The specific release date of July 20 was not confirmed until the day before, July 19, by Apple CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, as part of Apple's 2011 third-quarter earnings announcement. On June 6, 2011, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, it was announced that the official release for Lion would be in July 2011. Mac OS X Lion was announced alongside iOS 5 and iCloud at WWDC 2011 at Moscone West. The same practice was also 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 Macintosh computers, starting on June 30, 2021. Lion is the final release whose development was overseen by Bertrand Serlet, considered the 'founding father of Mac OS X'. As of October 2011, Mac 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. 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. Mac OS X Lion, also known as OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers.Ī preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the 'Back to the Mac' Apple Special Event on October 20, 2010.

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