It’s been about a month since Apple announced its upcoming OS X 10.7 ‘Lion’ at its developer conference, and with news that it has just hit its ‘Gold’ status, a release is virtually imminent. Typically, once an OS X version goes gold, it will hit store shelves within two weeks, but being that Lion will primarily be distributed via the Mac Store app download service, Apple might take advantage of the fact that it could release it sooner and could very well do so.
When announced, people questioned whether or not the OS could be burned or copied to a thumb drive after being downloaded for the sake of keeping a hard copy on hand, but Apple has kept mum about it. An anonymous poster at Slashdot, who claims to be under NDA, has admitted that yes, Lion can be burned. However, after it’s first installed, Lion will be copied to a recovery partition, so the only time you should really need a hard copy of the OS is to install it on alternate machines, or because you suffered a hard drive failure.
In the same comment thread, someone else mentions that for those who simply can’t stomach the download, or want a hard official copy for whatever reason, there will be copies made available at all Apple Stores. It’s unlikely that they will be displayed, however, but rather have to be requested.
Dubbed a ‘major’ update, OS X 10.7 introduces Launchpad, a nifty iOS-like app launcher, Resume, a feature that will allow you to reboot while retaining open applications, Mission Control, a view that allows you to see all running applications at once and a slew of new apps that natively support full-screen modes. You can read probably the best list for new features at Wikipedia, or hit up the official URL below for Apple’s own take.