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does apple ship mini's with 10.7.2 already on?

C

cooa99

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hi,

i am a newbiew and about to buy thr Mini Server in the next couple of hours.

I can purchase straight from apple store or from big retail shops (pcworld/comet/currys in the UK) for exact same price. Apple store is an addiotional 10 min journey.

When new Mac OS updates come out , does apple ship their mac Mini/ desktops with latest Lion 10.7.2 or do they just all ship with 10.7 an everyone has to do an update?

if they ship already updated is there some markings on the box to reveal this?

i just want to make sure i am picking up a mini fresh from the production line 😀


cheers
cooa99
 
Last edited:
If you buy a new one from Apple you'll more likely get one with the newer OS, depending on when it was built.

It's almost certain you'll get an older one off Currys/PCWorld/whoever.

The upgrade only takes a few minutes to download anyway, so I'm not sure why you're so concerned. If you buy from the Apple Store, you can get them to upgrade it for you while you wait.
 
I special ordered a mini server with the SSD through Mac Mall and received it last Friday... so it is a pretty new build. It came with 10.7.1 and I had to do a software update to bring it to 10.7.2. Who knows what they do this week though.
 
Thanks very much, I got one from the apple store . Hopefully I will get to open it tonight to find out!
 
some other questions please

Ok I have picked up my new toy ...... I meant business purchase 🙂

Coming from a windows OS world usually when I buy a new laptop of pc here are the initial things I do :-
1) Boot immediately into backup software like Acronis true image to take a complete un- tampered image/clone of the drive for safe keeping ….
2) Wipe drive to get rid of bloat ware and reinstall the windows OS with updated drivers…
3) Take a backup/clone of drive for storage -- ideal for restoration to OS
4) Install most of the things I need
5) Take another backup/clone of Drive for storage -- ideal for restoration when working system goes caput

So now that I have moved into Mac OS world, do I carry on with the above tradition?.
What’s the best software for taking backups? ...
Are Mac backups hot, cold or both?. I always prefer cold backups
what are the day to day software/utilities I need on the system?
Any simple links to tutorials would be appreciated



Bootcamp or virtualisation?
one of the main reasons I bought the Mac is knowing that I can still run windows from it.
I did a bit or reading about these two approaches and was about to settle for virtualization(using vmware) instead of bootcamp when i read the following comments on the vmware website :-
"VMware Fusion lets you run Windows and Mac applications side-by-side directly from your existing Boot Camp partition."

Does this mean that if I install bootcamp that I can boot straight into Mac OS and then access the windows bootcamp install via vmware thereby eliminating the need to ever boot directly into bootcamp?
if that’s not the case please can you explain what they meant?

thanks

cooa99
 
apostrophes are overrated

cooa99 said:
Ok I have picked up my new toy ...... I meant business purchase 🙂

Coming from a windows OS world usually when I buy a new laptop of pc here are the initial things I do :-
1) Boot immediately into backup software like Acronis true image to take a complete un- tampered image/clone of the drive for safe keeping ….
2) Wipe drive to get rid of bloat ware and reinstall the windows OS with updated drivers…
3) Take a backup/clone of drive for storage -- ideal for restoration to OS
4) Install most of the things I need
5) Take another backup/clone of Drive for storage -- ideal for restoration when working system goes caput

So now that I have moved into Mac OS world, do I carry on with the above tradition?.
Click to expand...
No, you just start the Mac mini and create a user account and there you are.

What’s the best software for taking backups? ...
Click to expand...
I don't know, but there is Time Machine, which is built into the OS, and then there is CarbonCopyCloner and SuperDuper to make bootable backups.

Are Mac backups hot, cold or both?. I always prefer cold backups
Click to expand...
As far as I understand the process of hot and cold backups, I would say, that TM and CCC and SD are hot backups, as the OS and various applications are running during the backup process.
Know that, whatever method of backing up you choose, the initial backup will take a while, but the incremental backups won't take as long.

what are the day to day software/utilities I need on the system?
Click to expand...
Activity Monitor, to see, what is going on.

Any simple links to tutorials would be appreciated
Click to expand...


Bootcamp or virtualisation?
one of the main reasons I bought the Mac is knowing that I can still run windows from it.
I did a bit or reading about these two approaches and was about to settle for virtualization(using vmware) instead of bootcamp when i read the following comments on the vmware website :-
"VMware Fusion lets you run Windows and Mac applications side-by-side directly from your existing Boot Camp partition."

