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JonnyAlpha

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 30, 2008
140
0
Hi;

Hi I have a Late 2008 Unibody Macbook Pro running 10.5.8 I'd like to upgrade my OSX what upgrade path should I follow? Do I have to upgrade to Snow Leopard and the Lion. Should I stick to Lion or go all the way to Mountain Lion?

And last question - where do I get OSX upgrades from? I looked on the Apple Online Shop and although there are loads of links to upgrading to Mountain Lion I cant find anything in between.

FYI I am about to upgrade my memory to 2 x 4GB.

Thanks
 

mohsy90

macrumors 65816
Feb 4, 2011
1,332
2
New York
Hi;

Hi I have a Late 2008 Unibody Macbook Pro running 10.5.8 I'd like to upgrade my OSX what upgrade path should I follow? Do I have to upgrade to Snow Leopard and the Lion. Should I stick to Lion or go all the way to Mountain Lion?

And last question - where do I get OSX upgrades from? I looked on the Apple Online Shop and although there are loads of links to upgrading to Mountain Lion I cant find anything in between.

FYI I am about to upgrade my memory to 2 x 4GB.

Thanks

Your notebook it compatible for Mountain Lion, so just upgrade to ML. You don't need to upgrade to any other OS in between.
 

JonnyAlpha

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 30, 2008
140
0
Your notebook it compatible for Mountain Lion, so just upgrade to ML. You don't need to upgrade to any other OS in between.

mmm Ok, looks this is will be a software upgrade, is there anyway of doing a clean install or do I have to backup everything first.
 

mohsy90

macrumors 65816
Feb 4, 2011
1,332
2
New York
mmm Ok, looks this is will be a software upgrade, is there anyway of doing a clean install or do I have to backup everything first.

You have Leopard currently, so you should have time machine. Attach an external HD and use time machine to back up your data, or you can do it manually by dragging over the files you need. Then you need to purchase ML. Now because Leopard doesn't come with the mac app store you'll either need to buy Snow Leopard CD from some website (eBay) to upgrade to SL which does have mac app store. Or, use another mac if you have one to download ML and then create a bootable USB install key.

Or, to make the process easier, you could always use torrents.;)
 

XPcentric

macrumors 6502
Oct 16, 2008
271
0
Hi;

Hi I have a Late 2008 Unibody Macbook Pro running 10.5.8 I'd like to upgrade my OSX what upgrade path should I follow? Do I have to upgrade to Snow Leopard and the Lion. Should I stick to Lion or go all the way to Mountain Lion?

And last question - where do I get OSX upgrades from? I looked on the Apple Online Shop and although there are loads of links to upgrading to Mountain Lion I cant find anything in between.

FYI I am about to upgrade my memory to 2 x 4GB.

Thanks

I'm on the same boat and thinking to do the same thing. If you are really going to do it before me, listen, there are traces on the internet that people with 10.9 started to browse the web, so Apple may cook a new version, I want to wait until December.

If you want to do it follow these guidelines to upgrade directly from Leopard to Lion, and do post a feedback here how successful it was:
http://mac-how-to.wonderhowto.com/how-to/upgrade-mountain-lion-from-leopard-os-x-10-5-10-8-0138304/
 

JonnyAlpha

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 30, 2008
140
0
Update to this thread:

I have backed up everything on my Mac using Carbon Copy Cloner as recommended in the thread I started here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1496102/

And I created a Bootable USB Drive with Snow Leopard on it.

Anyway I have started the installation by holding down the Option key at boot up and selecting the USB stick as the bootable drive. It then asked me where I wanted to install the Operating Systems and showed me my current Drive which I had previously partioned with a Mac partition and a Boot Camp partition. I was given no option to erase the partitions on my HDD and start fresh??

Anyway I have continued with the instalation and it has approx 41 minutes remaining. I wonder if this is going to be an upgrade as opposed to a clean install??
 

JonnyAlpha

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 30, 2008
140
0
Yep - loks like I just did an upgrade as opposed to a clean install DOH!!!

Found this page here after I started the installation: http://macs.about.com/od/snowleopardmacosx106/qt/cleaninstall_sl.htm

To be honest my Mac looks exactly the same : ) although I had read that the improvements brought with Snow Leopard were mainly speed and not many visible changes. http://www.diffen.com/difference/Leopard_(Mac_OS_X)_vs_Snow_Leopard_(Mac_OS_X)
I think I'll have a play with Snow Leopard and read up a bit more on Mountain Lion before delving deeper.

I may also go back and do a clean install??
 

snaky69

macrumors 603
Mar 14, 2008
5,908
488
Yep - loks like I just did an upgrade as opposed to a clean install DOH!!!

Found this page here after I started the installation: http://macs.about.com/od/snowleopardmacosx106/qt/cleaninstall_sl.htm

To be honest my Mac looks exactly the same : ) although I had read that the improvements brought with Snow Leopard were mainly speed and not many visible changes. http://www.diffen.com/difference/Leopard_(Mac_OS_X)_vs_Snow_Leopard_(Mac_OS_X)
I think I'll have a play with Snow Leopard and read up a bit more on Mountain Lion before delving deeper.

I may also go back and do a clean install??
You can go back and do a clean install but you most likely don't need to.

SL was mostly speed upgrades, very little changed visually.
 

JonnyAlpha

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 30, 2008
140
0
You can go back and do a clean install but you most likely don't need to.

SL was mostly speed upgrades, very little changed visually.

Looks good so far, I suppose the only reason I wanted to do a clean install was to clear out some clag and just in case I get some incompatability issues with some of the software I have installed.

I guess I'll keep going for now and try out all of my applications and see whether I get any hiccups
 
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