Apple OS X Lion sells over a million copies on day one

Apple on Thursday announced that the company's customers had downloaded more than a million copies of OS X Lion on Wednesday, the fastest pace in Apple's history.

Wednesday marked the release of Apple's OS X Lion, which Apple released as a digital download - and only a digital download, from its Mac Apps Store - for $29.99.

In snapping up Lion, Apple customers apparently set new records for Apple's eight major operating system. The release also comes amid news that Apple may begin ditching boxed software.

"Lion is off to a great start, user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, in a statement. "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."

Apple served up fantastic news for investors Tuesday with record quarterly revenue and net profit for its fiscal third quarter ending June 25. The computing and consumer electronics titan easily beat its own guidance and the Street's expectations with sales of $28.57 billion and earnings of $7.31 billion for earnings per share of $7.79.

"OS X 10.7 Lion includes convenience and safety features never seen before on a desktop operating system, such as documents that are saved automatically as you work—so you never have to save a file and can recover previous versions effortlessly—plus applications that automatically start up in the same state they were in when you closed them, and an option that, by default, restarts your system with all application windows showing exactly the same documents and cursor locations that they had when you last shut the system down," according to Apple's OS X Lion review. "Lion also includes hundreds of major improvements and minor tweaks that combine to make OS X both the most convenient and the most powerful operating system ever.

"The three main things you need to know about OS X Lion are these: It's faster and more flexible than ever," the review added. "It's more powerful than ever. And you don't have to climb a learning curve to use it."

This article, written by Mark Hachman, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc.