Developer build of OS X 10.6.8 preps for Mac App Store install for Lion - Page 2

but it has everything to do with physical media. If you have physically lost your sole HDD due to damage, having a Lion.dmg file, or a 700 Mb recovery partition on that dead HDD will have absolutely no value. Those items are gone when you lost your HDD. It has nothing to do with being easy or you squeezing your lemon. Once that drive is gone and you replace it with a new drive, the average Apple end user need OS media. Maybe you can borrow a Lion DVD from your Apple using neighbor down the street. Or if you live in a city it means a trip to the Apple store. The point you are missing from your last sentence (above), is that there is no boot volume to repair.

Have you ever actually just lost part of a HDD? Really? And if you did, how far would you trust it with your data? Whether a drive dies quickly or slowly, ultimately you are going to replace it.


According to wikipedia, references state that USB flash drives have a life time similar to SSD drives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive#Longevity

I have no plans to trust a USB flash drive for long term data archival purposes. I don't think that will change anytime in the near future. For me, those type of devices are for sneakernet type purposes. At this point in time, I suspect that most people use USB flash drives in a similar fashion. Either way, I have seen nothing so far in this thread that would convince me to trust this type of a device long term.


On the contrary, you seem to be overly eager to jump on new media distribution technology and dispose of the existing technology that not only works well, but is a necessity for many. If you are replacing your system every 12 to 18 months, or if you are surrounded by other Apple systems, where fresh DVD media could be burned, you can pull the OS over the network, or some other option is available, I would guess that none of my discussion points make any sense to you. And I would speculate that this is your situation.

To try to understand the point(s) I am attempting to make, I would ask you to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has just one Mac with a dead hard drive, or in the shoes of an Apple user who will still be using his or her system 10 plus years down the road. This isn't everyone, and it sound like it definately isn't you. But it is a significant percentage of Apple end users. And don't just consider older people with limited technical skills here. Consider all the recent converts from ms windows who are using their first/one/only Mac here.

From your posts, you are obviously skilled in OS X, and between your knowledge and the (physical) resources you have at hand it appears that you would suffer very little from the types of problems that I am describing. Many Apple end users don't have the knowledge to do so, nor do they have you living next door so that you can save them.


I think that you are generalizing here. I think that these devices are great, expecially SSD's. And I have an iPhone and a couple of other i-devices. They all do a wonderful job of performing their intended purpose. Unfortunately, none of these do the job of being install media as well as a DVD from Apple.

iWork apps, unlike Mac OS, aren't subsidized by hardware. Apple really doesn't have a choice but to continue to develop and refine Mac OS X, so long as it makes Macintoshes. And that, in and of itself, justifies the R&D dollars spent on Mac OS X. Profits from sales of Mac OS X upgrades are just gravy. But iWork apps are different. The Mac platform can flourish without them. So there's pressure on them to "pull their own weight."

$5 is the price for Xcode*, which is arguably much costlier to develop than any iWork app. It also seems to be their price-point for software they'd like to give away, but feel they can't due to SarbanesOxley. So there's a precedent for that price-point. It's very easy to see Apple releasing Lion for $5 in the App store, and maintaining SL's $29 DVD price-point.

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Apple doesn't have the option of dumping Mac OS X and installing another OS on Macs, like Linux, because that would make the Mac into just another commodity PC.

* Xcode used to be free. Not sure why they decided to start charging for it.

The whole purpose of iTunes, iLife, iWork et al. is to help support the Mac platform.


I think it's still free if you a member of their developer program. I'm not sure the Mac App Store is simply for those that don't want to sign up to be a developer or if they moved the Xcode download to paid iOS and Mac developers. The first option sounds odd but the second makes sense to me now that being a paid developer is only $99/year.

The thing to keep in mind is that nobody knows for sure how long any of these media will last, either flash drives or DVDs. All the life expectancies are speculation based on simulated aging. And i should point out that pressed DVDs have a different life expectancy than burned DVDs.



As someone who expects his Mac to last about 6-7 years, i consider myself to be in the minority. Typically, Apple doesn't support older hardware that long, which means the average Mac will only see a couple upgrades to the OS in its lifetime, and the hardware won't be supported by the time the third or fourth OS upgrade comes along. I suspect this is the case because the older Mac installed base doesn't represent a significant percentage of OS upgrades.

While Apple may indeed want to use the App store as the primary means of distribution for Lion, it won't be the only. Historically, when CDs were new, the OS was also available on floppy. When DVDs were new, it was also available on CD. So even if InterNet delivery is now the primary means of distribution, i'm sure it'll be available on DVD too.

