Apple.com Now Selling $20 OS X Mountain Lion And Lion Redemption Codes For Older Macs
Apple has begun selling OS X Mountain Lion redemption codes alongside OS X Lion for $20 each. Lion was previously available for purchase directly from Apple over the phone, but the company has decided …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple had already priced Mountain Lion through the Mac App Store at $19.99, while Lion was also distributed on a $69 physical thumb drive. With Mavericks announced as a free download a day earlier, Apple is separating its newest OS offer from a low-cost path to older releases for machines that need them.
First-order effects
- Owners of older Macs gain an Apple.com purchase route for Lion and Mountain Lion redemption codes at $20, rather than relying on Lion's prior phone ordering or physical-media option.
- Apple keeps Lion and Mountain Lion available as paid legacy releases even as its newest OS is offered free.
Second-order effects
- The web-code format reduces the role of AppleCare phone sales and physical USB distribution in fulfilling demand for older OS versions.
- A $20 redemption code puts Lion's legacy-access price near Mountain Lion's earlier Mac App Store price, making media and support-channel convenience less central to the purchase.
Third-order effects
- Apple's OS distribution is moving toward a split model: free upgrades for the newest release, with low-friction paid access to older versions for compatibility-bound Mac owners.
The trend: Desktop operating-system distribution is shifting from boxed or support-mediated sales toward digital upgrades differentiated by release age and hardware compatibility.