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Apple to Sell Lion on USB Thumb Drive Starting in August for $69

Wednesday July 20, 2011 5:53 am PDT by Arnold Kim

In Apple's press release for OS X Lion, the company revealed that they will be selling OS X Lion on USB Flash Drive as well starting in August:
Users who do not have broadband access at home, work or school can download Lion at Apple retail stores and later this August, Lion will be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com) for $69 (US).
This should allay concerns about those who can't easily download Lion using their home internet connection, or may want some sort of physical media.
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Ivan P
40 months ago
I think it's great they're going to offer a physical option - the part I cannot understand is how it apparently asks for a $40 markup? Sure I understand production and distribution costs, but they managed to ship Snow Leopard on a disc for only $29 a couple years ago, I wouldn't imagine a ~4GB thumb drive to cause that much of a price increase.
Rating: 11 Votes
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macridah
40 months ago
That's quite a premium but I bet it will sell and that gives me more reason to keep my apple shares.
Rating: 10 Votes
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t0rr3s
40 months ago
Apparently the thumbdrive can transform into a 3d lion ala transformers.
Rating: 10 Votes
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S.Jobs
40 months ago
They are really pushing the App Store. $40 for a flash drive, come on man! those are dirt cheap these days.
Rating: 7 Votes
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Jolly Jimmy
40 months ago
This was obviously going to happen. Now all the 'get a better internet connection' fools can finally shut up.
Rating: 6 Votes
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gregoryhargis
40 months ago
i'm pretty sure apple is just doing the price hike because they want to discourage people from buying the physical OS and instead use the Mac App Store to download it. They've been doing this for years by taking away CD/DVD drives in things like the Macbook Air and now the MacMini. They want to move everyone into digital downloads, and one way to push people is to make it more expensive to purchase a hard copy.
Rating: 5 Votes
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ArcaneDevice
40 months ago

Perfect for those on a bandwidth budget :)


Yeah woo hoo. Welcome to the future!

Where if you are in an area with sh tty broadband speeds and providers Apple will do you the favor of selling you a $5 USB drive for $40 when previously a DVD would have cost you nothing.

Thanks Apple!

Steve's personal gigabit line to his house has made him forget what the rest of the country has to put up with.
Rating: 4 Votes
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AAPLaday
40 months ago
Perfect for those on a bandwidth budget :)
Rating: 3 Votes
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acurafan
40 months ago
...and eventually they realized 'download-only' was a lesson in stupidity. altho, i'll burn my own, this is good news.
Rating: 2 Votes
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jelew1985
40 months ago

Forgive my ignorance on this but -

I have 10.6.6 installed, let's say I buy & download Lion. At some point my hard drive fails, and I need to re-install. Does it require 10.6 to be installed for me to reinstall Lion, or is it a case of I should have 10.6 installed, but it's not enforced?

If it's the former, I'd rather not have to keep a backup of Lion around, AND my Snow Leopard DVD.


If you have downloaded Lion you can put the installation files onto a flash drive and boot from it. It will allow you to do a clean install without installing Snow. I did this today. I wiped out my harddrive and installed Lion with no previous versions installed.
Rating: 2 Votes

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