back to article Apple serves 3m Mountain Lions in four days

Three million copies of Mac OS X Mountain Lion have been downloaded in the four days following its release on Wednesday, 25 July, Apple said today. That makes the Hillside Cat the "most successful OS X release in Apple's history", the Cupertino crew chirped. Don't forget that downloads doesn't equal buyers. A fair few folk, …

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  1. Tom7
    Coat

    Well, blow me down with a feather

    There is a long tail after all!

    1. LarsG
      Meh

      Now that's

      Now that's what's call an update, yet I had to wait 8 months for ICS.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Cost

        How much is it to upgrade windows? Hmmmm.

  2. Martin 63
    Meh

    14 quid??

    Almost begs me to get my last apple out of the attic. A solidly builty bit of kit. I seem to remember the last windows upgrage costing more for me. Of course the jellybean upgrade was also cheaper. Im guessing it will cost me a packet to upgrade my last Mac hardware to this though.

    1. Fuzz

      Re: 14 quid??

      If your mac is old enough to have been relegated to the attic then I'm guessing it won't run this latest update.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 14 quid??

      Yeah, I bet you could tell the difference between your last version of Windows and the version you upgraded to. A friend of mine upgraded and I asked about the new features, he said "well, there is new wallpaper".

      1. Andrew Baines Silver badge
        FAIL

        New version of Windows?

        Um, so what's he struggling with? The difference between Vista and 7? XP & 7?

        Sounds a bit thick to me.

    3. Toothpick
      Pint

      Re: 14 quid??

      plus about a quid calling the Apple helpline. ML upgrade screwed up one of my email accounts.

      10/10 for the helpline though as they fixed the issue.

  3. Ian 62

    Upgrade....PATH

    As I just found out. This isnt a 'new' install. As the lad in the t-shirt told me instore 'We havent sold our operating systems for years'.

    You need to be on at least Snow Leopard to get this. Its a digital download.

    When I asked how do I get to Snow Leopard? I was told... Go get it on eBay.

    Yes. eBay. I thought he was joking.

    So I believe if you're on legacy hardware...

    1) Check you meet the requirements (thats Intel and 64bit bootable plus some other details)

    2) Your on at least 10.6

    3) Then I think, pay for 10.7, then pay for 10.8

    So my 2009 MacBook Al (2.4Ghz C2D)

    Will, if i do the full set, cost about £80 to get to Mountain Lion.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Upgrade....PATH

      The need to cycle through the OSes is a pain in the arse. I don't see why they can't let me buy it using a system on a required version and then perform a clean install with it copied to a disc or USB stick. It's such a pain in the arse to install 10.6 (as that's the disc I have), then update away to get to the desired version. A fresh install is so much cleaner and less complicated - never do an in-place update as it goes bandy after a while as my last one did.

    2. mrh2

      Re: Upgrade....PATH

      >> As the lad in the t-shirt told me instore 'We havent sold our operating systems for years'.

      One of you is mistaken. Apple sold Snow Leopard on CD from their retail stores, Lion was the first to be available as a download and even then a US key drive was available.

      >> When I asked how do I get to Snow Leopard? I was told... Go get it on eBay.

      Apple offered all MobileMe users a free Snow Leopard CD a couple of months ago to ease their migration to iCloud - maybe worth rechecking your mailbox to see if you can snag a copy? Also the Genius bar are generally quite good at helping people upgrade if they're going to buy the latest version, indeed customers can even ask the store to do the upgrade if they lack a sufficiently fast broadband connection.

    3. E Haines

      Re: Upgrade....PATH

      > 3) Then I think, pay for 10.7, then pay for 10.8

      No. Just 10.8; you skip over 10.7.

    4. James 47

      Re: Upgrade....PATH

      I bought the Snow Leopard retail DVD from the App Store a few weeks ago. Works really well on a hacked VMWare Player. Downloading Mountain Lion now.

    5. horse of a different colour
      Mushroom

      Re: Upgrade....PATH

      Laggard user in upgrade price SHOCKAHH

      1. Ian 62

        Re: Upgrade....PATH

        It wasnt so much the price...Simply pointing out its not 14quid for the 'whole' install.

        I was objecting to the fact that the store wouldnt sell me what I need to get to do the upgrade.

        Which seemed bizarre.

    6. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Re: Upgrade....PATH

      It's sold through the App Store, no App Store on your Mac no download.

      Once you have the installer you can burn the DMG inside it onto an SD card or USB stick.

    7. Tom Samplonius
      Stop

      Re: Upgrade....PATH

      "When I asked how do I get to Snow Leopard? I was told... Go get it on eBay."

      Any system capable of running 10.8 probably probably included 10.6 already.

