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Lion USB Keys Available For Some via AppleCare
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What if they buy a Mac with Lion pre-installed and can't get the .dmg to burn?
Not likely. My place of work ordered a new mac mini. I hadn't realised I couldn't revert to SL since I had been able to boot into SL via my FireWire drive. To cut a very long story short, I had erased the entire drive, then after getting an error saying i could not install SL, I tried to g
et back to Lion. So i used my Lion USB drive i had created (which has been able to install Lion on 2 of my macs at home), but got a prohibited symbol (round circle with diagonal line). I then used my other FireWire drive with Lion installed on that, but got the same prohibited symbol yet again.So I called AppleCare and they told me to hold cmd+r on boot (which I had already tried but received an error telling me to restart the mini). When the rep realised it wasn't working, he tried to blame my network connection or the hard drive. However we confirmed that both were actually working fine. The mac would connect to the apple servers (confirmed by my router logs), and managed to download the boot environment which took about 3 mins. After the download completed, the mac would restart, then commence the installation but kick out an error almost instantly asking me to restart/reinstall.
In the end, i had to take the mini to the apple store. The 'genius' then connected his 'diagnostic' FireWire drive to the mini to boot it up. Low and behold, he got the same prohibitive sign. Basically he got the same error I had, but confirmed the hard drive was working fine and healthy. Oh and he wasnt able to support my method of using my USB drive to boot into the mini which didn't work anyway since i got the same old prohibitive sign.
Guess what he did...
...
...
NEW MAC MINI.
DISGRACEFUL IMO.
Yes, I walked away with a working computer but the resolution should have been easy and potentially wouldn't even have been an issue if I'd had boot media or my Lion USB drive worked. Wonder if it's the same with the MacBook Air? I'm hoping this is a bug...
Not likely. My place of work ordered a new mac mini. I hadn't realised I couldn't revert to SL since I had been able to boot into SL via my FireWire drive. To cut a very long story short, I had erased the entire drive, then after getting an error saying i could not install SL, I tried to g
So I called AppleCare and they told me to hold cmd+r on boot (which I had already tried but received an error telling me to restart the mini). When the rep realised it wasn't working, he tried to blame my network connection or the hard drive. However we confirmed that both were actually working fine. The mac would connect to the apple servers (confirmed by my router logs), and managed to download the boot environment which took about 3 mins. After the download completed, the mac would restart, then commence the installation but kick out an error almost instantly asking me to restart/reinstall.
In the end, i had to take the mini to the apple store. The 'genius' then connected his 'diagnostic' FireWire drive to the mini to boot it up. Low and behold, he got the same prohibitive sign. Basically he got the same error I had, but confirmed the hard drive was working fine and healthy. Oh and he wasnt able to support my method of using my USB drive to boot into the mini which didn't work anyway since i got the same old prohibitive sign.
Guess what he did...
...
...
NEW MAC MINI.
DISGRACEFUL IMO.
Yes, I walked away with a working computer but the resolution should have been easy and potentially wouldn't even have been an issue if I'd had boot media or my Lion USB drive worked. Wonder if it's the same with the MacBook Air? I'm hoping this is a bug...
I had the same experience with the MBA 2011. Its because the new mac mini and MBA use a different build - annoying, truly.
Not likely. My place of work ordered a new mac mini. I hadn't realised I couldn't revert to SL since I had been able to boot into SL via my FireWire drive. To cut a very long story short, I had erased the entire drive, then after getting an error saying i could not install SL, I tried to g
So I called AppleCare and they told me to hold cmd+r on boot (which I had already tried but received an error telling me to restart the mini). When the rep realised it wasn't working, he tried to blame my network connection or the hard drive. However we confirmed that both were actually working fine. The mac would connect to the apple servers (confirmed by my router logs), and managed to download the boot environment which took about 3 mins. After the download completed, the mac would restart, then commence the installation but kick out an error almost instantly asking me to restart/reinstall.
In the end, i had to take the mini to the apple store. The 'genius' then connected his 'diagnostic' FireWire drive to the mini to boot it up. Low and behold, he got the same prohibitive sign. Basically he got the same error I had, but confirmed the hard drive was working fine and healthy. Oh and he wasnt able to support my method of using my USB drive to boot into the mini which didn't work anyway since i got the same old prohibitive sign.
Guess what he did...
...
...
NEW MAC MINI.
DISGRACEFUL IMO.
Yes, I walked away with a working computer but the resolution should have been easy and potentially wouldn't even have been an issue if I'd had boot media or my Lion USB drive worked. Wonder if it's the same with the MacBook Air? I'm hoping this is a bug...
Actually, that's not a bug and has been pretty standard as far back as I can recall.
