Strong hints indicate that this Friday, the 22nd of July, will finally witness the arrival of OS X Lion in the Mac App Store. During the WWDC event in early June, Steve Jobs simply said “July” would see the arrival of Lion. That vague date, if you can even call it a date, has lead to high anticipation, stress, and disappointment for Mac users across the World.
As the July days tick on, Lion is nowhere to be seen. Surely this Lion hasn’t gone into hibernation?
When will all this finally end? When will we finally see a cage-free Lion roaming free in the Mac App Store?
I’m quietly confident that this Friday will finally see its release. There are a couple of reasons.
We have learnt from a source within Apple’s sales and retail department that Apple has blocked staff from taking this Friday, the 22nd, off as a holiday. Apple preventing staff from taking this day as a holiday is surely a sign that Apple has something special planned for this Friday. Could that something special be the arrival of new Macbook Airs, OS X Lion, or both? Apple have a previous track record of preventing staff from taking holidays prior to and during releases of products.
Secondly, we all like Fridays but Apple really really like Fridays. Apple tend to roll out OS X system updates on Fridays and they also have a past history when it comes to releasing new versions of OS X on this day. Let’s look at Apple’s past history with OS X releases:
- Jaguar – Released Friday, August 23rd, 2002
- Panther – Released Friday, October 24th, 2003
- Tiger – Released Friday, April 29th, 2005
- Leopard – Released Friday, October 26th, 2007
- Snow Leopard – Released Friday, August 28th, 2009
- Lion, Released Friday, July 22nd, 2011???
That’s right, Fridays have seen 5 of the 7 OS X releases and every single of those Friday releases were put out near the end of the month. The only exception to Friday’s rule is OS X Cheetah and OS X Puma which were both released way back in 2001.The last 5 OS X releases have all happened on a Friday.
I don’t know about you, but I’m quietly confident that this Friday will finally see the release of OS X Lion. Apple’s past history with Fridays and the fact that they denied staff holidays for this date is too much an indicator that something potentially cat-size is coming.
Sadly, I get the feeling that we will be living this “when is it coming out” nightmare in a few weeks when iOS 5 comes out…… sometime this Fall.
