When I called their automated call routing system I said 'Sales' at the first prompt (what department I wanted), 'Lion' at the second prompt (what I was calling about) and 'Personal' at the third prompt (personal, business or education).

In the USA, the number for Apple Sales Support is 1-80. I'm not sure why that is, but my guess is that if you haven't upgraded to Lion yet, waiting another day or two won't be a huge deal. The only weird part is that the Apple Support salesman said that it may take 'up to a couple of days' to get the redemption code. It will cost you US$20 and will come to you as a redeemable code that you will use in the Mac App Store, which means that you will need a Mac running at least 10.6.8 to use the code. The good news is that Lion is still available from Apple. It's also not available on Apple's website, or, or anywhere else (with very few exceptions which all looked extremely unreliable). Here's the twist: his MacBook cannot run Mountain Lion (10.8), and Lion (10.7) is no longer available for sale on the Mac App Store. A reader contacted us the other day with an interesting problem: he wanted to use the latest Java update, but it requires an 'Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.7.3 (Lion) or later' and his MacBook was running Snow Leopard. Follow Gregg on Twitter at or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. A short three-step description of the upgrade process can be found on Apple's site. Mountain Lion can be downloaded from the Mac App Store. An upgrade to Windows 8 Pro will sell for $39.99, or 20% less than the lowest price for Windows 7 three years.

Rival Microsoft is also upgrading Windows this year, and like Apple, has reduced the price. To obtain the code necessary to download the free upgrade, users must fill out the form on the Up-to-Date Program's website. That price tag was a third less than last year's Lion, and made Mountain Lion the third-consecutive OS X upgrade to cost less than $30.Īlso today, Apple began taking requests for a free copy of Mountain Lion from customers who have purchased a new Mac on or after June 11.

Mountain lion app store download