Lion has been released! The wait is over, you can download OS X Lion from the Mac App Store

Update: Mac OS X Lion GM has been released, signifying a public release is due in the very near future. Stay tuned!

Update 2: The Lion release date is imminent.

Update 3: The WSJ’s AllThingsD appears to confirm Lion release date will be next week, alongside new MacBook Airs possibly on Thursday or Friday.

Update 4: Apple has confirmed that OS X Lion release date is July 20

Some of the biggest Mac OS X related news from WWDC 2011:

• Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will be publicly released in July – this fits in line with Apple’s expected ‘summer 2011’ release announcement
• Mac OS X Lion will be be available exclusively as a download from the Mac App Store – this is perhaps the most controversial Mac OS X announcement, since many users were hoping for DVD’s and USB keys as well
• Lion will cost $29.99 – “aggressively priced” as predicted, pretty cheap for an all new operating system

The keynote for Lion covered most of the features already known to beta testers through the Developer Previews, however Mac OS X Lion is said to include over 250 new enhancements and features. Based on my albeit brief exposure to Lion and the features that Apple has talked about, it’s well worth the $30 price tag and I will be upgrading without hesitation.

We’ll keep you posted as more useful news comes in.

Update: Mac OS X Lion Server will be $49.99 and available in July as a separate download/upgrade from the Mac App Store.

One of our readers sent in this screenshot with a funny looking error code they got when trying to redeem a promo code on the App Store. It’s a sloppy error, spilling over the allocated space and dumping some object name or something onto the user.

The error seen is “MZFreeProductCode.ClientCannotRedeemIosApp_explanation” and the assumption is that this is a bug on the App Store that is preventing you from redeeming an app promo code. That is partially true, and partially not, and I was able to replicate the error message myself consistently, but the bug may not be what you think it is.

The Error is… Wrong App Store!
The real bug here is not that the promo code isn’t working, it’s a bug in how the error message is displayed by the App Store. Let’s review the error message again, and see what stands out at us, ClientCannotRedeemIosApp_explanation – see that? Ios, it’s not using the capitalization that we’re used to, iOS, but the problem is that you are trying to redeem an iOS promo code on the Mac App Store.

The Problem & the Cause
This problem seems to occur most often with the app promo code giveaways that have become popular on blogs and twitter feeds. A feed will dump a series of promo codes with no clear indication on what the app is. Users see a promo code and just throw it into their nearest app store, often without much direction from the initial giveaway – this is especially true with twitter giveaways. Is it an iOS app code? A Mac app code? Who knows! This is the cause of the problem.

The Solution: Use the Proper App Store
This is a very simple fix, just launch iTunes and be sure to use the iOS App Store rather than the Mac App Store. I’m assuming this goes both directions, and that a similarly funky error message will be displayed if you attempt to redeem a Mac app code through the iOS App Store.

We got an email about this a while ago and I figured it was a one-off problem, but the fact that we’re still seeing error reports and getting emails about this suggests this is a broader troubleshooting thing and should be clarified and explained. Finally, from Apple’s side with the App Stores, they should just replace the error message with one that is more appropriate for the situation like “This is an iOS App Promo Code”, it would reduce some confusion.

The official and exclusive biography of Steve Jobs is now available for pre-order on Amazon. The book is appropriately titled iSteve: The Book of Jobs, and here’s the description:

From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In iSteve: The Book of Jobs, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs’ professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs’ family members, key colleagues from Apple and its competitors, iSteve is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.

This should be a good read for anyone who is a fan of invention, Apple, and their one-of-a-kind CEO. Pre-ordering gets you a hardcover copy of the book at 40% off the retail price, but it won’t be released until March of 2012. A Kindle version will also be available for $14.99.

Pre-Order iSteve: The Book of Jobs for $18 at Amazon

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This is where it all started from, the classic “Hello” iPhone commercial for the very first iPhone. The TV ad was an almost instant classic that featured scene after scene of famous actors answering phones in famous movies.

As you watch, you undoubtedly will recognize many of these from movies and moments in cinematic history. And, as if Apple knew it would be cementing it’s place in popular culture, the commercial wraps up with a “Hello” on a first-gen Apple iPhone with a call from ‘John Appleseed’, before flashing an  Apple logo.

Embedded below, years past the original Apple iPhone commercial is still well worth watching again:

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The highly acclaimed first-person shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is on sale this weekend for Mac OS X gamers through MacUpdate Promo for just $23.99. For comparison, it’s $35.99 on the Mac App Store or $24.88 shipped from Amazon.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for $23.99 from MacUpdate Promo

If you buy the game through MacUpdate you’ll be able to download it instantly and play immediately, whereas the Amazon order is a physical box and has to ship to your door. I say save a buck and play now.

Check out the COD4 trailer below:

I featured COD4 in my recent list of 6 of the best games for Mac that are on sale, and it’s now cheaper than the price was then by about $10. Same game, lower price, good deal.

