000
May 25, 2010
1,762
209
Ohio, USA
There are ways to do that littered around the forums, but you will see no advantage to doing it this way. Just install it as apple intends.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.