Apple OS X Lion pulled as Mountain Lion rolls out

Apple on Wednesday pulled its last-generation OS X Lion from both the Mac App Store and brick-and-mortar Apple Stores amid the launch of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion OS.

As OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion rolled out today following Apple CEO Tim Cook's impromptu launch announcement during Tuesday's third quarter conference call, the company took down all mentiion of the last-generation operating system from its digital storefront while simultaneously removing OS X Lion USB thumb drives from physical stores, reports CNET.

Users attempting to find Lion on the Mac App Store are met with a "product not available" message while those who purchased the last-generation operating system can no longer re-download the software via the previous purchases section.

Apple's Mac App Store no longer lists OS X Lion as an available product. | Source: Apple

The publication notes that Apple has traditionally pulled older versions of its Mac OS when a new iteration is released, but in the case of Lion it could cause problems for users who want to upgrade to a newer operating system but have hardware that is incompatible with Mountain Lion. While such owners, limited to certain Mac models made between 2006 and 2008, have had a year to upgrade to Lion, feet-draggers may be out of luck unless they buy the OS through a reseller.

Apple has yet to issue an official statement regarding the matter.

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86 Comments

bullet618

said about 11 years ago

Lion still shows as re-downloadable for me. I just had to log into my account and Un-hide it in the hidden purchases area.

market_player

said about 11 years ago

Still able to download with a developer account from previously purchased list.

jelmore49

said about 11 years ago

The Lion installer was still in my purchases list, and I'm re-downloading it now. This Mac is still on 10.7, maybe that makes a difference?

solipsismx

said about 11 years ago

1) It makes sense to pull it from the store but keep it on the servers for those that have already purchased it, like they do with their App Store apps. 2) I'm guessing that despite the complaints of not having physical media for Lion which prompted the USB flash drive I'm guessing a very, very, very small number of people actually bought them.

tylerk36

said about 11 years ago

As OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion rolled out today following Apple CEO Tim Cook's impromptu launchannouncement during Tuesday's third quarter conference call, the company took down all mentiion of the last-generation operating system from its digital storefront while simultaneously removing OS X Lion USB thumb drives from physical stores, reports CNET.

Thats bull shit. There are plenty of Macs out there that need Lion that are not compatible with 10.8. So what are we supposed to do? Torrent Lion so we can get a so called pirated copy? Apple needs to keep Lion available for all the legacy macs.