With today’s release of OS X Mountain Lion as a digital download in the Mac App Store, it appears that Apple has also made the choice of hiding Mac OS X Lion from the public's grasp so that users will have difficulty finding the older operating system from the Mac App Store.
Currently, the Mac OS X Lion installer cannot be found in the Mac App Store by using the search bar. Users also will not find the application from their purchased tab, which keeps a history of every application you have ever downloaded and allows you to re-download these applications at no cost. So how exactly does a user get a copy of Mac OS X Lion to restore their older Mac in time of emergency?
Users that purchased Mac OS X Lion when it was in the Mac App Store were expected to keep backups of the operating system so they could use it for emergencies, however not everyone did. This could potentially come as an issue for people who own older Mac computers that aren’t capable of running the OS X Mountain Lion update, but are able to use Mac OS X Lion. It also comes as a problem for people that aren't satisfied with OS X Mountain Lion and want to return to Mac OS X Lion.
As Macworld points out, users that click on the purchased tab in the Mac App Store can hold down the Option key as they click on the tab and all hidden downloads will appear – including Mac OS X Lion. This is similar to how Apple hid the library folder from us in Mac OS X Lion and holding the Option key when clicking the “Go” button in the Menu Bar would show it. While the hidden feature is a good fail-safe for the time being, it's an issue because the Option key trick is not a well-known feature among users.
As long as the user uses this method to uncover the hidden download, the user can download the installer for the older operating system without any problems. It is also highly recommended that the user backs up the file they download because it’s not known if Apple will remove this feature in the future to help direct users toward OS X Mountain Lion, but it sure wouldn’t be a good idea since so many people with older Mac computers rely on it. For anyone that doesn’t own Mac OS X Lion already, there is currently no way to get Mac OS X Lion from the Mac App Store at this point in time.
Sources: Macworld
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