OS X Lion hits one million downloads on launch day
We were pretty sure OS X Lion would be a success, but this is kind of ridiculous. According to Apple, OS X Lion was downloaded over one million times on launch day. Apple says this is the fastest adoption rate of any OS in its history.
How about some other crazy numbers to go along with that stat? If you assume that most of those first-day downloads were paid downloads for the first machine (remember, Lion can be installed on any Mac associated with your iTunes account), that's US$30 million in revenue in one day. The actual number is likely to be a few million lower than that due to users installing Lion on multiple Macs, but it's still a gigantic amount of dollars flowing directly into Apple's coffers (and as Gus Mueller points out, Apple doesn't even have to give up 30 percent of its cut!).
Even more incredible than the financial implications is what happened on the data side of things. OS X Lion is a 3.49 GB download from the Mac App Store. With one million downloads, that's over 3400 terabytes of data pushed out in a 24-hour period. I guess that server farm in North Carolina is paying for itself already.
CUPERTINO, California-July 21, 2011-Apple® today announced that in just one day, over one million users bought and downloaded Mac OS® X Lion, the eighth major release of the world's most advanced operating system. Available through the Mac® App Store™ for $29.99 (US), users are buying Lion faster than any other OS release in Apple's history.
"Lion is off to a great start, user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Lion is a huge step forward, it's not only packed with innovative features but it's incredibly easy for users to update their Macs to the best OS we've ever made."
Lion introduces more than 250 new features to the Mac, including Multi-Touch® gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store, the best place to find and explore great software; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app.
Available in 123 countries, the Mac App Store brings the revolutionary App Store experience to the Mac so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes® account, download and install them in just one step. The Mac App Store offers apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what's hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews. The Mac App Store is built right into Lion and available for Snow Leopard® users through Software Update as part of Mac OS X version 10.6.8.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.
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We were pretty sure OS X Lion would be a success, but this is kind of ridiculous. According to Apple, OS X Lion was downloaded over one...
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Before doing anything I set up a new Snow Leopard system on an external hard drive and upgraded it to 10.6.8 migrated documents, photos and other data so that in the event of problems I could restart on the external drive, also ran time machine on my iMac drive as SnowLeopard final back up.
Then upgraded to Lion yesterday after doing preliminary upgrade of 10.6.8 etc. No problems with the download and installation BUT now have some issues.
1. Maxtor NAS drive not accessible--- Had to convert it to a CentralAxis drive using Manager and Firmware updates from MAXTOR/Seagate. That was after I copied serious data from it first. The update now works well and without losing any data.
2. I had 400+ items in my address book, I now have 4 yes four. Fortunately I still have the contacts on my iPod, I have de-activated the sync function on iTunes for the time being to see if Apple can tell me how to get them back into my address book on the iMac.
3. I want to do a Time Machine backup on the iMac but am unsure whether it will affect my previous backups of the earlier SnowLeopard system. I am off the genius bar to find out.
That is it for now. Hope there is something of use for someone.
Yesterday i've tried to download and install it. Downloaded 3 times, no luck in installation. Today I have downloaded 2 times, no luck.
July 22 2011 at 4:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWell, I believe this would happen, but wasn't expecting so quickly.
1 million downloads in just one day, awesome!
Apple win again, so with those app developers like ifunia live on it.
I am sure it will be good eventually but since installing it I have never hit the reload button o much as I have today. Safari works at a snail's pace, if at all and I can not open Address Book in Lion. Did the rush this out before its time? I know folks were anxious but better to get it right than get it there quickly.
Forget Safari. Use your iPad to check mail--it is hours quicker.
How many of those downloads were successful? Our company put a full global hold on downloading after a score of our MBPs were bricked.
July 21 2011 at 8:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyAm I the only one who doesn't buy this? It sounds like an exaggeration to try and get more people to buy it since the "new features" it comes with are of minimal importance, and response hasn't been as good as expected.
July 21 2011 at 7:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyBy that Take you would have to say that about any figures released by companies.
July 21 2011 at 8:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySorry, 3400 terabytes plus everything else.
July 21 2011 at 6:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply3.49 terabytes...plus however much for all the software updates...and I wonder how many of the million also got Lion Server.
July 21 2011 at 6:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyMac App Store is experiencing serious issues. I had to retry over an hour to download Lion on my second mac. Repeatedly got an internal server 500 error. And now I finally got it to start downloading, but it stopped again. I cannot even access the Purchase tab in the store to see the progress bars.
July 21 2011 at 5:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI gotta say that this was the smoothest OS upgrade I have ever done. I run a 2008 iMac, 2009 MBP, and 2010 MBA. They are all stable and running well with no obvious problems. My software makers were ready with upgrades and we are up and running. The biggest quirk for me was learning the new gestures. Once I got those down the rest was smooth as butter! Thank you Apple and every body else!
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