Does this mean that if I install bootcamp that I can boot straight into Mac OS and then access the windows bootcamp install via vmware thereby eliminating the need to ever boot directly into bootcamp?
if that’s not the case please can you explain what they meant?

thanks

cooa99
Click to expand...

It means, that if you have Windows installed via Boot Camp, that you can use VMWare Fusion to access and use that partition to run Windows as a VM, but it is not required to have Windows installed via Boot Camp to run Windows as a VM.

Btw, if you use that popular www search engine of planet Earth, called Google, you will find plenty of answers to your questions, as they have been asked before, plenty of times. To use Google to search MR Forums, use this additional search term: site:forums.macrumors.com
 
thanks very much

i find it odd that you cant do cold backups on a Mac system, ... in that case how would you re-image a few macs with same configs in a business environment?

ps. I am googling but every thing I can find still points to hot bakups which is not what i am after

simsaladimbamba said:
It means, that if you have Windows installed via Boot Camp, that you can use VMWare Fusion to access and use that partition to run Windows as a VM, but it is not required to have Windows installed via Boot Camp to run Windows as a VM.
Click to expand...
Ok statement understood so assuming a system with 8GB ram is there much performance diffirence between:-
1) accessing A bootcamp install of winxp via vmware within a Mac OS session
and
2) accessing A (non bootcamp) winxp virtual machine

This will help me to decide wherher or not to go the bootcamp virtualization route .....


cheers

cooa99

ps. i have been doing some googling. 🙂 ... there is just so much info that certain specifics i am after are not mentioned.
 
Just got mine from Amazon yesterday and it did not have 10.7.2, it does now 😀
And everything is transferred over from the other computer. I have to say I am quite pleased so far with the mini. Using a Dell 2311H and a MS keyboard and mouse and absolutely no glitches anywhere. Found my printers on my home network on it's own and installed them.
I think this is going to be a great little home system for what I use a computer for, and that doesn't include gaming. I got the 2.5 I5 and the AMD video card. Now trying to decide if I want to up the ram from 4 to 8 GIG.
 
cooa99 said:
i find it odd that you cant do cold backups on a Mac system, ... in that case how would you re-image a few macs with same configs in a business environment?
Click to expand...

Boot your machine up from an external drive ( disk drive or flash etc ) and get a cold backup of your operating system drive that way.

So far as I can tell there is no good backup software that gets both the OS X partitions and the bootcamp/NTFS partitions at the same time. You have to fudge a backup scenario where you get the OS X stuff one way and ( separately ) a different backup scenario for the bootcamp.
 
deafgoose said:
I purchased my mini 4 days ago and it has 10.7.2 on it.

I am in Canada.
Click to expand...


Hi deafgoose 🙂 I just wanna know how much % is the added tax there in canada if i purchase thru online (apple store) a mac mini?

At the moment it says $899.00 is that the final/total price?

By the way, its the 2.7 i7 dual core mini I am looking at now.

I am asking this because I'm here in Dubai and I plan on buying it thru online because I find it much cheaper compared to the shops here.
 
cooa99 said:
thanks very much

i find it odd that you cant do cold backups on a Mac system, ... in that case how would you re-image a few macs with same configs in a business environment?

ps. I am googling but every thing I can find still points to hot bakups which is not what i am after


Ok statement understood so assuming a system with 8GB ram is there much performance diffirence between:-
1) accessing A bootcamp install of winxp via vmware within a Mac OS session
and
2) accessing A (non bootcamp) winxp virtual machine

This will help me to decide wherher or not to go the bootcamp virtualization route .....


cheers

cooa99

ps. i have been doing some googling. 🙂 ... there is just so much info that certain specifics i am after are not mentioned.
Click to expand...

you can make an eternal drive be the boot drive. and attach a second external drive empty. then use the external boot drive to copy from the internal drive to the external empty drive. in this case two drives are not online so to speak and the third drive is the hot one. it also allows activity I can superduper clone a to b with drive c and with drive c type this. answer to you. of course with the server two drives are in the machine so you need only attach one external.
 
cooa99 said:
Ok I have picked up my new toy ...... I meant business purchase 🙂

Coming from a windows OS world usually when I buy a new laptop of pc here are the initial things I do :-
1) Boot immediately into backup software like Acronis true image to take a complete un- tampered image/clone of the drive for safe keeping ….
2) Wipe drive to get rid of bloat ware and reinstall the windows OS with updated drivers…
3) Take a backup/clone of drive for storage -- ideal for restoration to OS
4) Install most of the things I need
5) Take another backup/clone of Drive for storage -- ideal for restoration when working system goes caput

So now that I have moved into Mac OS world, do I carry on with the above tradition?.
What’s the best software for taking backups? ...
Are Mac backups hot, cold or both?. I always prefer cold backups
what are the day to day software/utilities I need on the system?
Any simple links to tutorials would be appreciated



Bootcamp or virtualisation?
one of the main reasons I bought the Mac is knowing that I can still run windows from it.
I did a bit or reading about these two approaches and was about to settle for virtualization(using vmware) instead of bootcamp when i read the following comments on the vmware website :-
"VMware Fusion lets you run Windows and Mac applications side-by-side directly from your existing Boot Camp partition."

