Apple have started shipping free USB recovery drives to eligible users unable to restore OS X Lion on their Macs. The thumb drives, which are believed to be 1GB in size, contain the same Lion Recovery utility that Apple made available to download earlier in the week. Contrary to other reports, the drives are not full OS X Lion installers.
Yesterday, Apple released Lion Recovery Disk Assistant – a utility which allows you to use an external USB hard drive, or thumb drive, to recover your OS X Lion system. Free to download from Apple’s support site, the assistant gives you access to the same Lion Recovery options built into OS X Lion, but can be used if your main hard drive fails.
Currently, Apple offers education discounts on new Macs to college students and academic staff, and in the past they have created Macs specifically for the eduction market (eMac). Now it seems they will be releasing a $999 21.5-inch iMac, which will only be available to educational institutions.
Apple’s new Mac OS X operating system ships with the latest version of the company’s Boot Camp feature – version 4.0 – and unless you already have a Boot Camp partition set up, you’ll need Windows 7 to create a new one.
Apple announced shortly after the release of the OS X Lion operating system that for those who would prefer to purchase the release on physical media, Lion USB thumb drives would be available this month. And now they are – for $69 through AppleCare.
Apple’s new OS X Lion operating system includes a super cool hidden “easter egg” that pays tribute to the company’s CEO. The discovery was made by one discerning Lion user who reported his find to Cult of Mac.
Apple’s latest operating system, OS X Lion, introduces over 250 new features to the Mac, and is a steal at just £20.99 ($29.99). Especially when you compare it to Windows – it’s biggest rival – which currently retails from around £120. It’s not such great value, however, if Apple decides to charge you for it 122 times.
Not made the switch from Snow Leopard to Lion yet? Apple released a revised version of its 10.6.8 update late yesterday, which should make the transfer of personal data, settings and compatible apps much smoother – when you do decide to upgrade.
On Thursday, Apple announced that over one million users bought & downloaded OS X Lion on day one of its release. My personal opinion is that unless you rely on older PowerPC applications, that won’t work under the new OS, there are enough improvements to make upgrading worthwhile. But if you need more convincing, I’ve put together a collection of links to some of the best Lion reviews.