At just $31.99, Apple's new download-only Mac OS X Lion released today (about a week behind schedule) is sure to see massive uptake.
Delayed by a week due to suspected last-minute bugs with its Resume feature, Apple today has released
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion for download at the bargain price of $31.99.
The eighth version of Mac OS X ships with some 250 new features, the most notable of which are new Multi-Touch gestures (pinch, tap, swipe etc.), full-screen apps support (previously not natively supported), Mission Control (a bird's eye view of what's running on your Mac), Launchpad (an iOS-like app launcher), Resume (which resumes reloaded apps right where you left them), Auto Save (not needing to manually save changes... ever) and AirDrop (wireless file sharing sans a common Wi-Fi network).
Lion's new Mission Control: everything purportedly at your fingertips, and accessed simply via a three-finger upwards swipe.
As has been noted
elsewhere, the pocket-friendly $31.99 pricetag can be reduced even further by utilising two-for-$30 iTunes card discount deals
currently available at retailers including Target, Big W and Myer (eg. 2 x $20 cards for $30, effectively netting you a sweet 25% Lion discount).
Lion, which is the first Mac OS X operating system not to be made available via optical disc, is download-only from the Mac App Store. However, in a bid to perhaps not alienate users (nor stifle Lion uptake), Apple has today softened its stance and sweetened the deal for users without broadband access at home (or those just miserly with their download quotas), announcing that Lion can be downloaded within Apple Stores using Store Wi-Fi (of course, you'd need to live proximate to these
metropolitan locations to take advantage of this, so it's not really practical for everybody).
And for those who really just want to go old school? Upgraders willing to hold out until late August will be able to purchase Lion on a USB thumb drive for $75. Quite the markup really, given how cheap a 4GB USB key goes for these days...