So, Where Will you get 10.7 from? (Not the torrents!)

Where will you get 10.7 from?

Appleinsider reports that Apple plans to offer the upgrade to 10.7 through the Mac App Store. You’ll have to upgrade to at least 10.6.6 to get the App Store running on your Mac right now.

Apple already uses the Mac App Store to distribute the Developer Previews of OS X 10.7, so it makes sense that they would use this distribution channel for the final product.

Of course, not everyone has sufficiently fast and reliable Internet to download the upgrade to 10.7. Apple will need to prepare lots of DVDs for those people. Many people prefer to have the “hard copy” of the software for future reinstallation.

Apple went to a USB flash drive for copies of 10.6 that it includes with the MacBook Air. A hint for the future of all Macs or just an option for people buying the high end MacBook Airs? We shall see.

In any case, 10.7 will not run software written for the PowerPC chip. So if you have some old program written in Carbon that ran under both OS 9.2.2 and 10.x that you really rely on...you better decide what to do. Keep the old computer around? Partition the Macintosh HD on your new computer so you can install 10.6 or 10.5? Go to an external hard drive for one or more of the OS versions?

You’ll find articles covering several options in this summer’s Voices.

The Tablet Wars

As I read Appleinsider, Motorola’s marketing people kept the Xoom in mind. The Xoom appears on every pageview with the splashscreen from Angry Birds on the screen.

I remember back to the days of early PCs-it really is time for me to sign up for AARP-when Microsoft Flight Simulator served as the test of PC compatibility. Now Angry Birds is the test of every tablet. If a consumer level tablet can’t play that game, it’s toast.

Now for two more contestants to ramp up their offerings. Both Barnes & Noble and Amazon offer E-book readers. Now it appears they want to offer more versatile tablets.

B&N has told the SEC it intends to offer something more. It already has an upgrade for its Nook Color reader. For $249, the Nook Color isn’t an iPad; but it’s only $249.

And from Taiwan, Digitimes.com-the source of so much information on Taiwan’s computer business-reports that Amazon has placed an large order with Quanta Computer, the big Original Equipment Manufacturer. Rumor has it that Amazon intends to go beyond the Kindle and offer a color tablet with an LCD screen. They intend to offer it in 2011. No word on whether they plan to offer some version of Android for their operating system or stick with the software in the Kindle.

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Cinco De Mayo celebrates the victory of Mexican forces over the troops of Emperor Napoleon III in 1862 at the Battle of Puebla. It is NOT the Mexican Day of Independence. That falls on September 16, 2011.