On first day, Apple sells 50 Lions for every lion During its first day of availability, Apple sold 50 copies of its new Mac OS X Lion operating system for every living copy of the actual African Lion for which it is named. Or over 160 copies. Or 25 copies. Or somewhere in between. It depends on who's counting the lions – the Panthera leo leo, that is. As for Mac OS X version …
With the introduction of Lion via App Store, Apple also eliminated the Family Pack version because one is allowed to install (and multiply download) the one purchased copy on all of the Macs one owns or "has control over". This is standard terms for App Store items and Apple is drinking their own Kool Aid.
So while a million copies were sold there were probably 2 million downloads.
that Rosetta would be dropped. It was already written, and the last PowerPC model was sold less than 5 years ago (August 2006.) I have noticed with MacOS there has been a linear progression for years (at least 10 years) where both the oldest machine it will run on, and oldest software that'll generally run on the OS, have both been decreasing. At present rate by 2015 or so it should run only on brand new systems.
(Apple fanboi notes:
1) Don't flame me. Although this progression is real, I assume it's an artifact of the PPC->x86 transition, and the odd decision of Apple to sell some 32-bit x86 systems (so with 10.7 being 64-bit, it abandons these systems.) I'm taking the piss in assuming 10.8 or 10.9 will only support like 1 or 2 year old systems, then 10.10 supporting 0-year old systems.
2) Don't compare to Windows, pretty much each newer Windows version probably has supported less and less aged systems too, but I find Windows to be a joke, and comparing to it is aiming pretty low. I can say, Ubuntu will run on just about anything going back at least 10 years (I've booted it up on a P3, and the slow stuff like loading the ever-bloated openoffice takes just the same length of time, since it's hard disk bound both on the P3 and the newer system. The CPU usage on the P3 is a lot higher, but not 100% 8-)
I don't know the extent of the problem, but Rosetta would require support from many parts of the OS, i.e. I expect there was a performance penalty for allowing an emulator to be woven into the system so seamlessly. It may have held back some fundamental changes too. I expect Apple would be keen to strip this away as soon as possible.
And although there were still PowerPC machines sold 5 years ago, the shift to Intel started 7 years ago. Anyone who bought PowerPC machines after the Intel move would have been aware that the future potential of their computers might be limited. Considering that many PCs are moved on after 3-4 years, the inability to install the latest operating system after 5 years doesn't seem too onerous.
too remember the 680x0 to PPC transition around 15 years ago. That seemed happened more or less overnight. Although they offered 'fat binaries' not many software houses bothered with them. Interestingly enough I still have two Macs from that period and they still work beautifully, as does the G4 iMac. It may have escaped you notice, but we are five days from August! Saying "less than 5 years" makes it sound very dramatic. Lets call a spade a spade, eh? It was 5 years ago. I have a Dell model laptop from around the same period and driver support for it from Dell was atrocious within 6 months of it's release. It has a 64 bit Core 2 Duo based processor and It runs Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit beautifully. Windows 7 64 bit, not so much.
"and the odd decision of Apple to sell some 32-bit x86 systems" You need to look at this in context. The PPC at the time was going nowhere and the Mac was stagnating. Apple need to get hardware out the door. They were among the first to sell Core 2 Duo based systems, which is a trend that has followed since. Commercial pressure was ultimately behind the decision to go Intel and release the Core Duos.
(Troll notes;
1) You won't get lamed if you don't call people 'fanboi, what are you? Use that expression and it take what is actually a relevant post (initially in your case) and reduce it to trolling in a sentence. For example; Judging by your Windows and Ubuntu comments, you must be a leeching freetard. I use all three platforms extensively so I look upon these moronic topics with a sense of unease. The really noisy ones tend to know very little when all is said and done.)
.. said in a Thursday press release, exulting in his perception that "user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic."
Well it's kind of his job to say so.
Beside, what was the last product Apple didn't brand as "Fantastic", "World most adavnced", ...
What puzzles me is that it continue working.
"... 3 per cent gave it the lowest rating of but one star"
And 10% gave a medium rating, so nearly 15% Apple's clients are from "unhappy" to "somewhat unhappy".
Gratz Apple!
.. because after download, it immediately proceeded to tell me I couldn't install it on my machine (a boring, vanilla 1 year old 15" MacBook Pro. I'm generally rather impressed with what Apple offers, including OSX (before I used Windows and Linux as main platforms), but the App shop download showed the deficiencies in that approach:
1 - in the above case, where do I go for support? Apple had a link to "support" - which was their generic help page which listed all the products except, you guessed it, OSX Lion. Duh. Money back? Hahahahahaaahhahahahaa. Funny. Sorry, I'm digressing.
2 - recovery. I'm about to find out how that works, because I plan to use this new OS release as a chance to clean out the machine. I have presently no idea if I can download the Apps I paid for again. Heaven help them if I can't. I suspect there is some manifest associated with Apple ID that will allow this, but I don't know. Anyone?
There are a few more reasons, but this will do for now.
Having said all that, I got it to work after all. It installed an App in the dock whose main function was to tell me that I couldn't use it. Once I ignored that and started what it put into the Applications directory it worked. And I made some ISO files for when I rebuild the machine (one inn DVD, one on a USB stick because it's faster).
In summary, I think the 1 star was justified for the original "experience". However, as for the final product it rates 4 out of 5 because of the vastly simpler and improved security model. Not a full 5/5 because revising the scroll direction was stupid, as is the launchpad.. Still worth the money.
I typed "apple support" into Google and got: Apple - Support
www.apple.com/uk/support as the first hit. I'm no expert, but I reckon that's where you should go to find out what went wrong with your Lion installation.
