On my iMac I don't currently have Mountain Lion as for some reason never upgraded. I was just wondering will a copy of Mountain Lion be required for the upgrade to Mavericks? I didn't want to spend out money (even of only £13.99) for Mountain Lion and then again to go straight up to Mavericks. In other words, if I have to buy Mountain Lion for an eventual Mavericks upgrade, I'd rather get it now and make good use out of Mountain Lion properly before Mavericks arrives. Any thoughts?
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Will Mountain Lion be required for upgrade to Mavericks?
- Thread starter LarmanF
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I am assuming if your machine is supported, you must be running at least 10.6 due to the mac app store being the portal to get 10.9
I'm planning on installing it on a mid 2008 iMac (apparently compatible according to some other forum posts), and it currently has Mac OSX 10.7.5, so I can access the App Store to download Mountain Lion, but will it be required for Mavericks?
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Just found this forum post
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1593194/
which seems to answer most of my questions.
Your iMac is supported in Mavericks so you don't need to mess around with the install. You could upgrade straight from Lion to Mavericks without going through Mountain Lion.
As long your mac is supported, you can directly install 10.9. It is just a matter of either building a boot installer or simply purchasing the app from another mac which has access to the app store. When the download finishes and it prompts you to start the installation, don't proceed and you'll find the installer in the applications folder.
They've always said you need to upgrade from the previous OS (at least since Lion they have) but if you just make a bootable DVD or Flashdrive you won't need to.
Obviously I cannot speak for the GM release, but in the beta installer, the OSInstall.mpkg file performs a check to see if you are on at least 10.6.6. So theoretically you should be able to perform an upgrade(as opposed to clean install) as long as you are on at least 10.6.6.
And 10.6.8 is the newest Snow Leopard, so those of us running that far back shouldn't have too many issues.
Where did who say that? You can upgrade from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion without going via Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the same goes for upgrading from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, no need to go via Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
The only requirement they (Apple) put forth, you need at least Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to have the Mac App Store (MAS) installed in order to purchase Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
Actually, I just noticed that even though OSInstall.mpkg looks for a minimum of 10.6.6, the Installer.app plist file notes a minimum of 10.6.8, so it's most likely that one.
Hmm, You might be right I'll have to look it up but I could've swore Apple said you needed the previous version to upgrade when Lion came out and it ended up being untrue, I think it was in an email response. I can't remember exactly. However you are right about not actually needing them.
And where do you make a boot installer without being able to dl it in the first place via MAS?
When Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was released, Apple offered the MAS version for 29 USD, which required Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard of course. Apple also began (and later stopped) to offer a 69 USD USB flash memory thumb drive with the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion installer, which of course would not need any previous Mac OS X version due to being able to do a clean install.
When OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion was released, that USB flash memory thumb drive was no longer available for either Mac OS X 10.7 Lion nor OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and one only needed to have at least Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installed on the Mac one wanted to install OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on.