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Lion should really be on a disc

NoSmokingBandit said:
Lion should really be on a disc, and this is why i think so:

Lets say something goes horribly wrong and i have to reinstall my OS. It happens to the best of us. Instead of popping in my Lion disc and installing like normal i'll have to...

1) Install Snow Leopard
2) update to the newest 1.6.X if my disc version is before the App Store was introduced.
3) Download Lion (~an hour depending on one's connection)
4) Install Lion
5) Update Lion

This could take a large part of your afternoon.
Click to expand...

You are forgetting about the recovery partition. Reboot into the partition, click "reinstall lion," (wait as it downloads, this part would suck--maybe it will be able to see the installer if you have it on a usb stick) done.

In the event of a total hard drive failure, as I've said before, I think Apple wants you to take it to them to fix. I don't like this at all.

You should really consider backing up all your stuff. Hard drives are dirt cheap and it makes it so much easier to restore in the case of hard drive failure.
 
Cougarcat said:
You should really consider backing up all your stuff. Hard drives are dirt cheap and it makes it so much easier to restore in the case of hard drive failure.
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The backup doesn't matter if you're dealing with drive failure because you have no way to get the OS on the replacement drive to then pull the backup from.

Also, I know that Apple has greatly expanded their retail offerings in the past decade, but it's just foolish to think that a customer will be able to bring their Mac in for something common enough like drive failure. I live in the midwest, I'm at least a 5 hour drive from a corporate Apple store, and a 3 hour drive from an authorized retailer (we have 3 in the state). Do they honestly expect me to mail in my machine when its out of warranty to get a drive replaced and have 10.7 installed on it?
 
SavMBP15 said:
I am here to disagree on your point. Why? Because manyof the apps on the App store are not the most current versions of software out there. Apple or third party vendors.
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i honestly don't have a lot of experience with mac app store apps, but the ios app store will only download the most up to date versions. it's curious it wouldn't be the same for mac apps.
 
iCheddar said:
The backup doesn't matter if you're dealing with drive failure because you have no way to get the OS on the replacement drive to then pull the backup from.
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You would if you had a superduper clone, but that's not as convenient as Time Machine and almost no one will have one. But I was talking about full backups in general being a good idea, not about addressing this specific issue.

Also, I know that Apple has greatly expanded their retail offerings in the past decade, but it's just foolish to think that a customer will be able to bring their Mac in for something common enough like drive failure. I live in the midwest, I'm at least a 5 hour drive from a corporate Apple store, and a 3 hour drive from an authorized retailer (we have 3 in the state). Do they honestly expect me to mail in my machine when its out of warranty to get a drive replaced and have 10.7 installed on it?
Click to expand...

I agree, this is a problem.
 
MacinJosh said:
Could you please tell us what it says? My crappy internet won't let me watch it...
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Schiller says that in the past, OS X has always been on a DVD, and he has every DVD release on the screen. Then he said Lion was going Appstore-only, as the DVDs behind him disintegrated. "That allows us to make it the easiest upgrade you've ever seen." 4GB download, the size of an HD movie. Installs in place.
 
disc

It better be only a trial thing otherwise i won't be there.

As I said in another post, if Apple charges $10 extra for the disc (I think this could be why its cheaper), then I would be happy to be that..... ok,, so i'm basically paying the same price then i got for 10.6, but hey,..... the disc is everything.

Unless Lion in the Mac App install can be prevented, and it downloads a dmg image you can burn, this would be good, but still... you need an OS there to even do that, or access to another mac. so ya i agree. disc is the only way to go. Bootable usb key etc is also good, but without the OS (particularly on a blank hard drive) your stuffed.
 
Cougarcat said:
Schiller says that in the past, OS X has always been on a DVD, and he has every DVD release on the screen. Then he said Lion was going Appstore-only, as the DVDs behind him disintegrated. "That allows us to make it the easiest upgrade you've ever seen." 4GB download, the size of an HD movie. Installs in place.
Click to expand...

Thanks mate!

Well, seems like bad news for me.

However, I find it *highly* unlikely that Apple would drop physical media just like that. It would be conceivable that they phaze it out bit by bit. One way of doing it is not talking about it. I'm sure down the road there will be ways to buy a DVD with Lion on it. They will just not market it.

