Made possible by Apple disc-free policies

The introduction of new Macs with Lion pre-installed is allowing some people to upgrade older Macs to iLife '11 at no cost, according to reports. The starting point is Apple disc-free reinstallation policy for Lion components. The Mac App Store recognizes a computer's iLife licenses, which are linked to a person's Apple ID during initial setup.

As long as any other Macs are linked to the same Apple ID, they should suddenly be allowed to download iLife '11 with no extra costs involved. There are otherwise only two catches: target Macs must have at least Mac OS X 10.6.6 installed, to view the Mac App Store, and downloads include only new versions of iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand, not iWeb and iDVD. While included with boxed copies of iLife '11, iWeb and iDVD have not been updated since iLife '09.

by MacNN Staff