How to: Buy Lion whilst running Lion GM

iTunes, and the Mac App store can be a funny and frustrating place sometimes.. Yes, I understand they need to ‘protect’ less tech savvy people.. However if you are running the pre release Lion Golden Master, perhaps you know what your doing when you attempt to download the released OS X Lion from the app store.

If you try and buy OS X Lion from the AppStore on a mac that’s running OS X Lion Developer Preview the ‘buy’ button will simply say Installed, and you will be unable to purchase it.

That is of course, unless you hold the ‘Alt’ key and click on the lion above the button, it will then change to the expected buy button.

Which takes you to challenge number 2! OS X Lion Golden Master has a higher version number then the one in the app store. Meaning you will get the following window popup:


Now, if you press and hold the Alt key and click the Buy App button it will bypass the version check and Lion will start downloading!

Installing OS X Lion over the Golden Master image may also be a challenge, watch this space for a blog post on how to perform the installation as soon as I have done it!

Mike Hudson

Mike Hudson is a Lead Cyber Security Analyst living and working in Kingston Upon Hull. With extensive experience in Microsoft and Apple technologies, ranging from desktop OS’s to Server OS’s and hardware. By day working as part of an infrastructure team, and by night ridding the world of IT issues through blog posts..

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