I'm also sure Apple will provide a means to create an emergency boot device for those not receiving physical media.

He's not against SSD NAND for data storage, states they have comparable shelf life as USB NAND but thinks it's bad to offer a restore disk with new Macs on a USB flash drive? He asked me a question about losing part of a HDD? I think he misunderstands what the Recovery HD is in regard to repairing a volume, but I can't be sure. I'm glad you can make sense of his post. I certainly can't.

I understand that. However the difference is the same as between "need" and "want." The Mac needs its OS. iLife and iWork are nice to have, but not essential.



No, Xcode is only "free" to those developers who pay the $99/year price (i.e. it's rolled into the yearly fee).

There was a time when Macs had a lot less market and mindshare. It was hard to get developers to support the platform. Apple even partnered with MS to ensure the MS Office would still be created for the Mac. Jobs even went go so far as to have Bill Gates on a live video conference. That was important for investors and customers alike. All those other apps are to sell more Macs.

It's rumoured that Apple SoundJam not because he had this great idea to overtake the digital media app, PMP and digital downloads store market, but so that it wouldn't be left out in the cold as Windows-based developers weren't focusing enough effort on the Mac. Without apps an OS is pointless.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY Check out the booing from the developer audience.

Never said i understood his entire post. But i could infer that part of it was based on media life expectancy, which isn't a solid foundation for any argument, because those life expectancies are like so much jello nailed to a tree.

Yeah, i know all that. Been an Apple watcher and customer since 1979, when i bought my first computer.

None of that makes iWork or iLife essential to the platform, however.

Which isn't to say they don't help to sell Macs, or make the platform thrive.

TDM would be handy except Apple decided they didn't want some people to run it ( no firewire ports on some macbooks)

And do you use carbon cloner to install an image of one Mac on another model?

I see your point, and almost completely agree with it not being "essential". They don't even include iWork as a 30-day trial on Macs anymore. But they do include iLife with Macs. Excluding iTunes having once been part of the iLife suite, I think iPhoto is an essential app for consumers. It's progressed quite nicely for the upcoming Lion and offers a great many new features for interacting with other sites.

Just to clarify, I am not against a binary downloadable distribution, but the point you have made here is precisely why I want to make sure that I get my official OS media up front. Burned media has a significantly shorter lifetime vs pressed DVD media.


If you aren't aware, there are quite a few boards and mailing list devoted to keeping older Apple equipment up and operational. Obviously, this is a minority and Apple doesn't make much money keeping older equipment running forever, they make money by selling new systems.


as is evident by the current attempts to kill off any and all support of PowerPC based equipment. If you have remote chance that you will want or need to keep an older system going after official support begins to taper off, one of the first things you need to do is to make sure you have everything you might need to support that equipment yourself. The need for OS media in such a situation should be obvious.


I truely hope that you are correct here.


I can certainly hope. But I have to look at the track record of manufacturers in the windows industry. I see people at home with dells, hp's, gateway's, etc. The manufacturer no longer includes an OS CD/DVD. They do the whole rescue partition thing. In this case, I believe that this is done primarily as a cost cutting measure and as a means to limit piracy of windows media.

The reality of this in real life is that the many end users typically will not create that emergency boot disk, either from lazyness, lack of technical ability or some other reason. In this example I have provided, obviously the manufacturer provided the capability to recover, but the end user didn't do what he or she needed to do. And once that emergency occured, it was too late. To recover typically ment calling the manufacturer and having that manufacturer mail out a recovery DVD, along with the wait for what ever mail system was used. From my observations, this might mean your system is down or unusable for a week or two, assuming no further problems are present that would need to be resolved.

At this point in time, Apple computers systems are no longer shipped with Motorola 68xxx chips, or PowerPC chips. They ship with Intel processors, the same as any windows box. The differentiator here is the user experience provided by Apple. Apple products are premium products and Apple charges accordingly.

Lion hasn't shipped yet, and no one ultimately knows exactly how Apple will ship 10.7. Or if they do, hopefully they are honoring their NDA agreement. But if things ultimately boil down to solely a binary download distribution and the 700 Mb recovery partition, I would view that as a major fail, and Apple stepping down to a method that I view as not working well in the windows world. Sure, they could do it, but I expect better from Apple.

lowededwookie, do you know this as a fact? I am curious where this comment originates?

