MacOS – Is it possible to purchase Lion, without using the Mac App Store *on* a Mac (ie. the app)

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This is a followup, but not a duplicate, of my first question:

Reinstalling a MacBook Pro w/Lion (10.7.2), when previous owner died, can it be done? What do I need?

I have a MacBook Pro, that is going to be given to a new user. The original owner died, so unfortunately I don't have access to his email account, but, the MBP auto-logs on so I'm on the Mac already.

The MBP will be given to the son of the later father, and I have his Apple account details, so I thought I could log on to the Mac App Store with his account, purchase Lion, and then reinstall.

However, in the Mac App Store, the "purchase" button just says "Installed", because of course Lion is installed on the machine already.

So I have a few questions in that regard:

  1. Can I reinstall from the recovery partition already on the machine, use the new users Apple account, and then purchase in the Mac App Store afterwards? Or will the installation stop at some point because that account doesn't own Lion and thus won't activate on this machine?
  2. Can I purchase Lion on the new account somewhere else, through Apple's web site?
  3. Can I trick the Mac App Store to think Lion is not installed, so that I can purchase it? I remember that when I disabled the Spotlight search engine, the app store was a bit confused about what was installed and what was not…
  4. Any other solution?

Best Answer

This only answers on part of the question, you can buy a Lion USB install from the Apple Store although it is more expensive at £55.

Link to USA store (at $69)

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