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On June 6, 2011, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, it was announced that the official release for Lion would be in July 2011. OS X Lion was announced alongside iOS 5 and iCloud at WWDC 2011 at Moscone West.
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The same practice was applied to its successor, OS X Mountain Lion. Īlthough originally paid, Apple later allowed free downloads of the OS, especially for customers of older and no longer officially supported Mac computers, starting on June 30, 2021.
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Lion was the final release of OS X whose development was overseen by Bertrand Serlet, considered to be the "founding father of Mac OS X". As of October 2011, OS X Lion had sold over six million copies worldwide. Apple reported over one million Lion sales on the first day of its release. Lion was released to manufacturing on July 1, 2011, followed by its final release via the Mac App Store on July 20, 2011. Other developer previews were subsequently released, with Lion Preview 4 (11A480b) being released at WWDC 2011.
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On February 24, 2011, the first developer's preview of Lion (11A390) was released to subscribers to the Apple Developer program. It brought many developments made in Apple's iOS, such as an easily navigable display of installed applications, to the Mac, and includes support for the Mac App Store, as introduced in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard version 10.6.6. Airdrop is supported on the following Mac models:MacBook Pro (late 2008 or newer), MacBook Air (late 2010 or newer), MacBook (late 2008 or newer), iMac (early 2009 or newer), Mac Mini (mid-2010 or newer), Mac Pro (early 2009 with AirPort Extreme card and mid-2010 or newer).OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers.Ī preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Special Event on October 20, 2010.Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later (Mac OS X 10.6.8 is recommended).x86-64 CPU (64 bit Macs, with an intel core 2 duo, Intel core i5, intel core i7, or processor.).The main earlier form of OS X that underpins the Mac App Store in Snow Leopard, which suggested that any machines that help Lion at present running Tiger or Leopard would initially be moved up to Snow Leopard, instead of enabling an immediate move up to Lion. Rather, the working framework was said to be accessible only as a download from the Mac App Store for US$29.99. Apple did not at first report any physical media circulation for Lion, for example, a lot of CD-ROMs or a DVD-ROM as utilized for past discharges.
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