I'm wanting to upgrade my mac mini from Snow Leopard to Lion but it appears Lion is no longer available from the App store. My mini won't support Mountain Lion. Does anyone know if there is anyway to get Lion anymore?

The only way of which I'm aware to obtain a legal copy of Lion is to buy a thumb drive; I've seen them listed on eBay. (I'll just offer up the usual warning that you use care in deciding from whom you want to buy.)

I've actually been thinking about purchasing a Lion thumb drive for a while, and your post got me back to looking on eBay, where I found this one, which, I note, is priced at only $0.99 more than the original Apple asking price, and which I'm going to purchase as soon as I submit this post.

The same vendor, who is based in the UK, also lists locally, here.

I'll post back with the details of my experience after I've received my media.

Thanks for that reply, I hadn't realised Lion had ever been available on a thumb drive.

Couldn't buy the eBay one as Paypal wouldn't work properly but did find the drives on Amazon too so have ordered one from there.

Will also post back when it comes.

> I hadn't realised Lion had ever been available on a thumb drive.

Apple sold Lion thumb drives because they realized that not everybody had the broad-band accessibility necessary for a 3Gb download.

At the same time, though, they ignored broad-bandless purchasers of Macs with pre-installed Lion who might someday need to do an Internet recovery. (I'm still amazed that they actually suggest that people in that position beg access from friends, relatives, or employers, and that doesn't even consider the fact that iMacs and Mac Pros are not particularly portable.)

And I suppose that the entire non-broadband world upgraded to broad-band sometime between the Lion and Mountain Lion releases, thereby negating the need for ML thumb drives.

I hope we both do well with our purchases.

I'm pleased to report my thumb drive arrived this morning, it installed very easily and I'm now running Lion.

Since ordering I've been led to believe that Apple are withdrawing the thumb drives from sellers so if this is true this may not be available as a way to upgrade for much longer either. Very short-sighted on Apple's part if this is the case as I can't be the only person who hasn't rushed to upgrade until I needed to.

Hope yours isn't far behind and the upgrade goes as smoothly.

I'm happy to hear that you're up and running.

My thumb drive hasn't arrived from the UK yet, and I've decided to not even test it...all I ever intended to do. Having bought it only against a possible future need I'm going to keep it in its sealed factory packaging (and gamble on Apple's quality control) in case the need never arises and I decide to sell it.

> Since ordering I've been led to believe that Apple are withdrawing the thumb drives from sellers so if this is true this may not be available as a way to upgrade for much longer either. Very short-sighted on Apple's part if this is the case as I can't be the only person who hasn't rushed to upgrade until I needed to.

Sellers, hmmm... I guess Apple marketed the thumb drives differently in the UK/Europe/overseas(?) than it did here in the US; Apple was their only seller here, and even authorized Apple resellers had to pay full price for them.

I guess different marketing strategies would account for the wide disparity in price between thumb drives sold by US and European sellers.

Short-sighted, hmmm...

And even if they can and do "withdraw" merchandise from sellers (Apple always discontinues sales of OSs as soon as their successors are released.) there will never be a shortage of resellers of used media.

The issue will first become an issue when Apple releases OS X 10.9 (Mountain Goat?), leaving no Mountain Lion media behind, but that's already being dealt with by sellers of bootleg ML thumb drives. (Short-sighted? Hmmm...)

(Kind of mind-boggling eBay page)

I've just discovered that OS X Lion is still available for d/l from the App Store (in a manner of speaking), and if anybody is interested, here's the eBay listing.

The listing appears to be 100% legit and legal, but I don't get it... I guess Apple is obligated to honor Lion gift certificates that were sold before Mountain Lion was released (and sales of Lion were discontinued), but I don't understand the price, $28.50, which, without even considering included shipping charges, is less than the $29.99 for which Apple originally sold the d/l.

Did Apple actually discount lots of d/l gift certificates, and if they did, was the price so low that somebody could make enough profit on them at $28.50 (minus shipping) to warrant investing the time and effort required to sell them?

Insights gratefully accepted.