Apple Retail Stores Receive Golden Master Copies of OS X Lion

[Davidkoh]

Not sure where you live, but I'm going to assume its in the USA because thats the kind thinking I would expect.

For 65% of the world, Data is capped. And the sad thing is most ISP's are looking at this as a possibility for the US market.

With Netflix Hulu and Torrents, I think the 21st century isn't going to be exactly what you think it is.

Nope, I live in Europe. Last time I heard about a cap on a home connection was back in 98 when dial up was what was being used.

What is important is how many of the potential consumers have capped internet. I don't know of any country in Europe that has this as a standard on it's home connections. Sure there are data caps on mobile internet, but that is a different store.

 

[antonis]

You're right: getting Lion into the hands of many users with different configurations will uncover bugs that haven't been discovered yet. The question for current Mac owners is whether we want to pay $30 to join in the public beta or wait for a few iterations. But people who buy a new Mac after the release date may not have that option. It may be possible to downgrade to SL on newly-purchased Macs that were already shipping before Lion, but what about the Airs and other models that are announced along with Lion or soon thereafter?

That's exactly the problem that has not been explained by Apple yet. Time machine can help you go back and forth in 10.6 / 10.7, but what about new machines ? What if I'm a new mac user and my mac's drive fail so I replace it with a new one myself ? No restore partition, no previous OS X.

I guess every new Mac user (or should I say especially every new mac user) should definitely create a usb installation disk of Lion.

 

[Vnl]

What is the situation with EU stores? Are they having changeover in couple of hours or on wednesday night?

 

[Mr. Gates]

Nope, I live in Europe. Last time I heard about a cap on a home connection was back in 98 when dial up was what was being used.

What is important is how many of the potential consumers have capped internet. I don't know of any country in Europe that has this as a standard on it's home connections. Sure there are data caps on mobile internet, but that is a different store.

Well your story sadly isn't the case for most people and thats just a fact.

Where in Europe do you live? I have to assume it has a stable Government and good infrastructure.

Still, that may not always be enough.

Look at Australia

 

[Dilum2444]

Wow, all that negativity towards the release, the OS and each other. Apple's bringing out new software and hardware this month. Be happy.
About all the negativity towards the OS: I'd like to see you do better. Ow, wait...
And let's get something to you all: when was the last time you used Windows? I'd put my money on it that Mac OS X is much better, even with the holes in them, which they will fix. When was the last time you go something right from the first time. And you have to take into account that Apple is torn between screaming fans waiting for new stuff and negative people who dig to the deepest point of the OS to find a bug. Yeez, get a life and ignore the update if you're unhappy anyway.

 

[Porco]

So Apple should redo it's entire distribution network because you haven't entered the 21st century when it comes to internet?

Well, no. Apple should carry on pressing discs for its OS like they already have been doing this century for those people that would like them that way.

Me personally, I can't, on my own, force my government to instantly upgrade my country's internet infrastructure just so that Apple's release policies don't cause hassle. I wish I could, but you know, that would be kind of a far-fetched thing to expect me to be able to do.

And as for "redo it's [sic] entire distribution network"? Please. We are talking about some DVDs, they already have a distribution network for physical products. They sell computers, for example!

Nope, I live in Europe. Last time I heard about a cap on a home connection was back in 98 when dial up was what was being used.

What is important is how many of the potential consumers have capped internet. I don't know of any country in Europe that has this as a standard on it's home connections. Sure there are data caps on mobile internet, but that is a different store.

Well in the UK at least there are data caps on many, many ISPs. And even when they say 'unlimited' they usually don't mean actually unlimited.

 

[Deako]

Nope, I live in Europe. Last time I heard about a cap on a home connection was back in 98 when dial up was what was being used.

What is important is how many of the potential consumers have capped internet. I don't know of any country in Europe that has this as a standard on it's home connections. Sure there are data caps on mobile internet, but that is a different store.

Almost every home in the UK is on a fair usage policy or has capped monthly data allowances. Mine is approx 1GB per day with Virgin Media, then they throttle my BB down to ridiculously slow.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

In other words, no less ready than any other 10.x.0 release of OS X so far.

Well let's hope it's not that dire. 10.0.x truly wasn't ready for prime time.

Anyone installing 10.7.0, please make a complete bootable backup of your 10.6 drive before installing. Ext. hard drives are dirt cheap so there is no excuse not to.

 

[paulkerdot]

Almost every home in the UK is on a fair usage policy or has capped monthly data allowances. Mine is approx 1GB per day with Virgin Media, then they throttle my BB down to ridiculously slow.

Im on Sky Unlimited which is truly unlimited. No fair use and no slow down.

 

[BruiserB]

When I lived in Australia, I could download 20GB per month during peak hours and had an additional 40GB off peak allowance, but once you reached the peak allowance, your off peak allowance vanished. Peak was 7a to Midnight I think. After that you were throttled down to dial up speeds. And this was the best plan available where I lived at any price. It was something like A$80 per month. This was 2 years ago, I think it's slightly better now, but not much. I made sure iTunes only updated podcasts at night. A total pain to manage and with a big OS download I think many will be angry. Lots of people only had like a 5GB limit.

 

[AndyK]

Almost every home in the UK is on a fair usage policy or has capped monthly data allowances. Mine is approx 1GB per day with Virgin Media, then they throttle my BB down to ridiculously slow.

