Mac OS X Lion Set for July Debut Priced at $29.99, Mac App Store Exclusive

[MacRumors]

Mac OS X has been around for 10 years now, built on a solid UNIX foundation. Phil Schiller said in the keynote that OS X has "evolved", and is great "not because of hardware, but because of software."

Apple today showed off ten of the 250 new features in Mac OS X Lion, revisiting some of the features that had been highlighted previously and showing off some that are brand new. Some of the new features include Windows Migration Assistant, a new version of FileVault, built-in FaceTime and more. Mac OS X Lion Server isn't a totally separate installation, just additional apps that can be run on top of Lion.

Lion will be priced at $29.99 and available only on the Mac App Store as a 4 GB download, allowing users to pay once and install it on all of their machines, just like all Mac App Store apps. Apple did not announce specific release date for Mac OS X Lion, but narrow down the launch window to the month of July.Â*Customers who purchase a Mac between today and the Lion launch in July will get the upgrade free from the App Store.





"New" features, most of which we have seen before -- but Apple feels they are important enough to demo:

1. Multi-touch gestures, very similar to iOS: Taken everything they've learned from iOS and applying that to Lion. Swipe, pinch, etc. Scrollbars disappear when not in use.

2. Full Screen Applications: "Really important for notebooks." Lion has a standard method for full screen apps. A swipe gesture allows you to get back to the desktop, and users can have more than one full screen app running at once, with a swipe gesture to switch between them.

3. Mission Control: The "best feature of Lion" according to Phil Schiller, is a combination of Spaces, Expose and an App Switcher. Spaces are managed through Mission Control, allowing them to be deleted and added on the fly.

4. Enhanced Photo Booth: This is a big feature for the teen crowd. Head into any Apple Store on a Friday or Saturday evening and you'll see many teenagers playing with Photo Booth and uploading pictures to Facebook. The new and improved Photo Booth can follow your face and make "targeted facial enhancements", such as making just your eyes huge.

5. Mac App Store: In the past 6 months, the Mac App Store has become the #1 software channel for Mac applications. Some developers have more than doubled their revenue by offering their software in the Mac App Store. New additions to the App Store in Lion will be in-app purchases, push notifications and application sandboxing for increased security.

6. Launchpad: Imagine the iOS home screen, with rows of app icons, on a Mac. That's Launchpad. It will make finding and organizing apps much, much easier for the average user (think, your Mom). You can even make folders, yet another iOS feature) within Launchpad. It's initiated by a gesture.

7. Resume: Instantly resume where you were in an application when you quit it -- just like iOS. There seems to be a trend popping up here. Works system wide, when you reboot, all of your windows and apps return how they were. Lion auto-saves everything. It makes for easy versioning, and reverting to past changes, much like Time Machine does now, but on a file-by-file basis. Every change is logged -- though it only stores the difference between revisions, making it very space efficient.

8. AirDrop: A new document sharing method. Lion will find other users running AirDrop and display all the machines it can see in the Finder. Sending files is as easy as dragging and dropping an icon on the AirDrop logo. The recipient gets a prompt, confirms they want the file, and it downloads to their computer. It sounds simple, but it should be very handy. BOOM.

9. Mail: Mail has been completely redesigned, with lots of inspiration from the iPad Mail client. Search looks much more intelligent, and there is a new conversation view apparently inspired by Gmail.

Article Link: Mac OS X Lion Set for July Debut Priced at $29.99, Mac App Store Exclusive

[Eidorian]

DVD or bust. Maybe even just removable physical media...

[mrkramer]

That's too bad, I wish it was available on a disk, my internet is too slow to buy it. By thie time I finish downloading a 4Gb file 10.8 will probaly be out. I wish Apple would give us options it would be cool if you could buy it from the app store or on some sort of physical media.

[Alexjungle]

Originally Posted by Eidorian

DVD or bust. Maybe even just removable physical media...

Do you even have a mac?

[moseleyite]

I guess I'm lucky and can download this. I can quite understand those on slow internet connections being annoyed though. Perhaps a version too early.

A UK price of £20-25 (I guess) for both my Macs? Count me in!

Edit - thinking about it £30 is probably more like it but even so... much cheaper than expected.

[Eorlas]

So if you want to format and install lion you have to install SL, update to get mac app store version, and then download Lion...

Sounds like it'll be as long as installing w7 if you ask me.

