Wow! That’s a bombshell. We expected Lion would be available on DVD, USB stick and on the Mac App Store, but Phil Schiller says that it’s a Mac App Store exclusive… and he says it’ll be the easiest upgrade you’ve ever seen.
This should kill Hackintoshing and piracy of Lion, by the way.
“You need about 4GB in storage. And because it’s part of the Mac App Store it follows the rules… you can use it on all of your authorized devices,” says Schiller.
Price: $29.99, just like Snow Leopard.
And the developer preview? It’s available today.
As for widescale release? July.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
32 responses to “Mac OS X Lion Will Cost $29, Available July… Only On Mac App Store [WWDC 2011]”
If it’s only available as a downloaded upgrade, how will you be able to perform a clean install if that’s what you want?
I have to say as someone stuck with 512 kbps ‘broadband’ (yes, I live in the sticks) that the prospect of 4 gb download only doesn’t really fill me with joy.. I hope some physical installation media will be available.
What about System Restore Disc’s for new computers? There HAS to be some kind of Physical Media for that!Â
That was my first thought.
Plus, what would people who don’t own Snow Leopard and the App Store do? Are you telling me they’d have to buy Snow Leopard, install it, then download Lion through the App Store and upgrade again? That’s so un-Apple.
Nice pricing though.
Not to mention the convenience of being able to boot up from the installation disc for troubleshooting purposes. One of my favorite things about Mac OS X.
No sir, I don’t like it.
Snow Leopard is already $29, and you get physical media, something that has saved my bacon more than once, as I have done major repairs on older machines, including replacing system drives. Download only for the OS is a non-starter.
The recover disk is now a partition (or what I heard). I think you will be able to burn the partition into a disk.
“This should kill Hackintoshing and piracy of Lion, by the way.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!! You really think that?
Well… I think that’s basically what I’d have to do. I dunno though since I might just buy a new iMac to replace my ageing MacBook Pro anyway.
I kinda feel like I’m an apologist for Apple though since I’m not particularly bothered if I did have to first upgrade my Leopard to Snow Leopard before getting to Lion as I know Apple wants their users to keep up-to-date with the latest and greatest, so from my personal view I blame myself for sticking to a policy of always skipping an OS upgrade for the one after.
But otherwise yes it’s not convenient at all for everyone else who isn’t as forgiving as I am.
I am gobsmacked by the price. I understood Snow Leopard was cheaper because it was more of an optimisation of Leopard so it was more of a mini upgrade in Apple’s eyes thus the cheaper price.
I presumed Lion would follow the conventional pricing that Leopard and previous OSX upgrades have had, but this really does come as a surprise. That is bloody aggressive pricing considering it’s a proper update with new features.
My guess is that Apple must really be wanting the new features of Lion to be filter through their userbase as quickly as possible.
Apple writes the rules so nothing is really ‘un Apple’.Â
As for buying Snow Leopard first etc, the common man does what has to be done and doesn’t think about it. Just like when they hose their computer they will take it to an Apple store to be fixed and if that means reinstalling from that SL disk and then adding the Lion update, that’s what they will do (or rather come back tomorrow to get the computer after the Genius does it for them)
Nope. They were very clear. MAS only.Â
Well the immediate thought isÂ
1. Verify you have a back up of all your data on an external drive
2. Boot from your Snow Leopard disk.
3. Wipe and reinstall SL
4. Â Run software update to bring system up to speed
5. Download and install Lion.Â
6. Copy your files back over
Sir in no way will this kill Hakintoshes..lol I have one and have Lion on it all ready..lol.. and we have know for awhile be cause of how the installer is setup now that it was going to be mac app store only and STILL we found a way to install it on PC’s.. man your really a dumb ass blogger to write that..lol
That is it, I am sick of Apple trying to nickle and dime me for EVERY feature. The only way I can get Lion is by upgrading to Snow Leopard (I have Leopard). Name ANY other OS that makes you buy 2 operating systems to get their latest version. I have a Core 2 MBP with 100GB SSD… not much space and now I have to put a recovery partition on it? $0.99 to change/create contact groups from the iPhone (there is an app for that) $0.99 to enable Facetime on my $2,500+ MBP purchase (there is an app for that) $60 to upgrade to the latest OS (there 2 apps for that) $200 for a 4gb RAM upgrade…. oh yeah, only 90 day warranty on Apple RAM vs. lifetime for almost every other brand including the very same module of Samsung ram that Apple gave me if I bought it from Samsung directly (oh, we have a yearly renewal warranty plan for that). Anybody else sick of getting nickled and dimed? I used to tell people how Apple is a great company, now I get sick just looking at the “250+” new features of Lion. Try this… check out how many times they list the full screen function as a separate new feature…. ‘now we have a close button… 5million+new features!’ Congrats Apple, I will never give you another cent of my money.
Peeps… Â do a search on Google… Â If you open up the download and view the files, there is a .dmg file in there which you can burn to a disc. Â Stop being so melodramatic…