Various upgrade issues

[Sebastiano]

I realise that there are thousands of threads about upgrades already, but a search didn't yield any helpful results for my problem.

I have three Macs in my household, one running Lion and two running Leopard (one is late 2007 and the other more recent). Once Mountain Lion is released I am looking to upgrade all three. What is the best way to do this?

Will the ones running Leopard be able to support Mountain Lion? If so, do I have to buy all the intermediate versions? Is there a way of installing Snow Leopard without buying a disc? Is there a family licence available for Mountain Lion?

 

[Weaselboy]

First check here to see if the hardware in your machines supports Mountain Lion.

If it does, you can upgrade straight from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, but not from Leopard. You will need to upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard first, then to Mountain Lion. Or, you can make a USB installer from the Mountain Lion download and do a clean install on the Leopard machines, but this will not be an upgrade that keeps your data.

Apple's OS licenses allow you to install the purchase on machines you own, so if you buy Mountain Lion from the App Store you can install it on all your compatible machines.

To speed things up, I would make a USB key installer from the first Mountain Lion download to avoid having to redownload it again for each machine.

 

[Sebastiano]

First check here to see if the hardware in your machines supports Mountain Lion.

If it does, you can upgrade straight from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, but not from Leopard. You will need to upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard first, then to Mountain Lion. Or, you can make a USB installer from the Mountain Lion download and do a clean install on the Leopard machines, but this will not be an upgrade that keeps your data.

Apple's OS licenses allow you to install the purchase on machines you own, so if you buy Mountain Lion from the App Store you can install it on all your compatible machines.

To speed things up, I would make a USB key installer from the first Mountain Lion download to avoid having to redownload it again for each machine.

Thanks, that's really helpful. Does the OS licence allowance cover Snow Leopard as well?

 

[Weaselboy]

Thanks, that's really helpful. Does the OS licence allowance cover Snow Leopard as well?

If you mean if you buy one copy of Snow Leopard, is that good on all your machines.... then yes.