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Mac Moves to PHP 5.3.6 With Release of OS X Lion

With Apple‘s release of OS X Lion, the bundled version of PHP has been updated to PHP 5.3.6, the very latest production version of PHP.

PHP 5.3 includes features like:

  • namespaces,
  • lambda funtions,
  • late static binding, and
  • a native mysql driver, mysqlnd.

This is good news for web developers using Mac. If we want to work the latest PHP release, we don’t have to resort to installing a separate version of PHP, using a tool like MacPorts.

Probably the fact that Lion is only available as a download through the Apple App Store has helped Apple ship with the latest PHP version.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard currently uses PHP 5.3.4, even with the latest 10.6.8 update.

A PHP 5.4 Alpha has just been released, with useful features like traits. I wonder whether Apple will update to PHP 5.4 during Lion’s lifetime? I can only hope.