Mikey Campbell
Apple on Friday confirmed that the upcoming OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will be exclusive to the Mac App Store when it hits the virtual shelves sometime this summer, according to Pocket-lint.
When Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was released in 2011, the company was concerned that customers would be wary of installing a new OS from a digital download. In response, Apple offered upgraders the options of going down to a brick-and-mortar Apple Store to have a representative install Lion, or purchase a thumb drive of the OS at a largely inflated price.
The worries were unfounded, and the USB drive was a poor seller.
"It was an interesting test, but it turns out the App Store was just fine for getting the new OS," an unnamed Apple source told Pocket-lint.
The Cupertino, Calif., company has been pushing to make digital downloads de rigueur since the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in 2009 and subsequently the Mac App Store in 2010, which has tallied over 100 million downloads as of December 2011.
Apple's next-generation OS X Mountain Lion was released as a developer preview on Thursday and looks to bring a number of iOS features to the desktop environment.
No specific launch date has been announced for the new operating system, though Apple estimates the software will be unveiled to the public sometime this summer.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
110 Comments
I think this correct in that the USB drive was a poor seller and that Apple will likely not push it with ML, but I seem to recall Apple saying that Lion would be exclusive to the Mac App Store, too, before later having a USB thumb drive version available for sale.
I would imagine Apple Stores will have physical copies on hand for the Genius Bar. Not necessarily for retail distribution.
Good. Nice to see Apple is the only one that has the balls to push forward against physical media. Everyone else will follow-suit eventually, but they'll straddle the line and be risk-averse until Apple has made it mainstream, like pretty much every single innovation.
If anyone needs to save ML on physical media after download, I'm sure it will be just as easy as doing so with Lion. Non-issue.
I would imagine Apple Stores will have physical copies on hand for the Genius Bar. Not necessarily for retail distribution.
They have USB, FW, and Ethernet connected physical drives with many partitions with many different OS builds and diagnostic systems on the ready so there would be no need for these USB thumb drives.
So how do I update the 10 users in my office? Download it 10 times? (We're still on Snow Leopard.)