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As expected, Apple's recent profits have broken records, achieving $28.57 billion in revenue for the second quarter of the year. With sales showing 9 million iPads and 20 million iPhones, it appears that the company can do no wrong.
Today, Apple are due to release the latest version of their successful UNIX based OSX, called ‘Lion'. Priced at only £20.99, it is surely going to rack up a very high volume of sales.
One of the most discussed new features is LaunchPad which is a feature giving easy ‘one click' access to programs stored on the computer. With a swipe system similar to the iOS interface, it should aid the crossover that Apple are trying to bring into OSX, merging UI traits.
Other key discussion points are the auto save features, which work on a system wide level, to ensure that lost data situations are minimised. There are also bug fixes and VPN reliability fixes and other code enhancements with some applications. Apple have also shipped a series of new signatures to detect and delete variants of the MacDefender ‘scareware’.
The Apple Mail program also receives a complete overhaul, working a little more like the iPad version which has proven popular among Apple fans. With a new timeline system and improved search functions it looks to be one of the biggest software oriented changes in the new OS. The Safari browser also adds new gesture based navigation with an offline store facility to read pages later without internet access.
The only negative commentary so far, seems based around the ‘download' only system that Apple are putting in place, releasing the download only via their Mac App Store. This marks a change in strategy for the company as it will be a download only purchase. With some people still being bandwidth capped each month, it may prove to be an unpopular move.
Kitguru says: £20.99 almost makes this an ‘impulse purchase', ensuring that a high percentage of long term Apple fans upgrade to the new operating system. Exactly what Apple want.
