If you want to perform a clean installation or plan to install Lion on multiple Macs around your house, the easiest way is to just make an OS X Lion installer USB drive or boot DVD.
Swipe left or right to move from one page to another in an app or switch from one full-screen app to another. Tap or pinch to zoom in on text and images. This will update your current 10.6.8 installation to 10.7 and take about 20-40 minutes after downloading it, depending on your hard drive speed. Get Your Free Subscription By Email: Fluid and realistic animations make gestures feel natural and direct. All you have 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 Mac OS X upgrade ever. Test that the backup is bootable and contains all the files as expected.Make a complete backup of your existing hard drive by cloning it to an external hard drive using one of the free tools Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.To force Time Machine to back up manually, right-click the Time Machine drive and select Backup Now.Īlternatively, you can use a modernized approach to the Gruber 4-step method: There are a few different approaches to backing up your data, the easiest way is to just use Time Machine and let it perform a full backup. It is always better to be safe than sorry. The chances of going wrong during the upgrade are low, but that’s not the thing, you need to back up your data. Developers need to update most applications to support Lion, but you can also quickly check for incompatible applications by looking at System Profiler to identify PowerPC applications – these don’t work. You want to make sure Lion supports the apps you depend on. Optional: Run the software update again and obtain the latest Migration Assistant download if you plan to transfer data from your 10.6 Snow Leopard Mac to another Lion-compatible MacĢ) Check application compatibility and update applications.Perform a software update and upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6.8, including the Mac App Store.