How to license a copy of Mountain Liond to a Mac instead of an Apple ID.

sswats · 8 May 2013 at 15:04

I have a few macs I want to sell that originally came with leopard/snow leopard.

I've been asked to install Mountain Lion. I can't use my own personal Apple ID to install ML on these systems because if the people I sell it to attempt a system recovery it will ask them for their Apple ID which will not work unless they had bought it off the app store.

On newer systems a recovery will automatically pick up the license from the computer and install OSX over the net, so is there a way to license older Macs to have Mountain Lion in the same way?

I know i can get them to buy the license then install for them, but just looking for an easier way to have the computer ready to go.

VaderDSL · 8 May 2013 at 15:06

Don't think so, best bet is stick 10.6.8 back on there and advise the person who buys it if they want to upgrade, all they have to do it purchase 10.8 via App Store. Ultimately at some point the new owner will have to buy it, the license is tied to your Apple ID as you say, not the machine.

FreeStream · 9 May 2013 at 16:53

Having installed ML from the image on a usb stick trick i'm fairly confident that my login details are nowhere to be found.

Upgrade, yes. Clean wipe? No.

slinxy · 10 May 2013 at 06:33

The ML install creates a recovery partition on the hdd, all the user needs to do is to hold down the Alt key and select that to boot or the R key to boot directly from it. I'll not done it myself, but during the installing of ML on replacement hdds and completely wiped systems, it clearly shows that it creates a recovery partition then it reboots to it then reimages the machine.

When installing from a USB, it doesn't ask for your apple ID.

The only other thing is Internet recovery mode, but any system with that option would be so new it would already have ML as the factory install.