How do you upgrade to OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" from OS X 10.7 "Lion"? Is it possible to upgrade directly from older versions of Mac OS X?

Apple's official instructions to upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) from OS X Lion (10.7) or Snow Leopard (10.6) -- earlier versions of the operating system are not supported -- involves three simple steps.

These steps are just to make sure your Mac meets the system requirements for Mountain Lion, make sure you have the latest version of Lion or Snow Leopard installed and download the OS from Apple's own App Store.

However, before you even think about following the official upgrade steps:

• Backup absolutely everything. Make a "clone" of the internal drive to an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and make an additional backup of individual files that are particularly important to you. If you have the budget to do so, making a second full backup is an excellent idea.
• Verify that the backups were successful. This step is extremely important!
• Confirm that all of your applications -- as well as printers, scanners, and other peripherals -- are compatible with OS X Mountain Lion. If you have expensive software or hardware, or simply aren't interested in replacing software or hardware just to upgrade the OS, you may wish to wait to upgrade at a later date (or not upgrade at all).
• If you use your Mac for important, "mission critical" tasks, it always is a good idea to let others experiment with a new OS and wait until more bug fixes have been released.

After you backup your computer, verify that the backups were successful, check about software and hardware compatibility, and determine whether or not this is a good time for you to install a new operating system, then you are in a good position to safely proceed with Apple's official instructions.

Are there any "hacks" or workarounds to install OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" from a flash drive or DVD? How do you create a bootable copy of OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" for troubleshooting?

The only legal method to obtain Mountain Lion is to purchase it via Apple's App Store. However, once you have purchased the software, the easiest way to create a bootable copy on DVD or a flash drive for backup or troubleshooting is to use the handy Lion DiskMaker application (later renamed DiskMaker X).

Lion DiskMaker is provided as donationware and EveryMac.com strongly encourages you to make a donation should you use it.

What applications are not compatible with OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion"? Can OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" run Mac apps that will work with OS X 10.7 "Lion" or Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard"?

The vast majority of applications that are compatible with OS X Lion (10.7) also should be compatible with OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), although Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) can be an entirely different story.

If you are running OS X Lion, it still is wise to review the official company websites for applications that are important to you, and particularly double check about drivers for peripherals (as printer and scanner drivers and the like often are not updated quickly, if at all, when a new version of an operating system is released). It might also be helpful to review a crowdsourced database of Mountain Lion incompatible apps.

If you are running Snow Leopard, some applications are compatible with Lion and Mountain Lion, but many are not. Perhaps most notably, Mac OS X Lion does not support the "Rosetta" translation engine that Snow Leopard supports. As a result, no PowerPC Mac OS X applications will operate on Lion or Mountain Lion.

Also see:

• Do Mac OS X applications written for the PowerPC processor really not work with OS X Lion or Mountain Lion? How can I tell if a Mac OS X application is written for PowerPC or Intel processors?
• What applications are not compatible with OS X Lion or Mountain Lion? What upgrade or substitute options are available for common incompatible applications?

Can OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" run iPad apps?

No. Although it's possible that the increasing "iOS-ification" of (Mac) OS X may lead to an "iOS X" operating system capable of running iOS apps within OS X (or more likely, running Mac applications within a "Classic Environment" of the iOS), the answer is simply no for now.

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