Mountain Lion was certainly popular with the reviewers ( our own Jason Snell included). But it’s the masses that matter when it comes to OS X, and, according to a press release from Apple, the masses were quite enamored of the release, downloading more than 3 million copies in the first four days.
Last year, Lion racked up 1 million downloads in a single day, and by the end of Apple’s fourth quarter it passed 6 million; in contrast, Mountain Lion looks set to beat that adoption rate, assuming its downloads stay at this level. Apple also described Mountain Lion as the most successful OS release in the company’s history.
Price may have helped, in part: Mountain Lion is $10 cheaper than its predecessor; additionally, consumers can upgrade directly from Snow Leopard, letting those who weren’t so thrilled with Lion make a jump to OS X 10.8 without paying for the intermediary step.
Mountain Lion also brings OS X more in sync with iOS, expanding iCloud’s connectivity, adding other features from the popular mobile OS, and bringing new apps and services to Apple’s desktop platform.
If you weren’t one of the first 3 million downloads, you can see what all the fuss is about by reading our coverage of Mountain Lion and visiting Mountain Lion’s page on the Mac App Store.
Updated at 9:23 a.m. Pacific: An earlier version of this report said that Lion was downloaded 4 million times in Apple’s fourth quarter of 2011; the correct number is 6 million.