So you fubar your computer and got a new replacement. I guess it could be worse. A few years ago, a friend ordered a Dell that didn't work out of the box. After the better part of a day talking to tech support rep that barely spoke English, they blamed her keyboard. They sent her a replacement, but it didn't resolve the problem. To make matters worse, they charged her for the keyboard! More excruciating hours talking to someone in an overseas call center, and they deduced it was something with the motherboard. Their resolution? Send her a refurb computer. Classy. I wonder if she got one of these?
Anyway, good luck.
You could manually burn the image file inside the Lion package downloaded via the App Store, that's how I made my own Lion DVD and installed it from scratch. I didn't need any script.
A support doc like that has never stopped power users trying things and being successful. I was able to do it with Tiger years back. However, the main point of contention here is that I should have been able to reinstall Lion using my own USB install drive. You must have skipped over that part... Please tell me how this is downgrading my OS!
Besides, a computer should not be rendered "fu**ed up beyond all recognition" after simply erasing the drive! Neither should it be completely useless after replacing/upgrading to a new drive. The point i was making was that if you have a system in place to restore an OS, in this case your machine contacts Apple's servers over the network and downloads a boot environment prior to the full OS, that system should work. Clearly, it is not working for a number of people.
Your refer to those dodgy DELL computers and the experience of your friend but how many times have you spoken with an AppleCare rep whose native language is not English. My experience just the other day was with someone whom I found it difficult to understand. That certainly wasn't the first time that has happened to me.
I don't want to sound disrespectful here towards your friend but NO WAY would I accept refurbished for new, or having to pay for a faulty keyboard. I would not have been mugged like that! I would have been quoting the Sale of Goods Act and Distance Selling Regulations at them so I'm not sure why your friend accepted service like that...
However, we are now straying from the original point of my post.
that's what I reckon too.
all this recovery partition crap and having to download a re-install from the AppStore via internet only smacks of being just a wee bit Microsoft-ish
And yet the common user won't care. They just do what they are told to do.
It's only the "I have to be able to do it my way or it is *****" folks on sites like this that it is a problem. Well guess what. Apple is like the Honey Badger. they don't give a ****. You want a DVD for installations, figure out how to make it yourself. Don't expect them to do your homework for you.
These drives are for limited cases where someone comes into a Genius Bar and the recovery partition doesn't work, didn't install or they get a swap for an iPhone etc with a much newer iOS that needs to have Lion rather than the tiger or Leopard that they have (they did the same thing with Snow Leopard). Not for lazy entitled technogeeks.
And just because something is how Windows does it doesn't make it automatically bad.
Actually you may just find that when the next update comes to for Lion or the ilife apps that the store does recognize your ownership and there's no money to shell out. Particularly if you entered your apple id when you set your air up. Because you are supposed to be getting free updates of all that just like always
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If you want a backup why not "image" the startup disk. Make a few copies and store each of them far away from each other.
There are commercial programs that will "clone" a disk but all Macs ship with the "dd" command which can also clone a disk, partition table and all.
I don't understand the backup problem, they are so easy to make
It will probably look very similar to this
8GB Flash drive Amazon
At least that is very similar to the drive bundled with the MBA 2010
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Not likely. My place of work ordered a new mac mini. I hadn't realised I couldn't revert to SL since I had been able to boot into SL via my FireWire drive. To cut a very long story short, I had erased the entire drive, then after getting an error saying i could not install SL, I tried to g
So I called AppleCare and they told me to hold cmd+r on boot (which I had already tried but received an error telling me to restart the mini). When the rep realised it wasn't working, he tried to blame my network connection or the hard drive. However we confirmed that both were actually working fine. The mac would connect to the apple servers (confirmed by my router logs), and managed to download the boot environment which took about 3 mins. After the download completed, the mac would restart, then commence the installation but kick out an error almost instantly asking me to restart/reinstall.
In the end, i had to take the mini to the apple store. The 'genius' then connected his 'diagnostic' FireWire drive to the mini to boot it up. Low and behold, he got the same prohibitive sign. Basically he got the same error I had, but confirmed the hard drive was working fine and healthy. Oh and he wasnt able to support my method of using my USB drive to boot into the mini which didn't work anyway since i got the same old prohibitive sign.
Guess what he did...
...
...
NEW MAC MINI.
DISGRACEFUL IMO.
Yes, I walked away with a working computer but the resolution should have been easy and potentially wouldn't even have been an issue if I'd had boot media or my Lion USB drive worked. Wonder if it's the same with the MacBook Air? I'm hoping this is a bug...
Generally people don't manage to screw their computer up before Apple manages to consolidate the different "special" versions of Mac OS out there in a new build (10.7.1). Restore media isn't going to work because it wouldn't have the drivers for your new mac. The real question is why you felt the need to downgrade to snow leopard.