Mac system requirements for Call of Duty 4 are as follows: Intel Core 2 Duo at 2 Ghz or faster, 2GB of RAM or more, at least 8GB of disk space, and a video card with 256MB of VRAM or more, including the following video cards:

• NVIDIA GEFORCE: 7300,7600, 8600,8800, 9400, 9600, GT 120, 320M, 330M
• ATI RADEON: X1600, HD 2400, HD 2600, HD 3870, HD 4670, HD 4850, HD 5670, HD 5750

You’ll also want broadband internet access so that you’ll be able to play online, but of course you’d want that also if you’re going to download the game.

Below is another lengthy video of actual gameplay, it’s 9 minutes long and gives a good idea of what to expect:
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Files from medical imaging devices like MRI’s, ultrasound, PET, CT scans, etc come as a collection of .DCM files which will not open on their own through just any image or video application. No big deal, because I came across some pretty amazing software for Mac OS X and iOS that will render these DICOM files as a fully controllable and playable 3D movie. Not only can these apps view the DICOM files, but you can then export them either as static images in a variety of friendly formats like JPG and TIFF or even as QuickTime movies.

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iOS 5 has been long rumored to include wireless syncing and over-the-air updates, and now at least part of this feature seems to be confirmed through a brief leak on iTunes. MacRumors reports that the iTunes update page briefly included the following phrase, discussing a feature called “Automatic Download” that currently does not exist:

if your device has Automatic Download enabled for apps, your updates will download to your device without having to sync.

The text was quickly pulled down by Apple, but seems to indicate that the “Automatic Download” feature will enable apps to install updates on their own with little user involvement, it’s also possible this includes iOS system updates. This could be both good and bad, good because it would make app updating much easier for novice users, and bad because some app updates involve unwanted features (barrage of ads or Twitter Dickbar anyone?).

The other side to automatic updates is the potential ramifications this has on jailbreaks and apps run on jailbroken hardware, since any automatic updating of software, particularly iOS system software, could cause a conflict and render the device useless without a restore. Over-the-air updates were included in the the list of things Apple is doing to kill jailbreaking for this reason.

We’ll undoubtedly hear more about this feature and many more at WWDC on Monday, so stay tuned.

Sometimes deciding between black and white devices is too difficult, so why not choose both?

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Is this what the new iOS 5 notification system will look like? That’s the question on everyones mind now that there has been confirmation that the developer of MobileNotifier is working for Apple.

For those who don’t know, MobileNotifier is a popular jailbreak tool that completely redesigns iOS’s notification system for the better. Notifications pop across the top of the screen but do not interfere with app functionality. If you’re on a lock screen, they gather in relevant groups and are easy to quickly identify. Shown are a few screenshots and two videos of MobileNotifier.

Notifications delivered and managed through the MobileNotifier app are easier to view, see, manage, and just all around improved, and apparently Apple was impressed enough too to hire developer Peter Hajas directly. This is perhaps the strong indicator yet of what the iOS 5 notification system will be.

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Rather than disabling Flash completely in Chrome, an excellent option is to enable a hidden “Click to Play” feature that prevents that plugin and all others from automatically loading. With Click To Play turned on, if you want Flash or another browse plug-in to run and load, you simply click on it to play or load the plugin. This feature is cross platform compatible, and it works the same in Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, and it can actually speed up your web browsing experience a bit since it reduces load times on many web pages.

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You can quickly retrieve active DNS server IP addresses on any Mac by using the networksetup utility. This is done from the command line, so launch the Terminal app and type one of the following command strings, dependent on the version of OS X that is running on the Mac.

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Some stories are so outrageous they are hard to believe, and this is a big WTF: a 17 year old boy in China sold his kidney to an organ broker so that he could buy an iPad 2.

As if this story didn’t sound bad enough, now comes the extra bad part; the hospital that performed the kidney extraction was not qualified to do so, and now the kid is sick, missing a kidney, and his parents are understandably upset and have opened a police investigation.

ShanghaiDaily quotes the teenager saying:

“I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it,” said the boy surnamed Zheng in Huaishan City. “A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.”

20,000 yuan is $3085, and the boy supposedly ended up buying both an iPad 2 and an iPhone with the money.

You can watch the video of a Chinese news report below, it shows the hospital and even the kids surgical scar:

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Update: Yes, you can upgrade any existing OS X Lion installation to Lion Server by downloading OS X Lion Server from the Mac App Store and installing it on top of a Mac already running 10.7.

A post on HardMac suggests that any Mac OS X Lion installation will be upgradeable to Lion Server via a paid update through the Mac App Store. This was discovered by a French reader who apparently has or had access to different Lion Help documents than what exists on Apple’s US servers, since we were unable to verify this ourselves.

Apple either took down the support document in question or it never existed in the first place at least on Apple’s US Help documents server. Here’s what you’ll find if you use the exact same search operators in Lion’s help menu:

In fact, there is no reference to Lion Server at all in the Help search menu. Nonetheless, upgrading to Lion Server through the App Store wouldn’t be too surprising considering the consumer-level Lion will be installable through the Mac App Store too.

The malware protecting Mac OS X Security Update will automatically download and update it’s malware definitions list from Apple, but if you’re like me you probably want to know how to manually check if the malware list is updated or not.