Your purchase history for all things lower case "i" is indeed associated with your iTunes account. This is one of the reasons some people get all nervous about Apple and its level of knowledge / control over data. But this is also enormously useful; if you completely clean out your machine, you can download again anything at all you ever bought from iTunes. Apple are keeping a sort-of-free backup for you (this process being formalised and extended via iCloud and things like the not free music matching service).
You can repeat the download process for other machines you might own - e.g. a desktop and a laptop - or mobile devices, for content such as music which is relevant to both. The various App Stores are in essence selling you site licences, rather than single use licences, but usually selling them at or below the single use licence price seen on corresponding vendor web sites (where applicable). AFAICT from reading the lawyer-speak, you get to install on up to as "few" as 5 machines, possibly up to 10 and, some claim, as many as you own.
Good to know Andrew, thanks for the update. I discovered only one major oopsie: I have Office 2008 installed, aka "the last one unspoileth by thee evil ribbon". That works fine (as far as MS Office "works"), but I have just read that it won't re-install as the installer itself needs Rosetta which is no longer in Lion. So I guess I best nuke the box, re-install 10.6.7, let it update to 10.6.8, install Office, and then run the installer from a USB stick.
Not that I need MS Office for myself, but unfortunately I have clients that have fallen for the file format and the "it doesn't look 100% the same" trick MS pulls on recalcitrant users. I use OpenOffice - fidelity on any platform..
Anyway, for me, the new partition level security and the fact that it is shared across Time Machine was a MEGA MAJOR argument to upgrade forthwith. It means I can tell clients to run Time Machine without worrying what they do with the backup disk..
I performed equally with my latest Dodo product.
Adding insult to injury, humans uses species populations they decimated as a benchmark for how much money they make.
If there were even less lions, Apple stats would sound even more attractive to shareholders, you know what this means #hands over shotguns#
I don't understand how on the day of release people can be so sure that an OS (or pretty much anything for that matter) can be rated as 5stars.
I might be an odd one out here, but before I can give any kind of rating, to anything at all, I like to actually use it for a while, (you know, more than an hour or so) to get past the shiney shiney and see /if/ there are any flaws....
But then again, it could just be the blind Fanboi effect
Unless they tried every piece of hardware (cameras, USB drives, old i[Phones]/[pads]/[pods],...) and every bit of software (including, in some cases perhaps, Adobe Flash and Java) how could they possibly rate it five out of five?
Heck, did they actually reboot a couple of times to make sure it could reboot from cold even?
I'll admit that my thoughts may be clouded by memories of Ubuntu refusing to do things the previous version did -- but surely every OS update has to be used in anger for a week or so before passing judgement?
(Not a comment on Apple or their software, just on their fans.)
Yep, stuck it on a spare drive in my Mac Pro. Had a play around, found it could not access my NAS which I need for my business. So I removed Lion. Might go back to it in the future, if either Buffalo or Apple sort out a fix. It has issues with steam games too, lower frame rates than Snow Leopard.
This is hardly user friendly, but:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4700?viewlocale=en_US
http://frankleng.me/2011/07/21/connect-to-a-freenas-samba-or-afp-share-on-lion-workaround/
...though if possible (and of course, it isn't always) I recommend asking your NAS vendor for a firmware update to support a more secure authentication mechanism.
Since nobody told me you can't burn a DVD copy after you've installed the OS - since the installer nukes itself, so had to download it again (there's a key combination to override the 'already installed' check to allow you to do this - which itself was an hour of googling I could have done without).
And no, downloading 4GB of data every time I need to reimage a mac is *not* an option, so a DVD was essential.
Wait for the $69 thumb drive in Autumn, or burn the install image to DVD yourself for free (see Google).
That said, Lion includes a recovery partition as part of the installation (OS X can repartition HFS volumes without data loss; the Lion installer does just that). If you reboot and hold down Command + R just after the chime, you'll boot into this partition and be able to play with Disk Utility, reinstall the OS (if somehow things *really* get badly broken) and do a bunch of other stuff. This covers the lion's share (hahaha, etc.) of rarely needed "recovery" tasks for OS X.
Of course, the above does not help if you want to install Lion onto a brand new, blank hard disc. The thumb drive, DVD or (if you've a very, very new Mac) EFI network installation options are needed for that.
I've been running Lion GM since it appeared in early July, am I impressed, no for 'God's sake' its just an OS with lots of bells and whistles - I could not do a Custom Install though, so now have stuff I'll never use.
As for other stuff, Lion GM far better than App Store download, you can hit properties and load Lion on to a 4.2G partition via restore function in disc utility, you can then do clean installs, no SL 6.8 necessary.
However, don't see what all the fuss is about, Lion is okay, seems stable and works with nearly all apps I run, however, had to waste 24 hours after huge problems on my Mac Mini media server - did not like Plex or Transmission, took ages to salvage the error.
As for paying US$69 for thumb drive version, I think someone is taking the p_ _ _!!!!!!
3 or less from 5.
I would happily carry on with Snow Leopard.
Ah well, too late now.
What's all this horrible scroll-bar stuff? Where has the Save option gone? What happened to the Spaces indicator? Preview is broken (puts grey rectangles across crops), it takes ages to start-up. Login window is odd. Finder file list sorting is changed/broken. Generally don't like it; expect that will change.
Been using Mac OS since System 7, this is the first time I refuse to upgrade in over 20 years.
Why? Cos I've been using this bloody OS for 20 years and have so much legacy data and software which survived the last "purge" that removed Power PC architecture (hardware not software) that I would have to spend about £700 on replacing my ancient Rosetta based apps and data.
Second reason, I have stand alone antiquated Macs in a dank cave in deepest darkest Kent. Backwards compatibility means they can share many of the tasks and data my latest Mac Pro (2008) is involved in. Slam the door on all my older machines? Nah.
Why Paris? Cos she's pretty much Team Obsolete now too.
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