Apple makes OS X Lion and Mountain Lion available for free

Apple has made installers for OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion available at no cost. Until now, the upgrades cost $20, but that price has been dropped. The operating systems only run on Macs with Intel processors.

The installers can be found on Apple’s site, MacWelt noted. The operating systems are also available in the shop for a fee, but the dmg files are public on Apple’s site. After Mountain Lion, Apple stopped selling paid operating system upgrades. Since then, upgrades have been available free of charge.

Apple has so far not responded to the question of why the operating systems are now available for free. With 10.9 Mavericks, Apple stopped paying for upgrades to new versions. Upgrades for iPhones have always been free, while in the early days Apple did charge a fee for upgrades to the iPod touch, which also ran iPhone OS.