Apple approving Lion centric app updates in the Mac App Store

Just a couple of days ago Apple passed around a release letting developers know that they should submit their Lion-ified applications and updates for review in the near future. Since then Apple has begun reviewing and approving applications that are ready for Lion, which only means one thing — Lion is pretty close to launch. Apple said Lion would ship in July, and we still have 17 days. Looks like we’re right on track.

There were rumors circulating the Internet leading up to today that Lion would ship sometime today; however, that hasn’t happened. Which, if you stop and think about it for 2.3 seconds, actually makes quite a bit of sense. Why would Apple ship an operating system that still doesn’t have any applications in the Mac App Store that are Lion-ified? The Mac App Store, despite being available for months now, was heralded as a major advancement in Lion. No Lion ready apps on the Mac App Store would mean major problems for people jumping into the upgrade head first. That’s not the Apple way.

Put it this way, Lion, running in the gold master form, is still pretty crashy. At this point it may not be the operating system, and it could very well be incompatible applications fudging up the system’s chi, but either way, it’s not a seamless experience yet. Here’s a case in point: I just had to force quit Safari because it ballooned to using 1 GB of my RAM. It could be the apps, and it could be the OS, but either way, Lion just isn’t quite ready for prime time, especially if the applications aren’t ready yet. Apple will never be able to ensure that all apps are Lion ready, but they can certainly do their best to make sure updates are rolling in to the review team before they pull the trigger on releasing the new OS X beast.

The less time I spend cursing crashes and the more time I spend actually getting some work done only means one thing — success. Let’s hope we get there before we’re all asked to update to Lion.

Quick note: If you rely on any application in your day-to-day life, we’d highly recommend looking into whether or not the application is Lion ready before you actually upgrade your operating system. Some applications in the past, like SuperDuper!, have been slow to update. It causes a lot of headaches then, and it’ll certainly cause a couple more with Lion. Don’t get screwed. Make sure your must-have apps are ready to go.  You’ll thank us for it.

Source: OS X Daily
Via: MacStories

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.