This will update your existing 10.6.8 installation to 10.7 and takes about 20 to 40 minutes after it has been downloaded, depending on the speed of your hard drive. All you need to do is download it from the Mac App Store and launch the installer.ĭownload Mac OS X Lion from the Mac App Store Installing OS X Lion is very easy, in fact it’s probably the easiest major Mac OS X upgrade ever.

Test that the backup is bootable and contains all files as expected.

Do a complete backup of your existing hard drive by cloning it to an external hard drive, using something like the free tool Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.

You can force Time Machine to perform a backup manually just by right-clicking on the Time Machine drive and selecting “Backup Now”.Īlternatively, you can use a modernized approach to Gruber’s 4-step method: There are a few different approaches to data backups, the easiest method is to just use Time Machine and let it run a full backup. It’s always better to be safe than sorry. The likelihood of something going wrong during the upgrade is slim, but that’s not the point, you need to backup your data.

Most apps should be updated by their developers to support Lion, but you can also quickly check for incompatible apps by looking at System Profiler to identify any PowerPC applications – these won’t work. You’ll want to make sure that Lion supports the apps you are dependent on. Optional: Run Software Update again and get the latest “Migration Assistant” download if you plan to transfer data from a 10.6 Snow Leopard Mac to another Lion equipped MacĢ) Check for App Compatibility and Update Apps.Run Software Update and be updated to Mac OS X 10.6.8 including the Mac App Store.You won’t be able to upgrade an existing Mac to Lion without having access to the Mac App Store and 10.6.8: 1) Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6.8 and get the Mac App Store

Recommended Steps for Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7 Lionīefore anything else, verify that your Mac meets the OS X Lion system requirements, which in brief are a Core 2 Duo or higher processor and at least 2GB of RAM.

Bookshelf mac os x 10.7 download