To be clear, Apple provides a special build of Mac OS X containing drivers for the specific macs they come on. When the next version of Mac OS is released, they consolidate the various special builds of Mac OS X, as well as other improvements/bug fixes.
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Can you do this after you install Lion? I downloaded and installed Lion the day it came out and didn't even think about not having any backup other than the SL disks that came with my new MBP. I have had mine for only a month and wanted to upgrade before I started a lot of personalization. Now that I think back, I should have made that backup USB key first, so can I go back and do it now or if I have an issue will I have to reinstall from the original SL disks and then re-download Lion? Hope not!
some can, some can't.
all owners of a Thunderbolt Air can't, since the version of Lion that ships with them is not available from the AppStore.
it is a later version than the Gold Master Lion released there.
thus it becomes a $30 download that cannot be installed on a Thunderbolt Air or any Mac that ships with Lion preinstalled.
it is a rort and Apple are very naughty to do this when its loyal customers have shelled out good $ for the latest product.
I ran into issues and so needed to reinstall the OS which our me over my ISP's allowance for the month and already cost me extra $
I don't think so. What if the Apple Retail Store asks you "What happened to the recovery partition? Where did it go? Did you delete it?" ?
I don't think they will give a free USB to those who intentionally deletes the recovery partition .
To answer your question the mac mini will join nearly 100 macs that ALL currently use SL. We use a standard build for support and software reasons.
Are you saying that if we have SL retail disks that we got during launch almost 2 years ago, those disks CANNOT be used to boot and install SL on mid-2011 iMacs because those disks won't have the necessary drivers?
I'm intrigued to hear your comments on this...
That is correct. There is no easy way of installing Snow Leopard on your new mini.
I realise it's not going to be practical at my workplace to run SL on the mini. After I'd thought about it, there may even be some licence terms I'd be breaking so I am not prepared to do this.
But in the post you quoted I was actually referring to using a SL retail disk from September 2009 to install SL on a mid-2011 iMac. Technically, this disk would not have the necessary drivers for the 2011 iMac...?
I don't think so. What if the Apple Retail Store asks you "What happened to the recovery partition? Where did it go? Did you delete it?" ?
All depends on how you answer that question. For instance "Oh, is that what it was? [looks all innocent]???" or... "My friend the Mac Guru told me to enter some weird stuff into a funny window that only had text. He says he's using something called Tiger...."
Then how can I use the SL retail disk I bought back in September 2009 to do a clean erase/install on one of our mid-2011 iMac's?
All depends on how you answer that question. For instance "Oh, is that what it was? [looks all innocent]???" or... "My friend the Mac Guru told me to enter some weird stuff into a funny window that only had text. He says he's using something called Tiger...."
Oh yeah Tiger! That's the latest one isn't it?!
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I guessed it was a loaded question but there is no way it should work with that 10.6.0 disk. The cpu, chipset, graphics card and thunderbolt components present in the latest iMacs didn't even exist when that disk was made so how has it loaded the correct drivers?
I didn't intend to be arsey with you, but all I know is I don't get the prohibited symbol when booting from the SL disk. I can install, update and bish bash bosh, away I go.
Why I cannot use my retail copy of Lion (albeit on USB that I created) on the mac mini is beyond me though. They are both 10.7 and whilst I get that the mini is using a different build geared for the mini, ultimately I should have been able to install from that USB drive.
Up until the other day the only time I've come up against that prohibited symbol was using iboot on a PC rig
is there no solution for us?
if we buy a new hdd, will we have to plan to buy a additional $69 4gb usb drive?
I had this problem using Internet Recovery with a new MBA. It would download the installer, come up in the graphical screen and say "there's a problem installing OSX, try reinstalling". Very frustrating
I had tried this initially using the USB/Ethernet dongle at work, but then switched to WiFi when I brought the machine home. Looking at the logs, even though it had downloaded from WiFi, it was trying to start the install from the USB Ethernet. I couldn't find a way to change/clear this in the install app.
I finally booted the machine and reset PRAM - couldn't get to OF, btw. Once I did that, the installer downloaded and then ran flawlessly after that.
So- the moral of the story is if you are having trouble with Internet recovery, try resetting the machine and see if that clears things up.
How is this anything like Microsoft? Microsoft doesn't create restore partitions, the OEMs do. More importantly, those OEMs will provide restore discs if you call them up. They at least give you the option to purchase the disc whereas Apple isn't at all with the new hardware. Also, Microsoft doesn't have any technology in place in Windows 7 where you can recover your OS from an internet download. Maybe some OEM came up with a method to do this, but not Microsoft that I know of. This would actually be pretty neat to be able to do. But it's a lot harder in the Windows world because of the hardware diversity.that's what I reckon too.
all this recovery partition crap and having to download a re-install from the AppStore via internet only smacks of being just a wee bit Microsoft-ish