Actually, a very easy solution to shut up all the cry babies, etc, is for Apple to put in an option during Lion install that says "Would you like to create a recovery disk?" or whatever, and allow you to make a Lion DVD / USB drive.
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Lion Clean Install Requires Snow Leopard Disk?
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Bubba Satori
Suspended
I said as much when Apple Inc. changed their name from Apple Computer.
The writing was on the wall even back then.
I wish I had been wrong.
I applaud their success, but it's coming at a terrible price. Pun intended.
iToys for the rich of us. Stay tuned. Magic.
Profit. Again.
kingtj,
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but nevertheless I'm fairly certain that, here in the UK, the directors of any public limited company have a legal obligation to maximise profit for their shareholders.
As far as I know it does not need to be short term profit, but if shareholders contest the way their company is being managed the directors need to satisfy a court that their policies are in the long term interests of their shareholders. If not they're in deep doo-doo.
I don't know about other countries but, given its free-enterprise culture, I'd be extremely surprised if there aren't similar laws in the US
kingtj,
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but nevertheless I'm fairly certain that, here in the UK, the directors of any public limited company have a legal obligation to maximise profit for their shareholders.
As far as I know it does not need to be short term profit, but if shareholders contest the way their company is being managed the directors need to satisfy a court that their policies are in the long term interests of their shareholders. If not they're in deep doo-doo.
I don't know about other countries but, given its free-enterprise culture, I'd be extremely surprised if there aren't similar laws in the US
I have respect for what Jobs has done. All of the success is not just him though, its like a quarterback getting too much credit win you win and too much blame win you lose. The iPod got it started, but was it all his idea?? I highly doubt that. We all know anything final goes through him since he runs the ship like he does, so obviously he makes excellent choices.
They are far too big now to go under like the 90's debacle. They are a MS now in some respects. Thats not a bad thing. We'll see when he leaves how well they do, my bet is (possibly)they can do even better. Maybe the next guy will have everything nicely integrated but not be such an ass about leaving things out that should be there. All this has been discussed so I wont go over the things being left out or ignored.
The right man could grow their marketshare quite a bit by offering better prices (we all know its marked up a ton) and more choices. See other laptop makers choices. Along with a cheaper desktop that you can customize. Giving back that choice that Jobs at one point said they had.
MS should NOT have 90% share and I do point a finger at Jobs for not going after more of the market.
On topic: Just put it on a disk or USB key and charge more if the buyer wants it that way, you make $$$ so where is the issue? It's all about $$$ everything in business is. The App store is limiting sales IMO of a lot of their software but they insist on using it as the ONLY way. FCPx (iMovie Pro) is stripped down so it easier to download, along with motion. A disk release would have had more built in but they want it in the App store.
It has already more reviews than any software I can see on the App store. So the pro market is lucrative, but they F' em over, and Jobs gets called a genius for it??? That kind of stuff needs to be on disk still since to have everything it needs, makes it a large file. Logic will suffer the same fate just wait and see. Disks also are dirt cheap to distribute, true fact.
MAS could be good for what it is, Jobs thinks it is 20 years in the future today, on some things. Obviously on others we are 5-10 years in the past. He got far better LSD than I ever did thats for sure. 😛
Bubba Satori
Suspended
Bubba Satori
Suspended
KingYaba
macrumors 68040
That's terribly inefficient with people's time and bandwidth considering it wouldn't trouble Apple to offer Lion on a flash drive or DVD. Obviously this is a rumor but I hope for you Mac user's sake they offer a disc image of Lion.
InuNacho
macrumors 68010
KnightWRX
macrumors Pentium
What's unfortunate about it ? Reinstalling an OS is such a waste of time. Just fix the problems you have instead of reinstalling.
MagnusVonMagnum
macrumors 603
It depends on entirely how long it takes one to fix what is wrong. If one doesn't know what is wrong, exactly, it can take quite a long time to fix. Unix is terribly complex underneath the veneer of the GUI and something as simple as one corrupt file in the right place (due to a hard drive starting to fail or maybe even an OS freeze or panic during a write operation) can cause a mountain of trouble. In Linux, one wrong setting in the config for the XWindows startup (and in some builds it's stored in different places or even different files, especially since many builds have started automating these setups and don't use the default files) and you can boot right into a shell with no GUI at all. If you don't know exactly what you're doing, you've got a real mess on your hands. Most Linux installs don't like booting off backup drives since file pointers are often to specific locations in the boot setup.
Fortunately, with OSX if you have a CCC backup of the working system, you can just boot from the backup drive and then copy-back onto the original the last working setup (and any important changed non-system files from the non-bootable system onto the backup first) and you're back in business like nothing ever happened and all without having to figure out what got corrupted, changed or otherwise screwed up. I know of no other modern OS that is as EASY to restore as OSX is from a backup seeing that a CCC backup is 100% bootable in place of the original (you're back up as soon as you can reboot). With Windows, for example you have to restore first and most setups require a special boot disc (sometimes even using Linux) to do that. You don't have to wait in OSX. Just boot off the backup and restore the backup to the original whenever you're ready (you can even make the original the backup instead if you don't mind booting off the backup drive. In my PowerMac, it makes little difference since both drives are internal and both are identical anyway except for the drive name to tell them apart quickly.
