Posted by Greg Mills

Lion is coming soon. Developers have gotten a version of Lion that is a "Golden Master". In the language of software, that means the version thus designated is free of known issues and will be the version shipped to the public. Various rumors regarding the release date have been circulating for a while now. Some have mentioned July 6 as being the release date.

From what seems to be reliable sources, Lion has some aspects of its user interface that will remind you of the iOS seen on iPhone and iPads. I have speculated that some sort of run-time sandbox for iOS apps might appear but haven't heard of any confrimation on that.

What is also known is that Lion is 64 Bit through-out. This uses the full power of recent chip sets to quickly run apps that are designed to run on 64 bits. Some legacy software will no longer run on Lion. The software required to run Power PC versions of Mac software will no longer be supported. Also, early Intel Macs won't run Lion.

The download delivery system Apple is going to use to download Lion to us will require a pretty good internet connection as Lion is around 4 Gigs according to information I have seen recently. What we can also expect is speed and powerful features that haven't even been announced. Apple likes to hold back enough information to delight the public and keep tech writers on our toes.