Follow Gregg on Twitter at or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. The Mac App Store download will be priced at $29.99. Lion requires a Mac with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 or Xeon processor 2GB of memory and Snow Leopard. In fact, since 2005's Tiger, aka Mac OS X 10.4, Apple has issued operating system upgrades only on a Friday.Ī wild card in this edition of Apple's release game is that Lion will be distributed only as a digital download through the Mac App Store, giving the company more flexibility when it ships the product because it does not need to duplicate physical media, package the product and deliver it to brick-and-mortar stores.Īpple provided a 'gold master' build of Lion - the label some developers use for software that has been completed and presumably is ready to ship - on July 1, and has not seeded them with another version since. The latest incarnation trickles in a few new features. 28, 2009, while Leopard hit the shelves Friday, Oct. I used to love Apple Mail but it’s begun to stagnate with the last few versions of OS X (Mail is free with OS X Mavericks).
In any case, Apple has historically preferred Fridays to launch its operating systems.įor example, Snow Leopard went on sale Friday, Aug.