It uses the Mac App Store, which is only available in Mac OS 10.6.7 or later (and Apple has stated that you should install at least 10.6.8 before upgrading to Lion).
KnightWRX
macrumors Pentium
You've not done much Unix administration have you ? As a Unix systems administrator, I can tell you all the issues you've raised are barely non-issues.
First, Linux installs like booting off of anything. File pointers ? Setup up your grub properly and there is basically 0 issues. Same with LILO or loadlin back in the days. Our servers with MD raid mirrors can boot off both drives without any problems. Next, not booting into the X Display Manager because of a bad X.org conf file is pretty much a thing of the past. There's almost nothing in there anymore. When it was an issue, so what, log in to the terminal, vi the config file, init 3/init 5 and you're back into X. No down time required again (and seriously, why are you running a GUI on a Linux box ? Is it your workstation ? If it is, why are you fudging around the X configuration for unless this is the initial install ? Do you mess with Quartz's configuration on OS X ?).
Finally, why even bring Linux into the picture ? We're talking about OS X. Every Unix system is different, has different issues and different solutions to those. Linux doesn't operate nor requires the same level of expertise as OS X, and OS X being Unix is still not the same thing as a HP-UX box.
Again, reinstalling the OS is a waste of time, requires downtime and offlining of systems. In Unix, you can fix almost all problems online without a reboot or taking down critical applications even.
MagnusVonMagnum
macrumors 603
In other words, you'll need to get Snow Leopard first and then update it ot the latest version of Snow Leopard and then download Lion and install it over top of Snow Leopard, thus wasting 2-3x the normal amount of time it SHOULD take to install Lion if you don't have 10.6.8 already installed.
All praise Steve! 🙄
KnightWRX
macrumors Pentium
How about keeping a backup around of the download ? Then you can just run it in place over anything really, it's simply an application.
Even though it'S 10.7
Consider it like a Service Pack from Windows
So Lion for me is like Snow Leopard SP
But anyway there wil lalways be haters so meh i have a 30mbit/s connection so no complain here 😛
Consider it like a Service Pack from Windows
So Lion for me is like Snow Leopard SP
But anyway there wil lalways be haters so meh i have a 30mbit/s connection so no complain here 😛
Is there any proof that this is the case?
We don't know exactly how the final Lion install will work.
KnightWRX
macrumors Pentium
Service Packs for Windows rarely (if ever) add the type of functionality Lion brings and never in the quantity that Lion does.
Lion is very much a new major release of OS X.
This late into the game (seeing how it ships in July) ? The same that the DPs do. You'll download an "installer" app from the MAS and run it to install in place. Just keep a backup of this application and you won't have to re-download it.
Yes, this is my opinion. But it would make no sense at this point to change the way the installer works, there's not enough time to test.
InuNacho
macrumors 68010
If you look at people outside of forums on the internet, most people don't know jack about computers. For most people it's doing a complete reinstall it or sending it off to the shop.
I apologize that not everyone in the world is a Unix Adminstratatoroer.
MagnusVonMagnum
macrumors 603
You're not very good at gauging your audience are you? I doesn't matter what my level of Unix experience is, my post was meant for AVERAGE desktop users, not system administrators. Your post somehow magically assumes EVERYONE ON HERE has those skills. And even if they did, it's still going to be faster in OSX to simply reboot off the backup (i.e. 1-2 minutes maximum) than attempt to find the source of the problem AND correct it in less time. But even if it always took less time than a reboot, MOST users on here don't have those skills and thus your advice is worthless to the majority on here and hence my reply to contrast yours. While your reply may be correct for you and a few others, it's little more than arrogance and bad advice for what I would wager is the vast majority of the users on here who are not expert Unix or Linux administrators.
Once OSX has a problem at the core level, it cannot necessarily be fixed at the GUI level. You are then dealing with a Unix problem, not a "Mac" one so-to-speak and this is why I brought up Linux to compare. Most Mac users do not have that kind of knowledge and thus telling them to 'fix' it is not very good advice, IMO, especially when tools like CCC guarantee an instant working OS on a simple reboot in 1-2 minutes where you can then restore (and perhaps fix what went wrong the first time).
For example, one time a software update in Leopard completely screwed up OSX here (normal applications were crapping out instantly, etc. if I recall correctly). This was apparently a defect in that software update (the combo update apparently lacked the problem at that time). It was far simpler to boot off my backup drive, restore the original (so the backup wouldn't be in danger if I tried again) and then use the combo update instead at which point the original updated correctly and problem solved. Trying to repair something when I have no idea what the software update was even modifying would have been a NIGHTMARE.
