Purchase 10.8 Licensing Prior To Release?

[Jayce]

Hi there. I have a general question. Can we purchase 10.8 licensing prior to its release?

The story:

While we are converting away from the Mac platform, the reality is we have a ton of systems still on Mac and we want to keep their software updated as much as possible until they are end of life. Right now they are on 10.5. They are a series of 2009 and 2010 Macbooks. If we purchase licensing to 10.7, we thereby own the right to upgrade to 10.6 and stop there, which is the goal. We want to avoid 10.7 at all costs, since it runs terrible, even on late 2010 Macbook Pro's with a high clock Core 2 Duo with 8gb of RAM. I have heard that 10.8 could be lighter on system resources. Entirely rumor mill, but I'm hoping there's a chance. Otherwise, we're stuck on 10.6 for life.

We'll be doing our re-imaging in June. However, 10.8 won't be out then. If we had 10.8, we could buy the license and hold at 10.6, then later down the road, 10.8 is already paid for and we could upgrade accordingly. See where I'm going with this?

We re-image in June, yet 10.8 is to come out a bit later. As a result, I'm curious if we can purchase 10.8 licensing in bulk before 10.8 is actually released, thereby giving us the right to bump to 10.6, hold there, and sit tight knowing we still have a paid chance at running 10.8 on our machines a year or two down the road.

Is this possible? I know it's an odd circumstance, but the timing is REALLY not on our side.

 

[Arcot]

10.7.2 works fine, is more stable than initial version. I bought my Mac in early 2011 and run 10.7 on it, had no problems. I was worried about the 2GB memory, but it proved to be faster than Snow leopard. And if you are still concerned about 10.7, wait for its next update and go for it.

 

[Jayce]

Problem is, we did try 10.7. Extensively. Core 2 Duo, 8gb RAM, holy Vista. It just doesn't perform well on our machines. The bulk of our machines are 2009/2010 Macbooks, but the few we tested it on were actually 2010 Macbook Pros, which are the newest and most powerful of what we have in our fleet of systems.

In short, 10.7 is a definite no go.

The more I read about this, the more I think it's a bust. I suppose the best option on the table now is to embrace 10.6 as long as we can until we're ready to migrate off the platform. Maybe as we get closer to release date we'll have some more options to consider.