With previous releases of Mac OS, Apple had to stop development about a month before it was supposed to ship, so disks could be manufactured. After manufacturing, disks had to be shipped to stores and other retail outlets, which costs quite a bit of money when you add it all up. Yesterday, they released Lion on the Mac App Store and paid whatever distribution it costs to have it downloaded. That’s it. $29.99 x 1 million sold.

No damn wonder Apple can pull in a $7 billion profit in one quarter. Good on you Apple.