[cxny]

Well the price is right, goodbye $129.00 w/the $199.00 "family" option!

[Žalgiris]

Originally Posted by Eidorian

DVD or bust. Maybe even just removable physical media...

Wake up.

[adztaylor]

Originally Posted by moseleyite

I guess I'm lucky and can download this. I can quite understand those on slow internet connections being annoyed though. Perhaps a version too early.

A UK price of £20-25 (I guess) for both my Macs? Count me in!

Edit - thinking about it £30 is probably more like it but even so... much cheaper than expected.

Confirmed at £20.99, great deal

[chenks]

my question is... if after i purchase Lion, what if i want to wipe my mac and install from scratch?

do i have to install 10.6 from DVD first and then upgrade to 10.7 via appstore? if yes then that is insane.

[GeekLawyer]

Great pricing, but I'm shocked the option to buy it on DVD (or other physical media) is gone. Thought we were some years from that reality...

[(marc)]

DVD or the Mac has died for me.

[Fraaaa]

Instead on going to the shop to buy Lion DVD, you can go to the Apple store and use the WiFi to download it.

[MasterHowl]

I will not sleep until this is out. I am so excited.

wrekhgnadf.nbkfgndg`fhnfhxgnhdfgx

[KALLT]

A bit of an anti-climax preview today. These are all features we already knew, not even marginally changed. Launchpad for example still seems to be clunky. I was hoping we would see some exciting new stuff. At least the pricing seems to be reasonable, although I'm having second thoughts on the limited distribution.

The real bummer for me is that we still haven't seen any sign of iWork ’11. I was really looking forward to that.

[Eidorian]

Originally Posted by Alexjungle

Do you even have a mac?

I do. Why do you ask?

Originally Posted by Žalgiris

Wake up.

I honestly do not want to use the App Store or be tied to an account.

[OmegaRed1723]

Honestly, how will this work? We have 5 Macs in our home. Apple is telling me we have to waste 20GB of bandwidth (Comcast data cap here) to update all our machines? The idea of downloading the same thing over and over again really irks me. I'd much rather download it once, and create a bootable USB stick or DVD. And, as others have mentioned, how will we perform clean installs should the need arise (new HDD, fresh start, etc)? Will I have to install 10.6 only to have to re-download the 4GB Lion? This is bogus.

[RafaelT]

Awesome price... better give us a way to burn a copy though.

[3N16MA]

Would have liked to see some more new features announced however what was shown looks great. $29.99 price point looks like the standard now which is nice but digital distribution only is odd.

[moseleyite]

Originally Posted by adztaylor

Confirmed at £20.99, great deal

Well, I'll be... 21 quid? For both my Macs? I'm in!

Any ideas on download size yet?

[elschus]

I wonder if this will affect the up-to-date program Apple has run in the past on new Macs...

[adztaylor]

Originally Posted by moseleyite

Well, I'll be... 21 quid? For both my Macs? I'm in!

Any ideas on download size yet?

4GB I've heard.

[dukebound85]

Originally Posted by Eidorian

I do. Why do you ask?

Yea, I am curious why he asked too...

I wish they had a dvd option.

Originally Posted by OmegaRed1723

Honestly, how will this work? We have 5 Macs in our home. Apple is telling me we have to waste 20GB of bandwidth (Comcast data cap here) to update all our machines? The idea of downloading the same thing over and over again really irks me. I'd much rather download it once, and create a bootable USB stick or DVD. And, as others have mentioned, how will we perform clean installs should the need arise (new HDD, fresh start, etc)? Will I have to install 10.6 only to have to re-download the 4GB Lion? This is bogus.

I believe so, unless all the computers you update have the same appleid

[Discoverer]

Apple is genius. Now, if you want the next version of the Mac OS, you have to register an Apple ID, which may encourage you to buy more things in the App Store and iTunes music store in the future.

Want a clean install? Buy a new Mac!

[milo]

I'm surprised there's no DVD option, but it doesn't bother me as long as it's easy to create either a bootable DVD or bootable volume (secondary drive or USB thumb drive).

Apple just needs to give more info on this, the big concern is if your boot drive crashes. I assume they have a solution figured out, they just need to let everyone know what that is to quiet down the worriers.

The price is fantastic, and looks like some great features. Heck, it's worth thirty bucks to me just to get Resume.