Does this mean that if I install bootcamp that I can boot straight into Mac OS and then access the windows bootcamp install via vmware thereby eliminating the need to ever boot directly into bootcamp?
if that’s not the case please can you explain what they meant?

thanks

cooa99
Click to expand...

Hi cooa99,

I think you're headed in the right direction as you have listed.

1. Since Apple doesn't supply Lion on disk when you buy the machine, it would be a good idea to clone the drive before you boot into the clean install, since you would be saving the image at the state before any user account is created. That being said - its a bit tricky without another Mac handy or an already created external OS X boot drive. If you do have an external disk you can boot into recover mode first and then do a clean install to the external drive - allowing you to now boot to the external drive to make a clone of the internal, factory fresh install, OS drive. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for this. You can save the drive clone as a disk image to the external drive. Now you have a clean copy of the OS just like when you purchased the computer. Thats a lot to go through before actually using your new machine, but if you're as anal as I am - thats what I'd do.

At any time though you can do a clean Lion install using the recovery method I just mentioned. Keep in mind that the recovery method does not install the iLife product and you will have to download that from the App Store later. Apple expects users to live without physical media now so I guess this will be the norm going forward.

2. No need to wipe the drive - there is no 3rd party bloatware installed on the Mac by default.

3. As stated in 1.

4. Yes

5. Backups - Thats up to you. I suggest using Time Machine for regular daily backups. Its seamless to the OS and you can do a complete restore if necessary. TM backups are done every hour, so its more of an incremental backup after the first one is completed. You can periodically clone the OS using Carbon Copy Cloner as mention in 1.

Cold Backups - boot from an external drive and clone the internal drive as necessary.

Daily Utilities - The Mac runs pretty much without needing any utilities but I would suggest - Activity Monitor (see whats running, memory usage, network usage, etc.), Disk Utility (disk maintenance, permission repairs, formatting, etc.) and Cocktail for regular unix maintenance. Activity Monitor and Disk Utility are free and come installed on the Mac.

Running Windows - vmware is nice but I honestly think Parallels has passed them up. Take a look at their latest version (Parallels Desktop 7). http://bit.ly/qrJ14C
I was a vmware fanatic until parallels 7 came out. Haven't looked back since.

BootCamp lets you run Windows natively and it will be the fastest way to run Windows on the Mac. Keep in mind that running Windows virtually does offer some advantages.

• You can run Lion and Windows at the same time
• You don't have to partition the drive
• You can run several instances of Windows, Linux, Lion, etc.

Hope this helps.
 
Last edited:
Disk Image

Thanks guys, very much appreciated.

I am as well anal about backups so prepared to go to any lenghts before firing up the mac mini for usage.

A bit more googling is showing me some stuff about using the ipod as a bootable drive ... but nothing really leading my hands i guess

Any more clarifications about doing this will be ideal please.



Something else just occured to me .... but not sure if it will work. Is it possible for me to just take the disks out of the mac mini, drop them into an external case and use a windows utility like Acronis to take its image?

I will rather go the boot disk route though
 
cooa99 said:
Thanks guys, very much appreciated.

I am as well anal about backups so prepared to go to any lenghts before firing up the mac mini for usage.

A bit more googling is showing me some stuff about using the ipod as a bootable drive ... but nothing really leading my hands i guess

Any more clarifications about doing this will be ideal please.



Something else just occured to me .... but not sure if it will work. Is it possible for me to just take the disks out of the mac mini, drop them into an external case and use a windows utility like Acronis to take its image?

I will rather go the boot disk route though
Click to expand...

I guess you could use an iPod as an external device but thats not its intended use. Not sure this would be recommended. If your going to be doing regular backups I'd just get a real external drive for that purpose.

As for taking out the drives and using Windows to clone - you can do this, but remember that OS X drives are formatted Mac OS Extended & Journaled, not a native format for Windows. So you'd have to use some 3rd party utility to understand the formatting. This is getting complicated and I can't say it would be successful or not. Never gone down that road before.

