Don't Apple include CDs?

[leekaiwei]

I was surprised when I didn't receive one with my Macbook Pro. Is this normal? What happens if something goes wrong and you need the CD?

 

[S.B.G]

With Lion, it's a digital download or you can use the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. Or you can buy the OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive

 

[Sirolway]

Nope - no CDs anymore

If something goes wrong you can restart while holding down Cmd-R & you'll boot into the hidden recovery partition, from where you can fix / reinstall your main partition.

If things *really* go wrong, recent Macs can even boot off the internet, re-download Lion & reinstall

So no need for CDs & DVDs

 

[wrinkster22]

Apple does not use recovery disks anymore. Instead it relys on a partion on the hard drive with the OS

 

[RolandNights]

IIRC, most laptop manufacturers don't include any CDs in the box anymore.

 

[(marc)]

IIRC, most laptop manufacturers don't include any CDs in the box anymore.

Which sucks. I've used my SL recovery DVD many times.

 

[larkost]

IIRC, most laptop manufacturers don't include any CDs in the box anymore.

But there is a real difference between the way (and reason) Apple is doing this, and most (or all) of the competition.

The PC vendors include a recovery partition that you need to backup yourself onto media you provide. If you lose that media (or never make it) and you hard drive dies you are out of luck (or out of whatever their replacement media costs). They have done this because Microsoft charges the OEMs a lot more money to include recovery media in the box because they are worried about piracy.

With Apple's new system you can always recover your computer (as long as you have an internet connection), even if the hard drive has been replaced with a blank one. You never have to worry about losing the original media.

 

[Soliber]

Macs now have a recovery partition and can even recover via the internet

 

[Lone Deranger]

You can also create a bootable disk image from the Lion install package and place it onto an 8GB USB key and boot from that in any event. I’ve found this to be much more reliable and much faster than the error prone nature of optical media.

 

[leekaiwei]

Thanks guys. That's cool. No more scrabbling around trying to find discs.

 

[tkermit]

Macs [...] can even recover via the internet

Really neat feature.

 

[Julien]

Apple hasn't used CD's in many MANY years.

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

Apple hasn't used CD's in many MANY years.

You know as well as I do that optical media is being discussed here, not CDs specifically.

 

[Julien]

You know as well as I do that optical media is being discussed here, not CDs specifically.

True so I vote to call them Laser Disc's, Mini Disc's or maybe Blu-ray Disc's.