That's not at all true since the majority of providers now offer unlimited access. The only people with a cap are ones that don't bother to shop around for a better deal, since they're paying more than those of us on an unlimited packed, for less.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

Almost every home in the UK is on a fair usage policy or has capped monthly data allowances. Mine is approx 1GB per day with Virgin Media, then they throttle my BB down to ridiculously slow.

UK internet is shocking, everytime I go back there to visit my folks I'm amazed at just how poor it is. Whenever my friends come to visit me in the Netherlands the first thing they do is jump on to my WiFi to update their TomTom maps, it's just not feasible back in Blighty.

 

[the8thark]

it'll be like a manbearpig

Bear Grylls trying to catch and eat a boar.
So that's man bear eating pig. (he does catch it)

 

[brucebrendon]

I understood this to mean that the new boxed Mac's with Lion had arrived.

– tho would be logical to have a hard drive to clone around the store macs.

surely the geniuses would have had Lion a while back ago anyway.

 

[theSeb]

UK internet is shocking, everytime I go back there to visit my folks I'm amazed at just how poor it is. Whenever my friends come to visit me in the Netherlands the first thing they do is jump on to my WiFi to update their TomTom maps, it's just not feasible back in Blighty.

Agreed. The UK is far behind places like Netherlands when it comes to internet infrastructure. And the fibre-optic cable roll-out is a joke.

 

[calb]

Almost every home in the UK is on a fair usage policy or has capped monthly data allowances. Mine is approx 1GB per day with Virgin Media, then they throttle my BB down to ridiculously slow.

Virgin Media's traffic management policy is here: http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html

Virgin Media throttles during certain hours when you reach a certain limit, but you can still consume as much data as you want. Downloading Lion after 9pm or before 10am is not unreasonable. To clarify: VM do not have monthly data allowances.

 

[ancorena]

Perhaps, at the end of the day, Apple just renewed their store servers' HDDs with or even without a copy of Lion in them.

Quite a discussion though. Laughter is surely a nice remedy to everything.

 

[JPTech]

"Critical reading" is a lost art, it seems.

Maybe they're like me-much as I love reading, it gets pretty old sifting through countless forum posts pretty durn quickly.

 

[djgamble]

Cr@pple should just go ahead and release it... it's not as if they are waiting for the CDs to be printed or anything.

Oh and while they're at it the can fix the bug they introduced in 10.6.7 that renders my APPLE airport useless for my MBP (although my iPod, PC and Linux box can access it?)

The quality has dropped significantly at Apple HQ.

 

[AndyK]

UK internet is shocking, everytime I go back there to visit my folks I'm amazed at just how poor it is. Whenever my friends come to visit me in the Netherlands the first thing they do is jump on to my WiFi to update their TomTom maps, it's just not feasible back in Blighty.

This wasn't a discussion though about the -speed- people attain, but the usage caps put on their (bad) deals preventing them from doing a large download.

UK broadband is good considering it's still on copper wire so speed is still dictated by exchange distance, not fibre like a lot of Europe. I live < .5 of a mile from my exchange and have a 14mb connection and some people live 10 miles from their exchange and have a 2mb connection, it's just how it is. By 2016 everyone will be on fibre anyway.

 

[fat jez]

Again, that's fine for my other machine(s) but not necessarily for other machines I'm upgrading which are not mine. But nick123222's suggestion above will hopefully be the answer.

As long as you've bought licenses for them all, I don't think it matters.

 

[iSmac]

Come on now no more negativity towards Lion, this is brilliant…Fact!

 

[marc11]

I have a "soft" cap here in NY of 20gb per day, but it has never been enforced, but that is at a pathetic 2-3 Mbs over DSL. At my apartment in Tokyo I can stream HD video 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with no throttling, no cut offs and no up charges (it actually says that word for word in my contract). All at 100+ Mbs over fiber optic and all for 4500 yen per month. If Japan can do it, so can the rest of the "modern" world, it is called greed folks, most internet/cable/phone companies prefer to keep the technology old, prices high and profits high instead of reinvesting into the network. So they cap the data, throttle the bandwidth and then charge you more for crappy service.

As for Lion, bring it on, I am looking forward to it, and accept the fact that it may have quirks and bugs. I do agree, having a Time Machine/bootable back up is a good idea, but I honestly do not think it will be so unstable as to render your machine useless.

I also support the download option, I think it is time we move on from CD/DVD and other landfill producing waste products, I mean this is the sort of thing the internet was supposed to free us from. As for those people in areas with poor or no internet connection it is a problem, but technology moves forward and we cannot continue to hold back progress of the many for the sake of the few. Honestly, CD/DVD media is dead for a lot of people and that trend is only growing IMHO. My guess is if you go to an Apple store.WiFi hot spot you can download and upgrade as needed all for the cost of an hour or two and some coffee.

 

[the8thark]

So many people complain saying Lion is not ready for release or bad in other ways. Maybe it is bad compared to your lofty standards. But Lion is pure gold when compared to Vista, W7 and W8(what we've seen so far) and just about every other desktop/notebook computer OS.

So in short if you want better than Lion, go invent it yourself. Cause nothing better currently exists.

 

[Spartanets]

Where in Europe do you live? I have to assume it has a stable Government and good infrastructure.

I live in Gloucester, UK with a 50Mb connection through Virgin Media (on average getting 45Mb). I guess Lion will be a great way to test the speed, but I'm sure Apple's servers will be dictating the download speeds to avoid a catastrophe! But on the 50Mb package, Virgin don't have any data caps or restrictions.