On Sunday, I ordered an iMac to replace my aging white Macbook. I expected that I would have to follow the instructions on Apple’s OSX Up-to-Date page. I configured the 21.5″ iMac with a 2.8 i7 processor. At the time of placing my order, I saw that the delivery date was July 20-22. Thinking it was just that Apple would need more time to put in the i7, I just let it go.
However, considering that it’s the 19th today and tomorrow, the 20th, is when rumors point to as Lion’s commercial release date, maybe Apple is delaying shipments until the 20th in order to install OSX Lion on pending orders. Maybe they’ll just insert a drop in disk instead.
That happened when I bought my Macbook in 2007 on OSX Leopard 10.5’s release day. The box had a sticky on it with the label “Drop in” and an upgrade only disk for Leopard inside.
This afternoon, at 4, I checked my order again. It’s status was “Prepared for Shipment”. If tomorrow or the next two days really is (well, I’m sure it’s one of them) Lion’s release date, then it would make sense for Apple to delay recent Mac orders to save customers the trouble to downloading the new OS from the Mac App Store.
Update: Apple’s Peter Oppenheimer has confirmed that Lion will debut Wednesday on the Mac App Store. Source: Macworld.com
**Update 2: Order shipped via Fedex Ground in Newark, CA. It’ll probably come tomorrow as we’re located in Fremont, CA. **
**Update 3: Came on the 20th. The iMac was not preloaded with Lion nor did it come with a drop in disk. We used Apple’s Up-to-date program to download Lion off of the App Store and we also made a bootable disk ourselves. ** *We just wrote a review on Lion; read it here. *
