Told you so....
Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 9:55AM OK, So back from my vacation and Apple were kind enough to hold fire on the release of Lion until I got back.
Very kind of them!
Another stellar earnings announcement last night - Apple Press Release - breaking all sorts of records.
- $76 billion dollars in the bank
- Still selling as many iPads as they can make - 9.25 million of them
- iPads now outselling Macs - amazing for a product less than 18 months old
- 20.34 million iPhones sold in the quarter - more than the analysists predicted even without a new model
- Mac sales still on the up beating the PC - in fact, the 21st consecutive quarter they outgrew the PC market
- Apple's second quarter earnings ($7.79) were higher than the whole of Apple's 2008 earnings ($7.45) (via @asymco)
and lots of other mind boggling statistics.
Absolutely incredible performance and this time, the stock price went up instead of down!
One very surprising thing, was that Apple actually announced that Lion was to be launched on the day after the earnings call - 20th July. This came out of the blue, as Apple historically does not refer to future products during the call.
Happily, I'd previously predicted the 20th July as the launch date back in the beginning of July on an episode of MacBreak Weekly and have stuck to that date ever since.
I have a pet theory that Apple likes to announce record breaking numbers during the earnings call, then immediately follow that up with another announcement a day or so later, catapulting earnings for the next quarter.
So it seemed logical that the Lion release would follow the earnings call.
As far as the fabled Thunderbolt enabled Macbook Airs and Mac Pros, I'm sure they will arrive in the next two weeks, but not on the same day as Lion. Update: Just as I hit publish on this post, all the online Apple stores went down! So it may well be that we will see some new hardware today too. Or it may be that they are just removing/replacing some older versions of software, we'll soon find out
Final Update: Huzzah - new MacBook Airs and Mac minis - So I was wrong but hey, I'm only human ;-)
Today is all about the big cat!
I've done the decent thing and kept to my NDA during the Lion Developer phase so although I've been playing with Lion for a few months, I've deliberately not done any ScreenCastsOnline shows or sneak peaks at Lion. I also haven't done any advance shows, as I really wanted to wait for the final release to be made available so there are no last minute changes.
As I write this, I'm poised for Lion to be released and have created several builds to test the standard install and the unsupported methods of doing a fresh install. We still don't know when during the day it will be released, and how easy it will be to download - it's going to be a serious test of Apple's infrastructure (and the Internet!). Once I have the release version, I'll do my testing and hopefully get an install show out soon. Features and highlights of Lion will follow in a number of other shows over the next few weeks.
One thing to bear in mind is that we will also need updates to most of the Apple applications not contained in Lion (iWork, iLife, etc) New versions of the Apps will be needed to support some of the new features of Lion, so expect to see new versions of these via the Mac App Store. Will be interesting to see if brand new versions of iLife or iWork are released soon, not just Lion optimised ones.
Anyway, back to the Mac App Store....
Is it there yet, is it there yet, is it there yet....
Reader Comments (4)
It will take about 12 hours to download the cat given my bad internet connection, but I am looking forward to this new OS. :)
A DVD with the OS on it would have been nice though...
Unfortunately Don you failed to mention the year so no Apple Pie for you ;-)
One thing to bare in mind is that we will also need updates to most of the Apple applications ...
*Bear* in mind, Don. Not *bare* in mind. :)
It took about 55 minutes to download the update (UK based) and a further 40 minutes to complete the install. Seven minutes longer than the instal first suggested. Still acceptable to me.
All installed and working. Need to try it I guess.