Those of you that are anxiously waiting for the arrival of OS X Lion (aren’t we all?) are in luck – according to a source reportedly within Apple, Lion may be released next Wednesday at 9AM PST! Further, the timing actually seems fairly likely – Read on for my thoughts as to why.
It’s been rumored before that Lion would arrive in July, but none had pegged it so early, or to such a specific time. The timing makes sense – contrary to other recent rumors that pegged the release to occur on July 19th (alongside new MacBook Airs). Here’s a few reasons why I find it very plausible:
1. It wouldn’t make sense for Apple to release Lion (or new hardware) on the 19th, as it is the day of their Q2 financial earnings call. Not only has a release never historically occurred on the same day as a quarterly conference call – Apple already has plenty to worry about on that day, and it’s unlikely that they’d further muddy the waters with new releases.
2. Apple could really release Lion at any time, since it’s no longer a physical product and they no longer have to worry about stock or inventory – they also don’t have to press it onto discs and ship it.
3. MacBook Air and MacBook supplies are so constrained that I doubt Apple would want to push it along any longer just to wait for Lion’s release. Apple is said to be holding back on new releases until Lion – which makes sense to me. If Lion is ready, there’s really no reason for Apple to hold it’s release back.
4. July 6th falls right after a significant US holiday weekend, giving Apple plenty of time to buckle up and fortify their servers. Further, the latest Developer Preview of Lion is quite stable, and was very near an end-user release, so it’s not difficult to imagine that the final product is now ready to go.
For all these reasons, I find this July 6th date much more plausible than many of the other rumors I’ve seen – it makes sense for all the right reasons, plus it makes me happy because it’s coming so soon!Just one week!
Of course, this is still all speculative – nothing is for certain. Still, this is where I’m hedging my bets. How about you?