We’ll show you where the malware list is located on Mac, and how to determine when it was last updated, and if you want to, we’ll additionally show how to forcibly update the malware definition file on Mac so that everything is up to date as it should be.

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Putting on my bullet proof vest here, dare I say there’s some features shown in the Windows 8 demo video that iOS and even Mac OS X would greatly benefit from?

Regardless of how you feel about Windows, Microsoft, and Apple competition, you have to admit there are some good ideas shown in the first look at Windows 8. Here are six features that I think look promising enough that the iPhone and iPad would benefit from including too:

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Competition is heating up as everyone races to catch up to Apple’s runaway success with iOS. Now Microsoft is throwing it’s hat into the touch and tablet ring with their first video demo of Windows 8. Clearly influenced in part by the iPad but still adding a unique twist to touch interfaces, Microsoft’s demo video of Windows 8 is actually pretty impressive. There’s a lot of good ideas shown here, the user interface looks really interesting and there’s a lot of shared elements with Windows Phone 7, but aspects like tiles clearly work better on a larger touch screen than a smaller 3.5″ mobile display.

The video is about 4.5 minutes long, but it doesn’t really start showing off features until almost a minute in. Check it out, it’s interesting to see what Apple is up against.

Update: Here are 6 features that iOS needs to borrow from Windows 8, although I imagine iOS 5 will address many of these.

A new report indicates that Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will be “aggressively priced” and include free access to some of the expected iCloud features and services as an added incentive for Mac users to upgrade.

Lion to Include Free iCloud Features?

Providing a substantial reason for Mac users to jump to Lion, Apple may offer some iCloud features completely for free. This could be indicative of direct Lion and iCloud integration, or just an upgrade bonus. Unfortunately the report from AppleInsider does not mention which iCloud features would be included with Mac OS X Lion for free, but this isn’t terribly surprising considering the service has only been announced by name thus far. The current expected iCloud feature list is nothing but speculation, but everyone will get a complete overview of the service at WWDC on Monday of next week.

Will Mac OS X Lion be Another $29 Upgrade?

In addition to offering some free iCloud services, Mac OS X Lion could be available at a surprisingly low sale price through the Mac App Store, potentially matching the $29 price tag of the past 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade. AppleInsider explains that “software now plays a very small part in Apple’s bottom line, and the company is said to be interested in ensuring that users quickly upgrade to the latest version of Mac OS X, through incentives and low barriers to entry.” They cite what they call an ‘unproven source’ regarding the aggressive pricing, but the low price point of the past Snow Leopard upgrade helped it to reach record setting sales levels, and Apple would likely want to replicate that success.

iCloud Integration Could be Reason Mac OS X Lion is King of the Jungle

While Mac OS X Lion already shows many promising new features in the Developer Previews, there is increasing evidence that suggests iCloud could be one of the defining unannounced features that sets Lion apart from any previous Mac OS X release, thus justifying the “Lion” king-of-the-jungle monicker. Rumors have long existed that suggest there will be cloud integration in Apple’s next major OS, but the widely used developer builds have either completely omitted or carefully disguised many of the features that have been patented or simply rumored and hoped to exist. Is iCloud integration going to be the killer feature of Lion? Pay attention to WWDC this year, it’s going to be a big one.

Not much is known about iCloud other than that Apple will officially unveil the service next week at WWDC alongside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and iOS 5. The most obvious aspect of these three products launching alongside one another is that they’ll all be deeply integrated, but what does that mean? What is iCloud going to be and what will it offer? Let’s take a look.

Possible iCloud Features

iCloud is expected to offer a barrage of new abilities and integration to both Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5. The increasingly well-connected MG Siegler of TechCrunch says “we know – or think we know” iCloud may offer the following features:

• iTunes library mirroring and streaming to any device, no uploading of media or songs required
• Music streaming from your browser via iTunes.com
• Movie & television streaming
• iDrive & iDisk integration in Mac OS X Finder and iOS
• Photostreaming, possibly with Twitter and/or Facebook integration
• Advanced location services beyond “Find my iPhone” and “Find my Mac”
• Improved voices and speech recognition, the improved voices are already found in Mac OS X Lion developer builds
• Dramatic improvements to existing MobileMe features including syncing of email, calendar, address book
• Improved notifications delivered and maintained via iCloud, access your iPhone notifications from your Mac, and vice versa?
• Game Center becomes a gaming network much like PSN and Xbox Live
• Wireless iOS device syncing, this has been long anticipated, and the New York Times reported earlier in the year that it was coming
• Free entry-level iCloud services, including syncing of the calendar, address book, bookmarks, iBooks, Find my iPhone, and email. Possibly $99 for access to all other features. This is in line with the report from AppleInsider indicating that some iCloud services will be free with the purchase of Lion.

This list could be entirely hypothetical, but TechCrunch has become a more reliable source of Apple rumors as of late, suggesting that there are truths mixed in with some speculation here. Regardless, iCloud is looking like an exciting service and we’ll find out for sure come WWDC next week.