Good luck.
 
Last edited:
looks like I am at the point of giving up now 😕

I cant believe there is no simple way of creating cold backups ... i need to create a bootable Mac OS external drive 😡

cooa99
 
cooa99 said:
looks like I am at the point of giving up now 😕

I cant believe there is no simple way of creating cold backups ... i need to create a bootable Mac OS external drive 😡

cooa99
Click to expand...

Can you explain in more detail what your concern is over a Cold Backup? Cloning a Mac system - either live or from an external drive is pretty straight forward and an accepted method of backing up. What are you trying to achieve here?
 
KScottMyers said:
Can you explain in more detail what your concern is over a Cold Backup? Cloning a Mac system - either live or from an external drive is pretty straight forward and an accepted method of backing up. What are you trying to achieve here?
Click to expand...

As you detected earlier the intention of the cold backup is to return me to a "virgin" image/clone of the Mac mini as shipped from Apple. ... before any changes or users get created..

This gives be the opportunity to fully mess around with the mac mini knowing fully well that i can restore back to the image or clone.

KScottMyers said:
Hi cooa99,

I think you're headed in the right direction as you have listed.

1. Since Apple doesn't supply Lion on disk when you buy the machine, it would be a good idea to clone the drive before you boot into the clean install, since you would be saving the image at the state before any user account is created. That being said - its a bit tricky without another Mac handy or an already created external OS X boot drive. If you do have an external disk you can boot into recover mode first and then do a clean install to the external drive - allowing you to now boot to the external drive to make a clone of the internal, factory fresh install, OS drive. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for this. You can save the drive clone as a disk image to the external drive. Now you have a clean copy of the OS just like when you purchased the computer. Thats a lot to go through before actually using your new machine, but if you're as anal as I am - thats what I'd do.
Click to expand...

I want to achieve what you said above. I would have access to an intel based macbook tomorrow from a mate at work. I would appreciated if you can give mesome more pointers stepwise to achieve my goal.

ps I was reading some stuff about target disc mode so not sure how feasible that route is as well.

cheers

cooa99
 
cooa99 said:
I want to achieve what you said above. I would have access to an intel based macbook tomorrow from a mate at work. I would appreciated if you can give mesome more pointers stepwise to achieve my goal.

ps I was reading some stuff about target disc mode so not sure how feasible that route is as well.

cheers

cooa99
Click to expand...

This is what I would do.

1. Make sure both Macs are connected with a FireWire cable. (Mini & MacBook)

2. Boot new mini into Target Disk Mode. (Hold down the "T" key at startup)

3. Boot the MacBook and use Carbon Copy Cloner to image the mini's hard drive now mounted and seen from the MacBook.

4. Save cloned image for safe keeping - DVD, USB Flash Drive, External Drive, etc.

5. Use your new clone image and clone it to the external hard drive.

6. You can now boot the mini from the external drive as needed for emergency's, cold backups, etc.
 
Last edited:
KScottMyers said:
This is what I would do.

1. Make sure both Macs are connected with a FireWire cable. (Mini & MacBook)

2. Boot new mini into Target Disk Mode. (Hold down the "T" key at startup)

3. Boot the MacBook and use Carbon Copy Cloner to image the mini's hard drive now mounted and seen from the MacBook.

4. Save cloned image for safe keeping - DVD, USB Flash Drive, External Drive, etc.

5. Use your new clone image and clone it to the external hard drive.

6. You can now boot the mini from the external drive as needed for emergency's, cold backups, etc.
Click to expand...


Thank you very much!.

I'll go with this method.

i'll let you know when done tomorrow!


cheers

cooa99
 
KScottMyers said:
This is what I would do.

1. Make sure both Macs are connected with a FireWire cable. (Mini & MacBook)

2. Boot new mini into Target Disk Mode. (Hold down the "T" key at startup)

3. Boot the MacBook and use Carbon Copy Cloner to image the mini's hard drive now mounted and seen from the MacBook.

4. Save cloned image for safe keeping - DVD, USB Flash Drive, External Drive, etc.

5. Use your new clone image and clone it to the external hard drive.

6. You can now boot the mini from the external drive as needed for emergency's, cold backups, etc.
Click to expand...



Here is what I was going to do later on today, please let me know if this is fine and covers all your steps

1) Create two partitions on the backup/destination drive.
2) Use CCC to create a (bootable ?) clone of MacMini into partition 1
3) use CCC to create a non bootable disk Image of MacMini and store it in partition 2

cheers

cooa99
 
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