If they don't come up with any way for us backward people to get Lion, they are *forcing* us into piracy. Ok, ok, we could buy the thing from the AppStore and then have someone torrent it for us and send it over on a DVD.

All that said, my money is on a Lion DVD being available down the road otherwise Apple would really be hurting themselves. The day when Apple doesn't provide physical media for their applications is the day when they start shipping computers without optical drives.
 
I though I'd add some more thoughts on the Lion distribution method based on Apple's history.

All of Apple's OSes up until 7.5 were on floppies. IIRC OS8.0 and up were CD only. No transition with OS8 available on floppies as well as CDs. This was understandable because of the sheer amount of floppies required to install the OS.

I'm not entirely sure when installation DVDs becames available but at least Jaguar (10.2), Panther (10.3) and Tiger (10.4) were available on DVDs as well as CDs to cater for those with no DVD drives. Leopard was the first OS to be DVD-only. That's an example of Apple transitioning distribution methods.

With Leopard and Snow-Leopard being DVD-only and then jumping to Lion which supposedly is download-only makes no sense and does not follow Apple's style.

Other examples of Apple transitioning is with PowerPC/Intel. Tiger was the first to support Intel and was a hybrid system. Leopard was the same. Only in Snow Leopard did Apple drop PowerPC support.

I'm just trying to make sense of this.

EDIT: I guess it boils down to how Apple looks at Lion. Is it an *update* or a full blown OS? All incremental OSX updates have been download only unless I'm mistaken. Some combo updates are fairly hefty in size, over a GB.

So if it's an "update" for Snow Leopard then I guess I can't expect an installation DVD. If it's meant to be a full-blown OS in it's own right then it's a mafor inconvenience for many folks.
 
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MacinJosh said:
I though I'd add some more thoughts on the Lion distribution method based on Apple's history.

All of Apple's OSes up until 7.5 were on floppies. IIRC OS8.0 and up were CD only. No transition with OS8 available on floppies as well as CDs. This was understandable because of the sheer amount of floppies required to install the OS.

I'm not entirely sure when installation DVDs becames available but at least Jaguar (10.2), Panther (10.3) and Tiger (10.4) were available on DVDs as well as CDs to cater for those with no DVD drives. Leopard was the first OS to be DVD-only. That's an example of Apple transitioning distribution methods.

With Leopard and Snow-Leopard being DVD-only and then jumping to Lion which supposedly is download-only makes no sense and does not follow Apple's style.

Other examples of Apple transitioning is with PowerPC/Intel. Tiger was the first to support Intel and was a hybrid system. Leopard was the same. Only in Snow Leopard did Apple drop PowerPC support.

I'm just trying to make sense of this.
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I think its a bit of a power play. Remind people the mac app store is there, thumb their noses at Comcast and the like, plus its Apple being 'advanced' and 'cool'.

Also; to reduce costs. This will be significantly cheaper for Apple.

Remember that Linux has been distributed via the internet since the dawn of time, and Windows Vista and 7 were available as downloads. (7 wider than Vista by a large margin though)
 
All that said, my money is on a Lion DVD being available down the road otherwise Apple would really be hurting themselves. The day when Apple doesn't provide physical media for their applications is the day when they start shipping computers without optical drives.
Click to expand...

Window OEM PC's haven't had install disks for years. Usually have a hidden partition. But often it will let you make back up disks.

Apple not putting optical disks in their computers may not be that far off.
 
Apple is trying to end the need for optical physical media in their lines. The iTunes store, the iTunes-match service, the MBA keynote's reference "This is the laptop of the gureu", and now this... all of that is too much to ignore.

I think Apple will eventually be forced to provide some sort of physical media, simply because installing on new Hard Drives isn't supposed to be an issue to anyone.

I think they will eventually give it out. However, they won't do it from the start. I also believe they might give it in the form of a USB flash drive, instead of a DVD, just like do with Snow Leopard in their MBAs:

a) To allow MBAs to update.
b) To better "justify" an (even) higher price on the physical copy than on the App Store (flahs drives are more expensive than DVDs), and thus slightly demotivate people from buying it.
c) To somehow justify an hypothetical Optical Disk Drive removal from their laptop lines.
 
