Mac OS X release date ‘most likely late next week’ – anonymous Apple employee

“Apple users kept their eyes and ears close to tech-media as rumors speculated that the new Mac OS X Lion would be released, but an Apple employee points to a different date,” International Business Times. “Speaking on the basis of anonymity, the source told IBTimes that the new software is ‘most likely’ to come ‘late next week,’ saying it was ready to go so far as they could tell.”

“The source also said Apple’s ultrathin notebook computer, will employ Intel’s latest ‘Sandy Bridge’ processor. The low-voltage chip is inline with the Macbook Air’s predecessor, and the chip’s ability to process graphics cuts the need for other chips, enhancing battery life,” IBT reports. “The notebook computer should have the new operating system on it. ‘It doesn’t make sense to release hardware without the software,’ the source said, wishing to remain nameless for fear of reprisals.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]

27 Comments

  1. It was me, RastaMouse, from the skunkworks department of 1 Infinite Loop.

    There was a last minute bug in the flux capacitor API which meant it was activated at 8mph instead of 88mph under certain conditions, but I’ve fixed that; final testing, Lion by next Friday.

      1. Sorry, you’re both wrong. It will be released on the 23rd to commemorate the introduction of the ice cream cone at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, MO, in 1904!

  2. Well Jobs said they would release it in July. No one needs to be a so called Apple employee to have a 50/50 chance of guessing which week Lion will be released. I find this a non-story.

  3. Aren’t they reporting financial results next week? I didn’t personally expect news of an official release date until they had shared the quarterly sales figures with us.

  4. Here’s a question: everyone says Apple is waiting to rease new hardware until it can be fit with Lion…

    So how do they get Lion onto 250,000 MBA’s that have already been made and presumably boxed? Or if they’re not boxed, what, do they stack a quarter of a million computers in the corner and install them one by one?

    1. Those new MacBook Air models could be stockpiled with the GM version that was distributed to developers two weeks ago (or an even earlier build created just for this purpose). It is not that unusual for a new Mac model to ship initially with a “customized” release of Mac OS that does not exist elsewhere. And it would be far easier to make sure all non-trivial bugs were fixed in Lion when dealing with a small number of hardware configs, compared to all supported Macs going back to 2006.

      But, Apple can’t start selling those MacBook Air models with Lion, before Lion is officially released to everyone. Once Lion is released, start selling the new MacBook Air at the same time, as part of a “launch event.” Within the first two weeks, release the first dot-dot update and everyone running Lion will be consolidated at 10.7.1.

  5. I think it will be next week, or the week after that. And I’m not even an “Apple employee.”

    (I was expecting to hear reports about a second GM candidate going to developers by today. Nothing so far…)

  6. The official Mac OS X Lion release:

    Peter Oppenheimer, Apple CFO

    Highest quarterly revenue and profit ever.
    Record iPhone and iPad sales
    June quarter record for Mac sales
    Mac sales strong in the Asia Pacific region in particular
    –>Excited to launch OS X Lion tomorrow.<–
    iPod touch continues to account for over half of iPods sold
    over 70% of market still
    iTunes revenue up 36% year over year.
    225 million iTunes accounts
    15 billion songs downloaded
    iPhone 20.3 million sales
    iPad 9.2 million sales
    “we sold every iPad we could make”
    iPad 2 launched in 36 countries. Now in 64 countries.

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