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Do I need to buy Snow Leopard to upgrade to El Capitan?

D

dylanlewis2000

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 17, 2009
47
9
Hi All,

I have been given a 2008 iMac. The OS it came with is 10.5 Leopard. This mac can run El Capitan but do I need to buy a Snow Leopard licence before I upgrade to El Capitan?

I know that with the later Macs you can simply upgrade for free but not sure about the older operating systems.

Help please!
 
You'll still have to buy SnowLeopard no lower than version 10.6.6 for its MacAppStore app to get El Capitan for free, because all Mac OS upgrades Lion onwards come via digital distribution (i.e.,"download") with no physical media of them available.
 
maverick28 said:
You'll still have to buy SnowLeopard no lower than version 10.6.6 for its MacAppStore app to get El Capitan for free, because all Mac OS upgrades Lion onwards come via digital distribution (i.e.,"download") with no physical media of them available.
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Thanks for the reply,

I have copies of El Cap and Yosemite as i have another mac which i have upgraded. My other mac is newer than this one and has had the 'free' upgrades. I was just wondering if the licensing now is totally free or whether there is a stipulation that you have to pay to upgrade to SL and from then on its free.
 
Owning the SL disk is the license, I suppose. There really isn't any license number involved with Snow Leopard.

So the legal, ridiculous way for you to get to El Capitan is to install SL as discussed, update to 10.6.8 so that you'll get the App Store (application), "purchase" (for free) El Capitan, then upgrade that old SL installation to EC.

Use the other Mac with the copy of EC on it to create a USB installer. Search for info on how including the Terminal command "createinstallmedia".
 
If you have the installation drive for El Capitan, you should be able to plug it into the 2008 iMac and install the OS. You only need 10.6.6 to get the MAS so you can "buy" the upgrade to download on that Mac, but since you already "own" it, if you can build the installation drive you can do the upgrade without buying an additional OS for $$
 
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Legally, where do I stand with this. I may have a few more to build see. I have looked on Ebay and can see Snow Leopard with 5 licences for a reasonable price.
 
A Snow Leopard DVD is technically just a single licence for one Mac computer. As long as the DVDs are legit, you buy one for each computer and the computers are Macs, then you are perfectly fine.
 
dylanlewis2000 said:
Legally, where do I stand with this. I may have a few more to build see. I have looked on Ebay and can see Snow Leopard with 5 licences for a reasonable price.
Click to expand...
If you use halloxes approach, you'll be perfectly fine legally, and it will cost you the least. And is likely also the easiest.
 
T'hain Esh Kelch said:
If you use halloxes approach, you'll be perfectly fine legally, and it will cost you the least. And is likely also the easiest.
Click to expand...

No, BrianBaughn was correct. You need a ‘base’ licence in order to ‘purchase’ El Capitan legally. Apple only provides derivative licences on the App Store that presuppose an existing base licence for each computer. This can either be a copy of Snow Leopard or a pre-installed version of Snow Leopard or newer. Anything older does not fulfil this requirement.
 
Just make a bootable El Capitan USB stick on another mac and straight away boot from it and install El Capitan. You don't have to buy anything else
 
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