Actually, PC vendors long before Steve said so stopped shipping optical drives in their boxes. But, yes I heard Steve say that the optical drive is one bag of hurt.
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Wtf - No INSTALL DVD when you buy a MACPRO
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I do too with usb thumb drive, but DVD in 2012? Must not be cereal! Time to move on fox.
I agree about dropping the DVD restore disc but IMO they should have replaced it with USB thumb drive, or at least have it on the options list for say $20 when ordering you new Mac. I've only recently got a fast Internet less than a year ago, without decent speed or data limits DL 4Gb upgrades or using it to restore your computer is out of the question.
We're just asking for an affordable option to buy the OS X on USB or DVD if we need it, that's not much to aks IMO.
My other option would be for Apple to have a program (or maybe part of Disk Utility) that allows the user to easily create a boot USB or DVD if needed, how hard would that be?
We're just asking for an affordable option to buy the OS X on USB or DVD if we need it, that's not much to aks IMO.
My other option would be for Apple to have a program (or maybe part of Disk Utility) that allows the user to easily create a boot USB or DVD if needed, how hard would that be?
I completely agree with you Apple should provide some easy method of either buying or making a install USB key. If you want to make your own there is a nice free utility here that does all the work for you.
It's pathetic not to include a physical copy of the OS anymore. My 2010 refurb MBA came with (the worlds most beautiful) USB thumb drive. There is no valid argument imho to ditch that. Thank's to the link, may come in handy some time.
You could always use the easy way provided by apple to make a install disk.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433
Or just make one with disk utility.
That utility does not make a full install disk. That is just a recovery boot that gets you up you you can download the 4GB OS from Apple.
Get with it? Haven't you heard? We've moved on to 10 inch slabs of aluminum with IPS 'Retina' screens. It has photoshop and iMovie on it. It's replaced the Macbooks AND the Mac Pro. MBP's are soooo 2010. Nobody needs them. You can dock the iPad to a keyboard and hook it up to your TV. And it has Quad Core graphixxx!
What is the "official" and "Apple supported" way of installing a new copy of he OS onto a new hard disk? I assume take it to an Apple service center or download that Recovery Disk utility that makes a bootable USB drive that will jump start Internet recovery?
This seems very un-Apple like and not an elegant solution to me. If a hard disk actually failed and the OS needed to be reinstalled, there would be no solution if the recovery drive was not made before hand.
I understand how to make bootable DMG on a USB drive and a bootable DVD-DL of Mountain Lion, but most consumers do not, and this seems like an unnessecary hassle for those users.
Perhaps they think the Mac Pro customer will have a) more than average knowledge about their computer or b) a dedicated IT department.
This seems very un-Apple like and not an elegant solution to me. If a hard disk actually failed and the OS needed to be reinstalled, there would be no solution if the recovery drive was not made before hand.
I understand how to make bootable DMG on a USB drive and a bootable DVD-DL of Mountain Lion, but most consumers do not, and this seems like an unnessecary hassle for those users.
Perhaps they think the Mac Pro customer will have a) more than average knowledge about their computer or b) a dedicated IT department.
From what I understand about Mountain Lion, there are two partitions created on macs with this OS. A hidden parition holds the OSX Mountain Lion boot disk with all the utlities and OS as a physical DVD that used to be provided with all Macs. If people have probelms they Boot into that recovery partition via holding the "option" key.
The obvious reasons for Apple to shy away from using DVD is cost, the second is so that mac users will not be required to have their DVD recovery disk, at hand, in the event of a catastrophic OS failure. Even if Apple included a physical DVD OS, Mountain Lion would still create these two paritions.
This is now Apple's offical way apparently as Sony, HP, etc. has been doing this for years.
mokeiko
The obvious reasons for Apple to shy away from using DVD is cost, the second is so that mac users will not be required to have their DVD recovery disk, at hand, in the event of a catastrophic OS failure. Even if Apple included a physical DVD OS, Mountain Lion would still create these two paritions.
This is now Apple's offical way apparently as Sony, HP, etc. has been doing this for years.
mokeiko
I'm won't defend Apple; I think a disc should be available.
