Need a new Mac right now, but want to wait until Lion drops in July to spare yourself paying an extra $30 to upgrade from Snow Leopard. Don’t sweat it: if you buy a new Mac now, Snow Leopard will give you Lion for free when it is released next month.
From the press release:
The Mac OS X Lion Up-To-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge via the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. Users must request their Up-To-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of their Mac computer. Customers who purchase a qualifying Mac between June 6, 2011 and the date when Lion is available in the Mac App Store will have 30 days from Lions official release date to make a request.
In the past, you had to pay $9.95 for the installation DVD, but the Mac App Store has simplified things greatly, and now you can just download the install.
[via MacStories]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
42 responses to “Buy A New Mac Now, Get Lion Free When It’s Released”
That’s so awesome… I don’t have the money to get a Mac
Guess this whole download only scheme tackles any possible growth of fragmentation. Shame though, even sure knows now that Lion is Mac App Store only, but I’d love a shiny disk with packaging.
how about iPad2 / os5?
I think you might be able to backup the download, because you have to initiate the install after download, so it must be somewhere on the computer, hopefully its not hidden. Just guessing though.
The quad MPB I bought in March will qualify….right? Right?
Ehm… iOS updates are free and all devices newer than the 3GS will get iOS 5 so what exactly are you asking about?
There was a post yesterday on how to burn it to a disk. Bit of a hack though.
Also, Lion has a recovery partition feature.
Nice. Specially as it’s all Apple, won’t end up as the buy computer now get Win 7 at launch deals where you did indeed get Win 7, many manufactures didn’t bother with driver. My laptop still have no driver for the switchable ATI card, only the Intel one, sure sucks :p
I think I’ll wait for a MacBook Air refresh though :p
No, from June 6th. forward only.
$29. upgrade.
The best an worst thing about lion is it’s only available on the mac app store. I’m running an older intel tiger iMac and the only way to upgrade to lion is to buy snow leopard, install that, then buy lion off of the mac app store and install that! It’s going to take way too much time and it’s double the cost it should be! Any solutions?
Nice…I purchased an iMac on Sunday June 5th. Ugh!!!
just install the dev preview of lion and install the final through that…
well, it’s still a little 29.99$ for the upgrade, i don’t think you will become poor with it, thinking of the price you paid for that mac…
will that free upgrade cover all around the world new buyers or just united states states?,
Same boat here. Ordered the wife’s new MacBook Air and received it last week.
Ugh. Still waiting for the free iPod Touch with a new Mac. The chances of that deal actually happening are going down everyday though…
No…..I bought my MacBook pro on the 4th :(
No…..I bought my MacBook pro on the 4th :(
i aint going to shell a grand out for a mac thank you very much
Well, I’m waiting for that deal to hit before I buy one. The longer they take to announce it, the longer they’re gonna wait for my business.
Where do we make the request if we’ve purchased a MacBook after June 6th?