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flameproof

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 14, 2011
615
18
Will get the latest MacBookAir today - can I make a Lion installer image and burn it on CD/DVD and use that to make a fresh install of Lion onto an old 2007 MacBook (it has Core2Duo but runs on Leopard).
 
See if you get charged for downloading Lion on the air.

Why would I get charged for Lion? I thought MacBookAir comes with Lion pre-installed...? (I know, I could just open the box that arrived via TNT earlier today and find out myself....)

Thanks for the link, I will try it later and will give feedback on that. I don't need anything on the ol' MacBook and want a totally new and fresh O/S on it.
 
Why would I get charged for Lion? I thought MacBookAir comes with Lion pre-installed...?

It's step 2 in the instructions :) I doubt you'll get charged for it but I don't know for sure since my air doesn't get here till Friday.

Post your results, I'm sure a few people would be interested in doing this.
 
When you try to download Lion from the new MacBook Air, the App Store icon just says it's is already installed and won't advance. They have the recovery partition, etc. set up, so I'm guessing they thought of this "loophole" and closed it.
 
When you try to download Lion from the new MacBook Air, the App Store icon just says it's is already installed and won't advance. They have the recovery partition, etc. set up, so I'm guessing they thought of this "loophole" and closed it.

Damn, that would have been super easy :/

I'll see if I can use the recovery partition to do something similar.
 
BTW, the new MacBookAir doesn't come with any CD/DVD/thumbdrive etc.

Haven't had time yet to try the image thing.
 
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Use this method to make a bootable OSX Lion USB Flash Drive or DVD. Works perfectly.

How To Create an OS X Lion Install Disc

I used this to perform a clean install on my 13" MacBook Air. Clean install is vastly superior and far more stable to upgrading.

;)

Two things:

1) The 2011 Airs use a Lion build newer than the GM. So this only works if the Lion app from the App store also provides this newer build (which is unlikely). We probably need to wait for 10.7.1 to become default with the Lion app before it will work in this case.

2) Installs since Snow Leopard don't use the same Upgrade engine as in 10.5 and earlier. 10.6 and later use an "Archive & Install + Migrate" style of upgrade. So the OS is installed clean, but then any installed packages and apps will get migrated for you automatically, as well as settings and users, as if you used the migration assistant after the install.

It's still possible to get weird situations if a specific app or setting can't migrate preferences correctly, but the upgrades of today are nothing like the old days. :)
 
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