      "So my 2009 MacBook Al (2.4Ghz C2D)"

      And it should have included 10.6, as 10.6 was released August 2009. If not, it probably included an free upgrade coupon.

  4. Andrew Baines Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Sophos Bulletin

    Today's security update from Sophos highlighted an interesting problem - to use the new speech recognition stuff, you have to allow it to upload all your contacts - to improve service of course.

    Guess I'll stick with Windows ;)

    1. toadwarrior

      Re: Sophos Bulletin

      Better to stick with the insecurities you know, eh?

      1. Andrew Baines Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: Sophos Bulletin

        Security I can manage easy enough.

        Privacy is my choice with Windows.

        1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

          Re: Sophos Bulletin

          Privacy is your choice with OSX too - I actually tracked the whole installation to see where privacy risks occurred.

          At no point does OSX enable anything that could have consequences for your privacy without telling you what it does. It will not enable dictation without telling you that it will be shipping your data and contacts to Apple (I must admit that the shipping of contacts prevented me from even trying - I just wanted to try dictation), and it doesn't try to ram iCloud down your throat either. It's there, but no hard sell tactics.

          However, it is by default quite a bit safer than 10.7 which was no slough in itself, but by default it throws out Java (had to re-install it as I run LibreOffice and FreeMind, but kept it out of the browsers) and Gatekeeper does its job.

          If privacy is of interest to you I'd recommend you reconsider your platform. On OSX, a virus checker has to do a lot less work than on Windows. Same on Linux, but then you'll have to spend some more time managing the platform (once i's stable it's OK, but setting it up is IMHO a pain in comparison with OSX).

  5. Martin 63
    Happy

    @ Fuzz

    You are right. The hardware is really old. The last of the PPC desktops, which is about when I decided to ditch Mac's. It was a personal choice.

  6. ukgnome

    14 Quid...what for?

    A new OS or a patch for your OS with some features added, you know - like a service pack.

    1. mrh2

      Re: 14 Quid...what for?

      A new OS.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 14 Quid...what for?

        And monkeys fly out of your butt!

      2. P. Lee

        Re: 14 Quid...what for?

        > a new OS.

        Really?

        It looks like new apps rather than a new OS. Which bits of the OS have they improved? You know, the bit which insulates the apps from the hardware and provides each app with a virtual machine.

        It seems that the OS is actually a downgrade in capabilities (less compatible hardware) with new apps put in to distract attention from the fact.

        /fuddyduddy who just stuck a penguin in his g5 and has a nice new usable machine for mythtv and iscsi time machine.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 14 Quid...what for?

      A service pack with a picture of a different cat on it.

    3. Senior Ugli
      Happy

      Re: 14 Quid...what for?

      more than a service pack, but not quite a full OS. Personally I got mine in a dmg form from somewhere...

      Also OS X still has no blue screen capability like windows is proud of

      1. Paw Bokenfohr
        Stop

        Re: 14 Quid...what for?

        "Also OS X still has no blue screen capability like windows is proud of"

        ...it may not blue screen, but it can certainly kernel panic, which from an end-user perspective is pretty much the same thing. And something that mine (late 2011 MBP) does on a regular basis. Joy.

        Meanwhile, my Windows 7 x64 PC (homebuilt, not a brand) has never, ever, bluescreened. I don't think it's my amazing skills as a PC builder. It's just that Windows is relatively stable now.

        Less of the FUD and more facts would be just great.

        1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

          Re: 14 Quid...what for?

          Interesting, I have had exactly two properly solid "restart machine" crashes since I bought my MBP (mid 2010) - for the rest nothing (the low volume is why I remember :-).

          I've installed 10.8 on 2 machines now - downloading is a pain so I made a copy, but the installs themselves were problem free for me.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Down

          Re: 14 Quid...what for?

          "Less of the FUD and more facts would be just great."

          Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Always. Just like yours is.

  7. Martin 63
    Stop

    Re: 14 Quid...what for?

    Hmm. While I think my post was pretty broad about the 3 main OS's, Im so far getting flak for one. Step it up please :)

  8. asdf
    FAIL

    f__k Apple

    No official 10.8 release for Intel Mac Pro tower first and second generations is such bullshit. Performance is still great (if upgrade video card) but forced obsolescence for you. You have to spend the money and rebuy a computer every few years to stay in the cool club or else you are forced to follow complex steps to basically make yoru computer a hackintosh.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: f__k Apple

      I don't recall Windows 7 working on older, previously MS Windows-approved hardware, either. Nothing to do with being in a club, it's all to do with making sales - as well as utilising new hardware to offer new features/better performance. If that's not for you, switch to Linux and stop moaning, there are distros that can handle an incredibly wide range of hardware across an incredibly wide age-range.

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