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There will be OS X Lion on CD, or only in the Mac Store?

I want to know if Apple will create also CD's of the Lion OS X system or if only the people will be allowed to upgrade their systems downloading the installer the Mac App Store.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Jun 7, 2011 5:26 AM

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211 replies

Jun 8, 2011 5:05 AM in response to thomas_r.

There wont be physical disks. This new distribution channel is forcefully implemented. Everybody wants to upgrade OSX, sp everybody will follow this new "cloud" way of getting apps. Xcode4 , the SL/Lion combined development app is on MAS now for a longer period and has already seen updates, but its ONLY available there..


New Macs past July 2011 wont have that problem, they come preloaded with Lion and as we know Lion has a on-disk-restore partition so nobody with a Lion Mac needs a disk to reload it.


The problem affects only SnowLeo Users.

Jun 8, 2011 5:59 AM in response to Sjazbec

>The problem affects only SnowLeo Users.


There are Leopard and Tiger users who have yet to buy Snow Leopard who can't download Lion either, and yes they do have Core2Duo Macs or better. There are Snow Leopard users who don't have high speed broadband for whom the speed of downloading is ridiculously slow.


Unless you personally have the resources to bring 5 Mbps broadband to everyone who wants Lion, I think saying that "There won't be physical disks. The new distribution channel is forcefully implemented", don't presume this is true. Unless you want only those with that kind of bandwidth to upgrade, then please don't play that game with us. http://www.apple.com/feedback/ is where you should post your desire to have Lion without the requirement to have high speed broadband. The more who do, the better a chance it will happen. It may not happen day one, but make our voice louder, please.

Jun 8, 2011 6:11 AM in response to a brody

Only 17% of the UK has 5Mbps access:


http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-246254712.html


Canada won't have that kind of speed nationwide until 2015 at the earliest
: http://www.techspot.com/news/43651-crtc-5mbps-broadband-for-all-canadians-by-201 5.html
The United States, 27% have that kind of access:
http://isaacontech.areavoices.com/2011/02/09/my-internet-is-slow/


With 5Mbps Lion's download is barely manageable 1.8 hours.
With DSL's average 768 kbps speed being nearly 1/8th that, most people will take as much as 10 to 16 hours to download it.

Jun 8, 2011 11:23 PM in response to Sjazbec

Sjazbec wrote:


New Macs past July 2011 wont have that problem, they come preloaded with Lion and as we know Lion has a on-disk-restore partition so nobody with a Lion Mac needs a disk to reload it.

This is unwarranted optimism. Yes, if the directory for the normal boot partition fails you can boot from the restore partition (as you can currently with TechTool Pro): but if the whole disk fails you can't boot from anything and need external media to boot from to deal with it. Possibly the facility will be provided to burn your own boot DVD from the restore partition - that would be logical - but this hasn't been mentioned.

Jun 9, 2011 5:29 AM in response to a brody

For all OS X version i had in my hands, it was always possible to put the installation images on some DVD, external hard drives, USB keys.... using disk utility and then boot up from it to install the system


In fact, it is mandatory to have the possibility to hold some kind of image as some companies i work for have dozens of mac, i always had a simple way to deploy OS X without wasting my time.


Despite the bandwidth problem some may encounter, all of the OS X Lion Developer Previews have been released through the Mac App Store and what you download is a single installation file which will prepare the system (recovery partition + pre-boot stuff) that you can archive for later use.

Jun 12, 2011 3:15 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Re: if the whole disk fails you can't boot from anything and need external media to boot from to deal with it.


Surely this can be solved by using software like "SuperDuper" to create, on a regular basis, an image of your entire Lion system on to an external HDD, which can then be used to restore your system after a catastrophic internal HDD failure ?


Or having an external Time Machine HDD ?

Jun 12, 2011 3:39 PM in response to Alejo2056

We don't really know the whole story yet.


The big announcement Steve Jobs made was, of course, a sales pitch with all the "gee whiz" stuff -- no nitty-gritty, gory details.


Apple's "How to buy" post (http://www.apple.com/macosx/how-to-buy/) clearly says "To upgrade on day one" -- no mention of day two, or twenty.


It would be rather silly for Apple to take the position that, if you don't have broadband (for a 4 GB download), they don't want you as a customer. So it's likely there will be an alternative for such folks, such as a DVD or USB stick, possibly for a nominal extra fee.


When the actual release date is announced, there will probably be more details.

Jun 12, 2011 5:03 PM in response to Dan Mitchell1

Dan Mitchell1 wrote:


Re: if the whole disk fails you can't boot from anything and need external media to boot from to deal with it.


Surely this can be solved by using software like "SuperDuper" to create, on a regular basis, an image of your entire Lion system on to an external HDD, which can then be used to restore your system after a catastrophic internal HDD failure ?


Or having an external Time Machine HDD ?


Cloning software like Carbon Copy Cloner and Superdupes! needs to be updated for OS X 10.7 Lion as there is a OS X recovery partition to also clone.


It should work just like before, but of course Apple isn't going to endorse this method EVER!



It's possible to burn a ISO/dmg of Lion using the MAS Lion installer, instructions here (credit to Kappy for catching this one):


http://eggfreckles.net/tech/burning-a-lion-boot-disc/


Again Apple likely isn't going to push this out to the masses neither.



I don't advise anyone to upgrade to Lion until several months down the road, until third party software is updated, drivers fixed, bugs worked out etc.


If Apple doesn't provide a bootable disk of Lion, some enterprising third party developer will simply take the present OS X Lion installed and make a bootable ISO of it.


It's done on Linux, so it can be done on OS X. The problem of course is doing it before trouble strikes which a lot of people won't do, just like they don't backup or clone.

There will be OS X Lion on CD, or only in the Mac Store?

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