Now I'm sure you, being a wunderkind, would have fired up the VI and fixed that baby in 10 seconds flat without even opening your eyes, but I think most people would have found it sounder advice to keep a CCC type bootable backup around and never have to worry about it.
I'll be happy to go into further detail about specific Linux things you brought up below, but first:
A backup of what? The guy asked about whether he'd need 10.6.8 before he could install Lion and the answer is YES, he'll need to update to it first before he can then update to Lion (thus doubling the install time for Lion). If he doesn't have 10.6.0 installed (i.e. still using Leopard), he'll need to install that FIRST and THEN update to 10.6.8 and THEN update to Lion, which can more than triple the time it would have taken if Apple provided a direct update (which could have been just a file sold at the Apple store online even) that could update from Leopard instead of an "App Store Only" Lion that needs App store functionality and thus 10.6.8 (apparently even 10.6.7 isn't enough even though it has basic App Store support).
Now that we've dealt with that seemingly random comment, let's get back to why Linux tends to suck for new users and why OSX is awesome if you backup your drive with CCC or equiv.
Please explain that to the average new desktop Linux user when it simply dumps them into a Grub prompt and won't boot. They insert their rescue disc they created when they installed whatever version of Linux and it gets them to another (different) shell prompt where they are perhaps instructed to go ahead and fix whatever the problem is (no help). Yes, it's real user friendly...if you're a Linux nerd, that is. 😉
Hell, you can boot to safe and be denied the ability to even write to your own filesystem at first. Try tooling around Linux forums and chat areas to find answers for those sorts of things if you're in a hurry (and that assumes you can boot into Windows or have a 2nd computer, etc. to even get to the Net for help). You can read a book or two on Unix and still not know what to do in certain situations. Don't even get me started on often cryptic 'man' pages that look like they were written by someone who has English for a 3rd language. 🙄 Most hacker types oddly aren't into documentation.
I HAVE fixed problems that way before, but it's not always pleasant, IMO. You need to know exactly where the problem is and what you need to do to fix it or you have a fun day ahead of you. And let me tell you in the past all it took to screw up an X config file was one wrong character. Explain that to an average user who simply wants to add a second monitor or a mouse that won't auto-configure, etc. (more common in the past, but then some distros are very old fashioned). I've been there in the past. It's a good learning experience, of course, but no much fun if you just want to get some work outside the computer OS itself done.
These things happen less in more recent distrobutions, but once you think it would be cool to modify the setup to a more customized experience, you can quickly find yourself in situations like this. I remember setting up automatic joystick detection long before there was ever any GUI controls to set the scripts up, etc. Most Linux types back then saw no need for such things. They could cite 2-3 letter linux commands from memory in a second flat, but couldn't write a decent document page to save their lives. And the elitist attitudes were unbearable...say you're a Linux admin? That explains a LOT. 😉
azurehi
macrumors regular
Why doesn't Apple tell users Exactly what is required Immediately when something new is released rather than having to deal with Jobs' incomplete and often rude messages?
KnightWRX
macrumors Pentium
What problems can arise in the SUS portions of OS X ? Frankly, the SUS is a specification of tools and APIs, not many problems can arise there.
OS X problems are OS X problems. They are usually configuration or implementation problems, nothing at all that relates to the Unix underpinnings or Linux in any way.
Hence my comment that you don't have much Unix experience.
The answer is YES ? Citation needed please.
A backup of the Lion installer, the one you down from the MAS. 10.6.6 is required to download the thing, but as far as DPs are concerned, not to actually install it.
MagnusVonMagnum
macrumors 603
The dual layer firewall implementation since Leopard comes to mind, for one whereby it ignores the GUI settings many times in favor of command line ones that a normal user doesn't even know exists.
I've found similar shortcomings/issues in other GUI configuration programs from time to time including network printer configuration, SAMBA services (restart from CLI works where GUI on/off usually did nothing) and network sharing thereof (directories and permissions). Permissions can be set by GUI, but it's easier to do it in a shell for multiple files.
In any way? Yeah, none of those problems I just listed have ANYTHING to do with Unix underpinnings. 🙄
Hence my comment you can't seem to relate to normal users. I know that 12 years of on/off using Linux desktop operating systems isn't 'much' experience compared to eternal geekdom qualifiers such as yourself, but it's not exactly none either.
I know it's hard to page back up to see your own reply in deference to my reply to someone else. Better to ask someone to spell it out for you since you can't use a browser, it seems. 😉
It was your reply that made no sense. Nowhere did anyone say they already had the install package at any point. How do you backup something you haven't yet downloaded? To get from point a to b to c, you generally have to start at point a. A typical user will need 10.6.8 to get Lion. Thus a user that has 6.0 will need 6.8 first to get Lion in order to install it. A user that has Leopard will need to get SL first and then update SL before they can get Lion.
I realize how difficult that was to follow and therefore I can see why you would jump in and tell someone to just 'backup the download' (i.e. what download didn't require 10.6.7 at minimum?) Are you sure you're getting enough sleep? 😎