Apple says Mac OS X Lion (10.7) is the biggest OS launch in the company’s history.
The OS cost $30 and is only available as a digital download to those Mac users running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.
Says Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing:
Lion is off to a great start, user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic. Lion is a huge step forward, it’s not only packed with innovative features but it’s incredibly easy for users to update their Macs to the best OS we’ve ever made.
Result for: Mac OS
Apple has completely blown out their quarterly earnings report this afternoon, on the back of strong growth in China and record iPad sales.
Profits for the quarter were $7.31 billion, up 125 percent year-over-year, and revenue was $28.57 billion, up 82 percent YoY.
Following the report, Apple, which closed the day at $376.85 jumped to as high as $405 per share, a new all-time high.
Additionally, the company confirmed it will be releasing Mac OS X 10.7 Lion tomorrow, as reported earlier.
iPhone sales jumped 142 percent to 20.34 million units (a record) and iPad sales jumped to 9.25 million units (also a record).
Says CEO Steve Jobs:
We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent. Right now, we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.
Sales in China, and the Asia-Pacific region in general, had the most explosive growth with COO Peter Oppenheimer saying overall sales in China are up 600 percent “and just beginning.”
A few other figures of note from the report was weak Mac sales (3.95 million units, up 13.8 percent YoY), the continued decline in iPod sales (down 20 percent to 7.54 million units) and an overall gross margin of 41.7 percent, huge for any industry.
Apple is also expected to release the iPhone 5 in September.
Result for: Mac OS
Two days into the Pwn2Own hacking challenge, only a few still remain.
So far, hackers have not been able to exploit Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome, and the mobile Android OS.
Victims of the contest include Internet Explorer 8, Apple Safari 5, iOS 4 and BlackBerry.
All the security researchers who manage to exploit the browsers or operating systems take home a cash prize of $15,000 and a laptop. If Chrome gets beaten, the researcher takes home $20,000.
Charlie Miller beat the iPhone 4 with iOS and has taken home the prize in 2007, 2009, 2010 and this year.
Firefox fixed 10 security flaws the day before the contest started, and Google fixed 9. Chrome has yet to be defeated since its launch in 2008, while Firefox was beaten in 2009 and 2010.
Security researchers from VUPEN beat Safari 5, rather easily: “We pwned Apple Safari on Mac OS X (x64) at Pwn2Own in 5 seconds.”
