Apple also used to have OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard available for a fee, but it is no longer purchasable. Fortunately, A1181 MacBooks have an extremely easy RAM and hard drive replacement if necessary. I am not saying it couldnt happen but most of the time when a machine stops booting out of the blue it is a hardware issue. Mavericks was free to download, and Apple has not charged for Mac software since then outside of the legacy Lion and Mountain Lion updates. OS X does not get corrupted easily and neither does modern versions of Windows. You are still able to use one of these Macs today but youll need. Apple began making Mac updates free with the launch of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, which also marked the shift from big cat names to California landmark names. 159 subscribers The MacBook A1181 is a pretty old laptop by todays standards being dropped for official support by Apple in 2016. The $19.99 fee dates back to when Apple used to charge for Mac updates. Macs that shipped with Mac OS X Mavericks or later are not compatible with the installer, however. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer).Mac OS X Mountain Lion is compatible with the following Macs:

Starting up the MacBook holding down the Cmd key, or Cmd+R doesn't work. Would like to install a later one but not sure that's possible. it's currently running Snow Leopard, 10.6.8. Would like to just wipe the memory and reinstall OS X. Mac OS X Lion is compatible with Macs that have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor, a minimum of 2GB RAM, and 7GB storage space. Reformat MacBook model A1181 from 2007 hi guys, just rediscovered I own the above. Apple recently dropped the $19.99 fee for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, making the older Mac updates free to download, reports Macworld.Īpple has kept OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion available for customers who have machines limited to the older software, but until recently, Apple was charging $19.99 to get download codes for the updates.Īs of last week, these updates no longer require a fee, and can be downloaded from the OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion support documents on Apple's website. The model seems too old for Internet recovery ( A1181 Core Duo, not C2D) and DIY recovery tool on Apples site says the Mac must have a 'recovery hd', which I assume I dont have since the HDD is blank.

Mac a1181 os