Apple to Offer Lion on USB Sticks

Despite Apple’s plans to offer OS X Lion, released on Wednesday, only as a download the company will offer an installer on USB flash drives as well. The flash drive installers will be available at Apple Stores, but not until late August.

Lion on USB sticks. Tastes like chicken?Lion will be available on USB drives come August

Lion borrows several iPad interface features such as multi-touch gestures for navigation and app selection, a homescreen-like Launchpad for organizing apps, and full screen view for individual apps. It also takes advantage of Mission Control for quick access to other applications and application windows, includes system-level support for the Mac App Store, includes a redesigned Mail app, offers improved disk encryption option, document auto-saving, and document versioning.

Mac users that don’t want to wait until August for a physical copy of Lion can use the Mac App Store to download and install it today. Lion is priced at US$29.99, and the USB flash drive version will cost $69.