Apple has officially ceased the sale of its last optical disc installers for older operating systems including OS X Lion 10.7 and Mountain Lion 10.8.
The change was spotted by @ClassicII_MrMac on X, formerly Twitter. The era of Apple’s optical discs began to wane with the introduction of OS X Lion in July 2011, which was the first version of macOS to be available exclusively through the Mac App Store. OS X Lion introduced several features like Mission Control, Launchpad, full-screen apps, and significant improvements to Mail and other core apps.
Due to customer demand, Apple briefly reverted to offering physical installation media for Lion and Mountain Lion, primarily to accommodate users with limited internet access or older machines without access to the Mac App Store. Mountain Lion, released in July 2012, followed suit with a focus on digital distribution, introducing features like the Notification Center, AirPlay mirroring, and the Messages app. The first version of macOS to completely forego a physical release was OS X Mavericks (version 10.9), released in October 2013, and the digital update process remains similar to this day.
While the physical install discs are now no more, Apple continues to offer OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion as free digital downloads for those who still need them.
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