The future Apple software copy is going to be an USB stick

[angrylawyer]

I hadn't thought of that, how would that work for installing Lion?

probably the same way the windows 'any time upgrade' works in vista/7.

 

[KnightWRX]

I think the savings might be more than we know. Fair enough, I don't know enough about flash media - but I'm sure it's not that hard to figure out a way to mass 'image' the media. It might be that the memory chips are imaged during their manufacture, and then the chips - with the content stored - are put into the physical USB holder.

You're still having to write them one by one. Also your way actually requires that your NAND vendor also pre-writes the memory before it's tied to a USB interface, using a big memory controller array.

A DVD/Blu-ray/CD is literally pressed.

Argue all you want, optical media is the cheapest to mass duplicate by a large margin. All the rest of your argument is based on the flawed assumption that it isn't so no need to even address it.

probably the same way the windows 'any time upgrade' works in vista/7.

The Mac App Store only supports applications that are self-contained and are installed by copying the app to the Application folder. It wouldn't support network based install/upgrades of the OS itself as it stands.

 

[snberk103]

You're still having to write them one by one. Also your way actually requires that your NAND vendor also pre-writes the memory before it's tied to a USB interface, using a big memory controller array.

A DVD/Blu-ray/CD is literally pressed.

Argue all you want, optical media is the cheapest to mass duplicate by a large margin.

No argument - optical media will be cheaper to mass produce. But that isn't the only cost, and flash media can be imaged efficiently (if not as cheap as DVD). The only argument is what the margin is. Even if the margin was 30x (huge by mass manufacturing standards) we are still talking about less than half of the total cost of distribution. The margin may be in the 1/3 to 1/5 range of the tcd - and that's not factoring in the cost/benefit of eliminating the optical drive.

All the rest of your argument is based on the flawed assumption that it isn't so no need to even address it.

Really? I didn't assume flash media was cheaper than optical .... so my base assumption isn't flawed..... so do then accept the rest of my argument?