Mac OS X Lion coming Real Soon Now (today, or next week …
Apple last week completed work on the next version of its operating system, Mac OS X 10.7, and provided the final code to its developers. Never mind the rgeeks, though – when do us regular Mac users get our hands on Lion?
Possibly, according to one of several rumors, today. iClarified reports that Apple tech support told a customer that 10.7 would be released July 6:
The reader, Marc, had recently purchased a refurbished Mac and hoped to receive a free upgrade.
An Apple Support representative reportedly responded saying, “Vielen Dank fur Ihre Mail. Ich komme leider erst jetzt dazu zu antworten. Einen Anspruch auf ein kostenloses Upgrade haben Sie nicht. Dieses Upgrade konnen Sie fur 23.99 Euro ab dem 06.07.2011 im APP Store erwerben.”
Google translated the response reads, “Thank you for your mail. I am unfortunately only now to respond. Entitled to a free upgrade, you do not have. This upgrade can be purchased for Euro 23.99 from 07/06/2011 in the APP Store.“
Another site, T-Gaap, cites its own sources with more specificity: Look for it at 9 a.m. Pacific time – that’s 11 a.m. CDT for us Houston folk – today.
Other rumors have a July 14 release date, which makes more sense to me. Apple just finished the code last week, and promised Lion sometime in July. The company has plenty of time to do some final testing and, more importantly, make sure its distribution system is working properly, which is particularly important for this release of OS X.
That’s because Lion will only be available online and through the Mac App Store. It’s expected to be more than 4 gigabytes, if the developer builds are any indication of what the final download will look like. The initial rush is almost certain to put a strain on Apple’s servers.
It may also test the patience of Mac users with slower connections. Even on my fast, 16-megabits-a-second Comcast connection, it will take me more than an hour to download it, based on this bandwidth test at DigitalLanding.com. As the resulting chart shows, those with slower speeds can expect quite a wait.
Then there’s the issue of bandwidth caps. While the vast majority of users don’t have to worry about coming near the ceiling of caps imposed by Internet providers – such as Comcast’s 250-GB limit, or AT&T DSL’s 150-GB cap – voracious bandwidth consumers should be aware of their usage before downloading this, particularly those with multiple Macs.
Of course, the only version of OS X that currently offers the App Store is Snow Leopard, which means that only those have the latest release will be able to download Lion. And before they do, they’ll want to make sure they have the latest update, 10.6.8.
If you’re still using Leopard (10.5) and want Lion, you’ll have to buy the Snow Leopard upgrade for $29. Then you’ll pay $29.99 for Lion when it’s unleashed.
And if you have multiple Macs, you can buy Lion once and download it to as many as 5 machines tied to your Apple ID.
There are other steps you’ll want to take in advance. Computerworld has an excellent guide for those who want to upgrade. You may also want to check out a chart at RoaringApps that lists the Lion compatibility status for many popular programs.
If Lion is indeed released today, I’ll update it this post with the news.
Dwight- Your bandwidth caps are listed in MB, not GB.
I think it’s funny that people complain about having to wait an hour or two to download 4GB. 4GB is a TON of data! Versus what, spending 15 minutes driving to the Galleria, 20 minutes parking, 10 minutes getting to the Apple store, 15 minutes waiting in line to purchase a DVD, another 10 minutes drooling over new hardware, 10 minutes back to the car, 15 minutes back home, and 30 minutes after that decompressing from dealing with crowds at the mall and traffic on 610. I’d rather spend 5 minutes clicking a few buttons, and get that time of my life back!
Apple may be able to eliminate piracy to a large extent.
They’ll achieve this by pricing the upgrade low ($29.99), allowing you to install on up to five Macs, and controlling distribution online via your iTunes account. That’s very affordable pricing and pretty effective control of distribution. They’ve said they want a large percentage of their users to upgrade right away.
By doing it this way, they should be able to migrate a high percentage of users on the latest version. Contrast that with Microsoft which has half their user base still running ten year old obsolete Windows XP.
We should start a wagering pool on how long it will take Microsoft to copy this approach.
Less than half are on XP now Dave and I would wager 90% of those are corporate/education computers. A $39.99 download upgrade system would not help corporate adoption, at all, if anything it would hinder it. This distribution method is yet another reason OSX will never catch on in the corporate world.
Microsoft already has a pay to download/upgrade Windows system in place, and it’s been around for a long time. This is essentially the same thing, all the App Store does it download the disk image and run it for you.
1. Purchase and download Lion from the Mac
App Store on any Lion compatible Mac running Snow Leopard.
2. Right click on “Mac OS X Lion” installer and choose the option to “Show Package
Contents.”
3. Inside the Contents folder that appears you will find a SharedSupport folder and
inside the SharedSupport folder you will find the “InstallESD.dmg.” This is the
Lion boot disc image we have all been waiting for.
4. Copy “InstallESD.dmg” to another folder like the Desktop.
5. Launch Disk Utility and click the burn button.
6. Select the copied “InstallESD.dmg” as the image to burn, insert a standard sized
4.7 GB DVD, and wait for your new Lion Boot Disc to come out toasty hot.
With this disc you can boot any Lion compatible Mac, and install 10.7 just like you
installed previous version of Mac OS X. You can even use Disk Utility’s Restore
function to image your Lion boot disc image onto a external drive suitable for
performing a clean install on a optical-drive-less MacBook Air, or Mac mini server.
Clean installs with Lion are easy once you find where Apple has hidden the boot disk.
Thanks.
Oh not at all. I’ve grabbed bigger files, and some close to that size. During the Win7 beta period, I was downloading copies of the 32- and 64-bit versions on a regular basis – the latter approached 4 GB. The download times for those varied greatly of course, though I don’t recall specifics.
I don’t consider the test I ran in this entry to be definitive, just a reference point. What’s more of value is the chart, which shows some relative speeds, rather than the raw numbers themselves.
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