I haven't counted up the amount of drivers on the Snow Leopard DVD in Mb, but I don't think that hardware drivers consume a major percentage of the OS DVD. I had always been of the opinion that the grey hardware specific CD/DVD's that shipped with a new system were machine type specific in order to provided new drivers for new hardware, and to keep people from using the media from upgrading all of the old system already in place, free of charge.

Do you know different? My above comment is just my opinion. Set me straight.



And when that HDD crash occurs, where does that new OS media come from? If you didn't buy it up front, then you are running around trying to come up with something to bring your system back.

There is never a good time for a total system crash and recovery. But it only gets worse if you don't have your recovery material up front.

This is all speculation at this point. I'm sure we'll know more about the installation options and processes when WWDC comes. People are forgetting that Apple has some very smart people who are working there. I can't imagine them not thinking of the issues people are talking about here. I suspect that they will move towards App Store delivery with new and unique ways to avoid problems. Limited optical disc for those with slow or no access being one, but that's not new or unique. I suspect that iCloud could even play a part.

1) I really doubt that Apple creates different installation packages. For the sake of simplicity, I think they will continue to have one installer that they ship and it deals with different hardware.

2) When a HD crashes you have 2 options. If you have built a bootable installer DVD or Flash drive you put that in and go from there. If you don't have that then you have to go back to 10.6, reinstall, upgrade to 10.7 and then migrate from your time machine - assuming you have one.

This is not great, which is why you want a bootable installer - which could be built after download. Keep in mind though that this is only a problem for machines sold before 10.7 ships. As 10.7 becomes the standard, all of those machines will have a system recovery stick or disk that deals with this. From Apples perspective this is a problem that gradually goes away.

For my own use I have been taking the DVD image and putting it on a Flash drive and I find this a much better solution. I have one flash with 2 partitions. One that boots 10.6 and has some utilities on it for repairing a disk. The other partition has the 10.6 install image and can boot. I put this drive in my bag and I find that i can handle most situations either for my computer or when a friend needs help. I like this a lot better than carrying a DVD, it's smaller, faster and does not scratch.

I think the ideal solution is if Apple starts shipping a Flash based recovery drive with all systems and has a utility that can rewrite that drive to reinstall the updated OS when needed. So if you buy a system and then update to 10.8, you download and install it and then mount your recovery stick, it's updated and then you are good to go. Best of both worlds. No DVDs.

You have a very jaded view of people who live in rural areas. You obviously don't live in the Western states.

Yes, i'm aware of those resources. I kept an old Wallstreet PowerBook alive with a couple generations of Mac OS X past what Apple officially supported (using Xpostfacto).


I've been through these transitions before with Macs (been using Macs since 1985). Floppies, CDs, DVDs, SCSI, FireWire, old serial ports, EtherNet, ADB, USB, etc. Indeed, sometimes it gets tricky.

Regarding Mac OS X upgrades: Some people believe that Apple doesn't support older hardware because they're trying to force users to upgrade. But i don't believe that's actually the case. I believe it's simply a confluence of two factors: 1) the number of users wanting to upgrade older hardware naturally tapers off, and 2) it becomes too costly to try to QA all those older Macs. In other words: Increasing costs for diminishing returns.


Trust me, i've been through this all before. Lion will be available on DVD. I expect that'll cost more. If the cost differential is nominal, i'll opt for the DVD. I'm just more comfortable with physical media, for many of the reasons you cite.

But i'll also carefully consider the digital download option. I can't imagine Apple not providing some recovery mechanism (e.g. burning an emergency install DVD). But if it requires a double layer disc, well i won't be too impressed (because DL blanks are still pretty pricy). If i only save a couple of bucks with the digital download, factoring in the cost of blanks, etc., well that's just not enough incentive for me to embrace it. But if the savings is larger, or has other advantages, well maybe i'll give it a try.

As for the shelf life of burnable DVD media, there are actually two numbers: The first is the shelf life of the unburned media, then there's the shelf life of burned media. The latter is allegedly much longer. Something about the burning process fixing the dyes used in the media.

But HD capacity has increased so much, while prices have decreased so much, that DVDs are becoming less and less viable as archival media. It's entirely sensible anymore to have a bootable external HD with an OS DMG image on it, and that otherwise contains your archives. So who needs a bootable DVD?


Well, you make a good point. But you're also comparing apples and oranges. Or in this case, Apples and lemons. Apple isn't just another Me Too PC maker. They think differently. Don't sweat it.