However, new Macs have Internet recovery built into the firmware.
http://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/
On a different note, if you are using a Mac Pro I assume you have valuable data. If your hard drive crashes and you don't have a backup, the OS is the least of your problems.
Yes others did away with them, but they also has a procedure for creating disks the very moment you switch the PC on. Apple have gone out of the way to make it as difficult as possible for the general consumer to make a back up disk.
Recovery partition is a joke, you still have to download the whole damn thing again anyway. So it does nothing other than taking up space on the HDD.
All of the cheap software I can understand being in the cloud.
The large expensive stuff no. Some of you might have unlimited broadband or fibre. Not many do. I had to reinstall the other day from SL, in total to get to Lion.5 took 10GB of downloads. Now when you have limited download limits that is not funny especially when you then move on to all the pro software.
It could be the other way around. If you are using a Mac Pro, you could assume that all valuable data is stored on a NAS, and the OS is the only thing you actually have to worry about.
No. That recovery boot can also drive a Time Machine restore. Let's be realistic. If trying to recovery 2-5 months after you bought the machine you do NOT really want to recovery to the "fresh from first power up state". You want to recover what you had on the disk before it got screwed up.
Going back to Apple and getting everything from scratch is primarily the path for those who have totally screwed up their back-ups. (or never had any in the first place ... which is just a different flavor of screwed up. ). Or they are trying to configure a machine "for sale" or "initial user configuration" state (e.g., a new VM image).
I like to have the install disks in case in need to do a clean install. I do clone my drives which make for good backups.
Optical media is great, i dont understand why it is getting a bad rap. The discs cost 25 cents, you can give it to someone and not worry about getting it back. Can you do this with a thumb drive? no they cost at least 10 bucks. Cloud computing you say? have you ever tried to upload 4 gigs with broadband? it
takes at least an hour. Compare this with the 5 minutes it takes to burn a disk or copy it to your desktop. I guess these are moot points because you cant burn a dvd with an ipad, whoops i meant a macbook pro
So when plug in a USB/Firewire drive and a dialog box pops up and asks if you want to make this a Time Machine target it has to be even simpler than that??????
Every single time you attach drive that could be a back-up disk the OS will ask if you want to do one.
Time Machine is turned on and active by default. Sure Apple could add a nanny nag screen toward the end of configuration that puts neon lights around Time Machine and if declined that then onto the Recovery Tool Utility.
That is not really making it difficult.
Only if you don't prepare do you "have to download". You don't. For example when buy a new Mac you could buy a new TM target external drive. After initial boot-up partition the drive into two parts. One 10GB target for recovery (oversized but provides later flexibility). The rest as a TM target. Use the "Recovery tool" to install recovery onto the drive. Reboot on it to confirm it works. Then go back to standard boot drive and add the other TM partition as a TM target. Now have a bootable disk that can do recovery with.
The even simpler case is just to have the TM set up to consume whole drive. Mac most likely comes back from authorized repair with an OS (and/or recovery) on it. User does a "restore from backup".
Install disks don't solve the problem of limited bandwidth. Eventually the cumulative security and bug updates are also going to be 1GB (or more ) amount of data. Those aren't going to be shipped out on DVD or USB drives. It doesn't solve the general software distribution issue.
So backup the boot drive to your NAS. That way your OS, every update, all your applications, keychain, and all the tweaks you've done will be backed up too.
Even if you had the OS on disc, the rest of the stuff there is countless hours to restore.
I couldn't agree with you more.
If I'm not mistaken, they actually did that when the MBA came out.
Now that almost all the Mac line losed the optical drive, makes more sense, and as you said, the costs are low and will keep lowring.
The machine's price tag covers it by far.
And I that used to brag about Mac comming with the complete OS installer media for free, unlike Windows...
I don't want DVDs but a USB drive like they launched with Lion - for free.
Apple's products stand out because details like this.
They can also fall off the stand by omissions like this.
I'm not mad. It's not worth it!
If it doesn't work for someone, don't buy it.
You've done what you always do, take everything out of context to make yourself look clever. But as per the norm you failed.
I was referring to a back up disk of the OS download. Hence the previous sentence relating to back up disks when you turn on a PC. Nothing to do with creating a Time Machine Back up.