MacinJosh said:
Hmm... The world I live in currently has no unlimited internet connection, mine is capped at 2.5GB for $100. Speed is about 80kbps, yes, kilobits.

So, how the heck am I supposed to download a 4GB OS?

Now, I am *from* the world you're talking about, but I hate when third-world countries that are starting to have a significant internet userbase get shafted with this kind of progress. Everything is dropbox this, dropbox that, cloud this, cloud that. I wasn't exactly jumping for joy with the iCloud announcement.

I'm all for this sort of development but let's not let the superfast unlimited internet connections "cloud" our eyes to the fact that a significant portion of the world still has a mediocre internet infrastructure. Apple needs to cater for both.

Here's a good example. I had my sister download the 4.3.1 iOS update for both my iPhone and iPad as it was impossible for me to get them here (I had a 500MB cap then). She put it in a flash drive and sent it by mail. After a long wait I received the flash drive and excitedly started to update. Well, turned out that by the time I received the flash drive, iOS 4.3.3 had arrived and there's no way of course that Apple will let you install an older iOS on your device even though it would have been an upgrade for me, not a downgrade. Thanks Apple!
Click to expand...
I have the same problem, if apple think that there too "cool" for physical media then they will not be getting there money from me, and if they keep on being inconsiderate and short sighted like this than the mac im on now will be the last.
 
x2 for the flash-drive. it would even help out the people who want the next gen macbook/pros to get rid of the optical drive for more battery/performance/storage.
 
If the Lion DL from the app store creates a recovery partition as we have been told, it seems like it would be fairly simple to create a USB thumb drive image of the recovery partition and that could be used for a new drive install.
 
linuxcooldude said:
Window OEM PC's haven't had install disks for years. Usually have a hidden partition. But often it will let you make back up disks.

Apple not putting optical disks in their computers may not be that far off.
Click to expand...

Not having a disk with your computer can be a real pain - in case of a hard disk failure all is lost. I think it's very important to either have a physical disk or a burnable image, I don't mind downloading the latter, though I still think a physical disk is required for the majority of the people.
 
Giuly said:
You want Lion on a DVD? Seriously?

I may introduce you to the year 2011, we have much faster and dirt cheap USB sticks. :rolleyes:


Besides, Lion in the App Store comes as bootable DMG, which you can restore to any hard drive/USB stick/DVD DL you want.
Click to expand...

You should really read the thread fully to get an answer to your question. Not all of us have superduperhighspeed internet...
 
Giuly said:
You want Lion on a DVD? Seriously?

I may introduce you to the year 2011, we have much faster and dirt cheap USB sticks. :rolleyes:


Besides, Lion in the App Store comes as bootable DMG, which you can restore to any hard drive/USB stick/DVD DL you want.
Click to expand...

DVD is still cheaper than stick right? There is no reason to take one 8GB stick (you cant use 4GB) format it as sys drive and store it away.

Like you said DMG will probably be able to go to straight to a stick or a disc so I wouldn't be worried. If for some reason that doesn't happen I am sure people on internetz will find a way to do it :)
 
Is this already fact that you will be able to create a bootable copy from the download? Would be important also e.g. when repairing the system hard disk with the "Utility" program after a kernel panic / hard reset ... And if I sell my computer, will I be able to sell it with "Lion" too, or will it stay connected to my Apple ID / password - worst case: The new owner doing illegal pirating stuff with it - or even NEED my Apple ID / password to "activate"?
 
NoSmokingBandit said:
Lion should really be on a disc, and this is why i think so:

Lets say something goes horribly wrong and i have to reinstall my OS. It happens to the best of us. Instead of popping in my Lion disc and installing like normal i'll have to...

1) Install Snow Leopard
2) update to the newest 1.6.X if my disc version is before the App Store was introduced.
3) Download Lion (~an hour depending on one's connection)
4) Install Lion
5) Update Lion

This could take a large part of your afternoon.

If there were a disc i'd simply:

1) Install Lion
2) Update Lion

and be done in an hour or so.

I suppose for people who have full Time-Machine backups they could just restore and keep going, but i find that backing up everything wastes space so i just back up personal files and media.

Anyway, thats just my thoughts on it, flame away.
Click to expand...

only problem with that is, it is not going to be like that. there is going to be a much more elegant solution.
 
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