How long will it take Apple to ship their MacBooks with Mountain Lion installed?

The day ML is released retail employees will open every box and insert Mountain Lion "Drop In" kits that contain install media or redeem codes for the App Store. At least thats how it was when I worked at Apple years ago.

mac.fanatic said:

...I would be eligible for a free copy of Mountain Lion, however I would prefer to buy the computer with Mountain Lion already installed so there are no issues for drivers, software, etc....

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If there are going to be issues with drivers, software,etc...it will be with the new OS (Mountain Lion) and not the current OS (Lion). So going by your criteria you would be better off buying now with Lion and waiting to upgrade to ML when you can confirm no problems with your software/hardware setup.

mac.fanatic said:

Thanks, but how long does it usually take Apple to get rid of the older stock and restock with new items?

When I turn on the MacBook, I would like to see Mountain Lion already installed on it and ready-to-go and not have to do the software update manually.

But if I waited for Mountain Lion to be released and then bought the computer, how would there be software/hardware issues since OS X 10.8 would already be installed on it?

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To be honest, it will likely be several weeks (3 or 4, possibly) before the entire stock of Lion machines is sold and replaced with Mountain Lion machines. However, like everyone else has said, every one of those Lion machines sold after ML's release date will include free upgrades to ML.

Really, it is HIGHLY, HIGHLY unlikely that you're going to have a single driver problem if you upgrade to ML. That is the advantage of Apple controlling both the software and the hardware: they have the ability to test new OS's in literally every single machine that it can run on, and check for any problems with every single possible configuration. Therefore, there is almost never a single driver problem with any Apple computer.

I would honestly just recommend that if you're looking to buy a computer now(ish), just go ahead and get one with Lion on it and upgrade it as soon as you take it out of the box. It honestly isn't going to be any different than waiting potentially a month for the exact same thing.

I purchased an iMac 21" last week (late August 2012). It had Lion installed and I was given a code to upgrade to ML. For me, it was a better move than having the computer come with ML since my HP laser printer is not supported on ML unless it was previously installed on Lion. Don't know how common this is, but might be worth checking first.