While the official release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion was earlier this morning, it’s download-only model makes it virtually unobtainable for those without a fast Internet connection. We brought this topic up when Lion was announced at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference in June.

Opinion of this was about a 50/50 split. Many disagreed with the post, claiming that the 4GB download wasn’t unruly and that broadband access was easy enough to come by that it shouldn’t be a problem. Others agreed with the topic that many parts of the United States—and the world—don’t necessarily have the kind of high speed access that would make installing Lion as easy for them as Apple made it out to be.

It wasn’t a pretty argument on either side, but the suggestion that Apple make Lion available on some sort of media, at a slight premium if necessary, was bandied about on our different social media discussions. It was a reasonable enough request. Unlike the suggestion saying I should move to any area that did have broadband ;-)

Well, someone at Apple must have either heard about our discussion or had it planned all along, because according to an Apple news release:

“Users who do not have broadband access at home, work or school can download Lion at Apple retail stores and later this August, Lion will be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com) for $69 (US). Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and is available from the Mac App Store for $49.99 (US).”

The only drawback I can see to this is that the price will be more than double the $29.99 they’re charging for the downloadable version.

None the less, this option will be a viable alternative to the App Store download-only version, especially those with slow or capped Internet connections.