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If I buy a new MBA, will I be able to install Lion on my iMac for free?
- Thread starter justywusty
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No, it'll be a unique installation to the Mac bought during the Up to Date program. It'll probably show up as an update in Software Update.
I'm talking about if my new refreshed MacBook air comes with lion....can I install it on my iMac...same answer though I bet. After thinking about it more, that wouldn't make much sense.
How would you reinstall Lion if it's ever uninstalled on a new Macbook Air if this is the case?
Once Lion is installed it'll make a recovery partition that will assist in the reinstallation of Lion if needed. If the whole drive is replaced, the end user must first install Snow Leopard then update to Lion. It is currently unknown how an end user will reinstall Lion on a Mac the ships with Lion if they replace their hard drive.
All machines come with restore discs (or USB sticks in the case of the MBA) with the OS. I don't see Lion changing this. Although you might see more and more machines shipping with USB sticks instead of DVDs. And the restore is usually locked to the exact model it ships with.
And, I'm wrong on this. Wow, didn't expect how wrong I was.
The new Airs don't come with a USB stick for recovery anymore. Instead you either use the recovery partition, or if your HDD gets entirely hosed, you can boot into an "Internet Restore" mode. That will launch the recovery mode over the network and let you reinstall the OS that way.
So it's a sure bet you won't be allowed to install Lion on the iMac just because you bought an Air.
Correct. There are likely ways to bypass it (the check that locks the disc to the model), but the builds themselves are also specific for the machine.
If you have, say, a 10.6.6 disc from a 2011 MBP, then it is really 10.6.6 (+MBP specific drivers). Those additional changes won't be in a stock OS X build until 10.6.7. So you can't just clone a 10.6.6 from another machine to a 2011 MBP either, it has to be 10.6.7 or later.
Been confirmed that you can install Lion on multiple machines with the up to date program (if you bought your mac before Lion released you get a code to download for free)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1193005/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1193005/