Mac OSX Mountain Lion

I need to know if the Mountain Lion Operating System can be downloaded as a disk image so I can do a Clean install on a new hard drive.

If anyone can send me a link to this I have no problem whatsoever in paying for it.

Thank you all in advance for what ever you can provide me

Dev

The download from the App Store contains the necessary image.
Egg Freckles | Installing Mountain Lion Clean

Greets Ivan,
Been there done that, There is no direct link to download the Mountain Lion Image file.

This is getting quite frustrating!!!
is there anything else you can provide like maybe a direct download link to the OS?

Thank You
Dev

Why does a direct download matter? Literally the image file you want is in the download. I sent you a link with step by step instructions on how to make your own boot disk from the download. Follow it and you will have a bootable USB or DVD disk. I have personally done this and it works fine.

EDIT: The answer is no - there is no direct download of an iso or image file for Mountain Lion - you have to dig for it in the installer file.

Ok, understood, and the only reason a direct download would matter for me is that I am doing this from a PC not a MAC. I guess I will just borrow my buddies MAC and download it your way.

Dont get me wrong, it is not that I dont appreciate your efforts, it is just in the past there was always a way to purchase a download from the Apple store without having to use a MAC.

Thank you once again and I will not bother you anymore
Dev

If you don't have a Mac, why are you downloading OS X?

Now to finish up answering your question. I am working on an Orple MacBook Pro that has Snow Leopard currently installed on it, My customer wants to upgrade his hard drive to a larger unit, and I did not really feel like doing double work with an UpStall of Mountain lion on that drive then SuperDuper ng it to the new drive and what not. As he wants to erase the entire drive and start clean. That will not happen if I do an upgrade to his existing drive, disk image a backup to the new drive using it as an external then installing the drive into his Orple Mac Book Pro. If you are wondering what and Orple is, since Intel began supplying processors for the Mac's and they can now semi natively run Windows Orple is a word I derived from Oranges (PC-Intel) Ple is for (Mac OSX aka Darwin Unix) hence you have an Orple.

I did contact Apple care not to check up on your advise which by the way was down to the letter correct however they did say I would be able to take the download and make a USB or DVD image for backup purposes. But you are absolutely correct there is NO direct download for Mountain Lion and Apple will not even provide for a charge the OS on a USB stick as they did with Lion.

Thank you once again for your efforts, you are truly a lot more knowledgeable with this than I am, Although I learned on an old Mac 512 Stacker, and being in an office environment I kinda had to slide over to the PC side of the house for 20 years until I retired and started up HomeBrew.

Dev

I removed your business info - that's getting awfully close to spam.

If the customer simply wants a larger hard drive, it would be best to simply pop the new drive in, install Snow Leopard on it, upgrade it to 10.6.6 (if I remember correctly, this is the minimum update required for the App Store) and then use that to download Mountain Lion. You could also use the current SL install to download ML, create a disk image for the installation, pop the new drive in and install ML on that.

Sorry about the Biz name, no offense ment nor spam intended.

I was just trying to get the point across as to your question why I wanted to do what I was asking.
I got the exact same answer from the Apple Care support department.
So thank you all and this will be a rap

Dev

Careful - the Mountain Lion download is tied to an Apple ID. I am not sure of the ramifications of downloading "with a buddie's computer" and trying to load onto a different Mac - that isn't using the same Apple ID that you bought Mountain Lion with.

You do not have to do a super duper clone of the drive. What you do is download the installer. Dig out the img file. Put it onto a bootable media. Pull the old drive - put in the new drive - then install from the bootable media. It is a clean install.

I have done this with a MBP - I pulled a 500GB drive, put a 750GB hard drive in - then clean installed Montain Lion off of a USB key. I am giving the warning because I then signed in with my Apple ID and the install thought I had all these programs from the App Store installed (even though I didn't) I had to do a restore to get all my app store apps back and correctly installed.

TL ; DR - use the right apple id - buy it from the computer you are going to clean install, make the boot disk, swap hard drives - install away.

IvanLasston makes a good point. If this is for a consumer, use their Apple ID. In this case, the ML installation will be tied to their Apple account.

Good point, but what if I want it for a backup, anyways I found it thru another source in a .dmg file

Should the 'other source' be a pirate version, be very careful using it as that is an excellent way to bring malware onto the MacBook.

harryb2448 said:

Should the 'other source' be a pirate version, be very careful using it as that is an excellent way to bring malware onto the MacBook.

Click to expand...

It totally sucks, the download did not come down clean, would not unrar. so back to square one
but if I do find a copy of it or if I make my own I would be glad to give you my server access (read only of course) so you can down it if your serious and your above comment was not a sarcastic one which I believe it was not. No it was not a pirate version, a friend of mine did the Mnt Lion update then made his own install disk of it. and it worked for him that is the history of this file

Let me know or I can let you know
my email is [email protected]

webdevii said:

No it was not a pirate version, a friend of mine did the Mnt Lion update then made his own install disk of it. and it worked for him that is the history of this file

Click to expand...

Distributing commercial software and using that which you did not pay for yourself - that's the definition of piracy.

It will only ever work for him. And it was a serious comment not sarcastic at all. Lion and Mountain Lion are tied to the purchaser through Apple ID and is not transferable. You need to create your own Apple ID and download that way. You will have to have OS X.6.8 at least installed to access the App Store.

vansmith said:

Distributing commercial software and using that which you did not pay for yourself - that's the definition of piracy.

Click to expand...

I respect your answer but how can a free update be piracy?, I do not see a charge screen when I do the Mountain Lion update? as you can not buy Mountain Lion! Therefore it is not piracy. Now if I downloaded Lion from a torrent or what not without paying for it, that would constitute piracy. which by the way I do have the receipt I would be happy to upload to you to prove I purchased Lion roughly a year ago or when ever it first came out for $29.00

Dev

webdevii said:

I respect your answer but how can a free update be piracy?, I do not see a charge screen when I do the Mountain Lion update? as you can not buy Mountain Lion! Therefore it is not piracy. Now if I downloaded Lion from a torrent or what not without paying for it, that would constitute piracy. which by the way I do have the receipt I would be happy to upload to you to prove I purchased Lion roughly a year ago or when ever it first came out for $29.00

Dev

Click to expand...

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!

Going from Lion (OS 10.7) to Mountain Lion (OS 10.8) is NOT a free update. Mountain Lion can only be legally obtained from the Mac App Store for $19.99:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-mountain-lion/id537386512?mt=12

Do you see the $19.99 price for Mountain Lion in the link??…this means that it is NOT a free update…it is a paid for upgrade!

- Nick

p.s. The only way Mountain Lion would be free…is if someone purchased a computer at the same time that Mountain Lion was released this past Summer (July). These folks were the only ones entitled to a free Mountain Lion update. All the rest of us had to pay for it.

Piracy

vansmith said:

Distributing commercial software and using that which you did not pay for yourself - that's the definition of piracy.

Click to expand...

So I am interpreting this as I can not install this software on the purchaser's machine because he does not know how. If that is your case then every shop in the United States is pirating.
so WRONG WRONG WRONG BACK AT YA!!!!!
End of conversation
Dev

webdevii said:

So I am interpreting this as I can not install this software on the purchaser's machine because he does not know how. If that is your case then every shop in the United States is pirating.
so WRONG WRONG WRONG BACK AT YA!!!!!
End of conversation
Dev

Click to expand...

That's not even close to what I said. You said that a friend gave you a copy of ML which is not allowed. If the individual you are helping paid for it and you simply helped install it, there would be no piracy. The two situations are worlds apart.