> ...neither Lion nor Mountain Lion will be available as an alternative.
Lion will remain an alternative as long as there are in-spec Macs that aren't running it, because there's no shortage of Apple thumb drives on eBay. (And since the price of new ones has dropped to less than Apple's $69 since the Brit from whom I bought mine [for $70] flooded the market, now is probably a good time to buy.)
As for Mt. Lion, though, I wonder what Apple has got against late-upgraders all of a sudden?
