Apple's Lion reached 1 million copies sold

Apple today revealed that it sold more than 1 million copies of Lion on its first day of availability. Lion is  the latest version of Apple's Mac OS.

The software, which went on sale yesterday, made its debut back in October during the company's "Back to the Mac" event. In today's release, the company noted that customers are buying Lion faster than any other operating system release in company's history.

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

Lion is the first version of Apple's Mac OS which is available as a digital download through the Mac App Store. The company is planning to let customers buy it on a USB stick for $69 which is more than double the software's $29.99 digital price tag.
Apple says that Lion packs in "morethan 250 new features." Some of the highlighted features include support for full-screen applications, more multitouch gestures, auto save for app data, AirDrop file transfer, and a feature which is similar to icon based application launcher in ios called "Launchpad".

So far the new operating system has gained 9,376 user ratings on the Mac App Store and there is about 2,091 written reviews. So it will get an average of 4.5-star rating (out of 5 stars).

This is the first time Apple revealed about sales numbers for one of its OS updates since releasing Leopard back near the end of 2007. That version of the Operating System sold more than 2 million copies in its first weekend on sale.