Feature: Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica review
Mac OS X 10.7 was first shown to the public in October 2010. The presentation was understated, especially compared to the bold rhetoric that accompanied the launches of the iPhone ("Apple reinvents the phone") and the iPad …
Context & Ripple Effects
Lion's road to release ran through an unusually open winter for Apple: a hands-on preview in February 2011 and pre-release builds shared with security researchers (CNET's report) preceded TechCrunch's March report that the OS was already nearing golden master ahead of WWDC. The understated October 2010 unveiling — deliberately low-key next to the iPhone and iPad launch rhetoric — set up a review that would judge whether the substance matched the quiet build-up.
The release itself lands as part of a coordinated hardware-and-retail reset: new MacBook Airs and Mac minis ship running Lion with disc-less Internet Recovery, the two-year-old Cinema Display line gives way to a $999 Thunderbolt Display, and Apple discontinues virtually all boxed retail software — making this the first major OS delivered through the Mac App Store rather than a shelf. Ars's feature-length treatment is its first full macOS review since the 10.5 Leopard review in October 2007, a four-year gap in which mobile, not desktop, became Apple's center of gravity.
First-order effects
- Buyers of the refreshed MacBook Airs and Mac minis get Lion preinstalled with no recovery discs, shifting first-line OS repair onto Apple's Internet Recovery servers instead of optical media.
- Existing Mac owners must obtain the upgrade through the Mac App Store, ending the boxed-software retail channel Apple has just dismantled across its product line.
Second-order effects
- Third-party developers lose the shrink-wrapped upgrade path and gain the App Store's update pipeline, pushing Mac software pricing and distribution toward the iPhone/iPad model Wired's coverage flags when it argues Lion 'tries too hard to be iOS.'
- Rival PC makers face a competitor whose flagship desktop OS now borrows tablet interaction patterns and ships alongside hardware refreshed the same day, tightening the integration argument against the Windows ecosystem.
Third-order effects
- If the App Store-only delivery holds, OS upgrades become a services relationship — continuous, account-tied, and hardware-paired — rather than a retail event, a structural shift other platform vendors would need to answer.
- The four-year gap since the Leopard review suggests a faster, more incremental cadence ahead, with each release importing more of iOS into the Mac rather than the two platforms diverging.
The trend: Desktop operating systems are being rebuilt around mobile-era distribution and interaction models, with Apple using Lion to fold the Mac into the iPhone/i iPad ecosystem it built after 2007.