Apple announces Lion downloads top 1 million in first day
Apple on Thursday announced that downloads of Lion, its latest upgrade to the Mac OS X operating system, exceeded one million in its first day of availability on the Mac App Store.
Those numbers put Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X, off to the fastest start of any operating system in Apple history.
"Lion is off to a great start, user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic," said Philip Schiller, Apple?s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Lion is a huge step forward, it?s not only packed with innovative features but it?s incredibly easy for users to update their Macs to the best OS we?ve ever made."
The performances of Apple's operating system releases continue to improve over the years, with this week's launch of Lion representing a new personal best for Apple. In 2009, the debut of Snow Leopard doubled the efforts of its predecessor, Leopard. Like Snow Leopard, Lion carries a low $29.99 upgrade price.
Lion launched on Wednesday and is available exclusively through the Mac App Store for $29.99. It is the first operating system that Apple has not offered on any sort of physical medium, as users can only download it with an Apple ID account, though it will become available on a USB thumb drive for $69 in August.
Lion boasts more than 250 new features, including new Multi-Touch gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control to view everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store; Launchpad, an iPad-like home screen for apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app. Other major features include:
Resume: brings apps back exactly how they were left when restarting a Mac or quitting and relaunching an app
Auto Save: automatically and continuously saves documents as you work
Versions: automatically records the history of a document as it is created, and gives an easy way to browse, revert and even copy and paste from previous versions;
AirDrop: finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy.
Initial impressions from the mainstream media have been extremely positive, with tech journalists at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today giving the latest version of Mac OS X high marks.
Those numbers put Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X, off to the fastest start of any operating system in Apple history.
"Lion is off to a great start, user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic," said Philip Schiller, Apple?s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Lion is a huge step forward, it?s not only packed with innovative features but it?s incredibly easy for users to update their Macs to the best OS we?ve ever made."
The performances of Apple's operating system releases continue to improve over the years, with this week's launch of Lion representing a new personal best for Apple. In 2009, the debut of Snow Leopard doubled the efforts of its predecessor, Leopard. Like Snow Leopard, Lion carries a low $29.99 upgrade price.
Lion launched on Wednesday and is available exclusively through the Mac App Store for $29.99. It is the first operating system that Apple has not offered on any sort of physical medium, as users can only download it with an Apple ID account, though it will become available on a USB thumb drive for $69 in August.
Lion boasts more than 250 new features, including new Multi-Touch gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control to view everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store; Launchpad, an iPad-like home screen for apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app. Other major features include:
Resume: brings apps back exactly how they were left when restarting a Mac or quitting and relaunching an app
Auto Save: automatically and continuously saves documents as you work
Versions: automatically records the history of a document as it is created, and gives an easy way to browse, revert and even copy and paste from previous versions;
AirDrop: finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy.
Initial impressions from the mainstream media have been extremely positive, with tech journalists at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today giving the latest version of Mac OS X high marks.
Comments
I will be putting mine onto 4 systems in my house.
Apple on Thursday announced that downloads of Lion, its latest upgrade to the Mac OS X operating system, exceeded one million in its first day of availability on the Mac App Store.[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ][/c]
That's $30 million and way more than a million installs counting people with multiple Macs and idiot pirates, so that's neat.
My house is looking more and more like an apple retail store.
You probably don't need to worry until you start trying to purchase sphere chairs.
I've been waiting for almost an hour and the download icon still says "waiting" for the download to start. From what I'm reading, it'll be worth the wait.
This is why massive distributions like these would have been better using bittorrent or some other P2P system.
There may be those who have little choice but to turn to unofficial sources if they do not have the internet bandwidthh.
The upgrade on a couple of my systems actually cost me a bit more than the purchase price of the OS since I had to add rAm to a couple to get them to 4GB for the installer to be happy.
Now if they could figure out a way for Flash Content in a browser to stop burning 100% of a CPU even after the content has stopped playing. aMakes me wonder if anyone at Adobe even uses a Mac when they claim there is no issue with their software.
maybe I *should* re-donwload it for each machine I will install it on - of course those with slow or capped internet may not be able to do so.
I will be putting mine onto 4 systems in my house.
that's laborious! I would copy it onto an external drive or thumb drive and install on each machine that way. Much quicker than waiting on a download for each machine. And heck if your up to it create a bootable thumb drive out of it for down the road use.
that's laborious! I would copy it onto an external drive or thumb drive and install on each machine that way. Much quicker than waiting on a download for each machine. And heck if your up to it create a bootable thumb drive out of it for down the road use.
I copied it from one machine to another via network drive and saved a copy on USB - just saying that for the extra 30 minutes of download time I could help Apple have a more accurate measure of the install base.
There may be those who have little choice but to turn to unofficial sources if they do not have the internet bandwidth.
Oh, that's abject nonsense. How is stealing the OS somehow better for slower bandwidth users than waiting the exact same amount of time to download it legitimately from the App Store?
Surely that's some sort of record.
You probably don't need to worry until you start trying to purchase sphere chairs.
Or have someone camped outside your house a week before the iPhone 5 is released!...
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Fabulous OS. Installed with ZERO problems on 3 Macs. After using it for all yesterday I fired up my Win 7 Dell and boy did it seem ancient.
What did you install it on? I have a 2006 white iMac so I might be borderline on performance... maybe... time for an upgrade...
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Air Drop is worth the $30 alone in my opinion.
What did you install it on? I have a 2006 white iMac so I might be borderline on performance... maybe... time for an upgrade...
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I installed it on a 2007 Macbook Pro with 4gig of RAM, a 2011 iMac with 12Gb of RAM and a 2007 Mac Pro with 12 Gb of RAM.
What did you install it on? I have a 2006 white iMac so I might be borderline on performance... maybe... time for an upgrade...
Early 2006, it can't be done.
Late 2006 should work fine.
I understand Apple not wanting to carry legacy code any longer than necessary but why it can't be made available as a separate download is beyond me.
I understand Apple not wanting to carry legacy code any longer than necessary but why it can't be made available as a separate download is beyond me.
Then you don't understand Apple not wanting to carry legacy code any longer.
Having a "download" for it defeats the purpose entirely.
It's six year old software. Minimum. Surely there are alternatives.