recently dropped the $19.99 fee for Lion and Mountain Lion, making the older Mac updates free to download, reports Macworld.

Apple 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.

As 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.

Lion is compatible with that have an 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor, a minimum of 2GB RAM, and 7GB storage space.

Mac is compatible with the following Macs:

  • iMac (Mid 2007-2020)
  • MacBook (Late Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
  • Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
  • Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
  • Xserve (Early 2009)

Macs that shipped with X Mavericks or later are not compatible with the installer, however.

The $19.99 fee dates back to when Apple used to charge for Mac updates. Apple began making Mac updates free with the launch of Mavericks, which also marked the shift from big cat names to California landmark names.

Mavericks was free to download, and Apple has not charged for Mac software since then outside of the legacy Lion and Mountain Lion updates. Apple also used to have OS X 10.6 Leopard available for a fee, but it is no longer purchasable.