The Register®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/22/first_day_mac_os_x_lion_sales/

On first day, Apple sells 50 Lions for every lion

Panthera leo leo outrun by one million Mac OS X sales

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted in Operating Systems, 22nd July 2011 00:29 GMT

Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V

During its first day of availability, Apple sold 50 copies of its new Mac OS X Lion operating system for every living copy of the actual African Lion for which it is named.

Or over 160 copies [1]. Or 25 copies [2]. Or somewhere in between. It depends on who's counting the lions [3] – the Panthera leo leo, that is.

As for Mac OS X version 10.7, the one-day sales number was over one million. "Lion is off to a great start," Apple head marketeer Phil Schiller said in a Thursday press release [4], exulting in his perception that "user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic."

As of mid-afternoon San Francisco time, Apple's Lion had been rated by nearly 10,000 Mac App Store shoppers; 87 per cent of them gave it five out of five stars, while 3 per cent gave it the lowest rating of but one star.

Over at MacInTouch [5], the Mac geekerati are busy weighing in [6] – with quite a bit of good discussion about the demise of the PowerPC code translator, Rosetta – and the forums at MacFixIt [7] and other fanboi watering holes are buzzing, as well.

As of today, Apple's Lion is only available from the Mac App Store for $29.99, but a thumb-drive version will appear in August, Apple says, for a pricey $69.

Having the Mac App Store available in 123 countries worldwide undoubledly helped Cupertino achieve its 50-to-1 advantage over Lion's namesake. After all, leo leo is available in only about two dozen countries. ®