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Mac OS X 10.6.8 to Remove MacDefender, Get Mac App Store Ready for Lion
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You would need room in the firmware memory to handle authentication and handling long slow downloads subject to interruptions. You also have no place to store what you download until the disk is configured.
Netboot typically requires LAN speed connections to function properly. Especially for 4GB or more of OS installation.
Maybe they did some changes in Snow Leopard. I tried to install Leopard like that once or twice, and after the install ended, the disk did not boot. So the installer was doing something extra when it worked from a booted media compared to a mounted media.
Sure, but again, the original poster that spawned this sub-thread suggested this as some sort of "Think Different" thing, something truely innovative and wild when it reality, it's been done. And it's been done to death. For the last 15 years.
My initial point, which you've twisted in your bid to do I don't know what, was that there is nothing "Think Different" about booting off the network and installing OSes through the network. It's all been done before and if Apple were to do something like this, they'd just join the ranks of all who did these sort of things before them.
The initial boot image could simply be about 20 MB big. Off broadband, it could work easily. Download would be stored in memory in a RAM disk, like these things usually are (at least in the case of Ignite installs, the EFI shell contacts the servers and loads an image to a RAM disk and boots off of it).
Seriously, guys, nothing that hasn't been solved before.
Well, the think different part was about the credit card purchasing through firmware I suppose or I don't know what that poster had in mind, which I haven't seen elsewhere.
Funny Macs have netboot already, but I wouldn't want to try it at anything other than LAN speeds. Especially for an OS install.
I'll agree the initial image could be 20MB (or even a bit bigger.) and still be semi reasonable. However, Who the heck wants to download a multi GB OS a second or third or fourth time when they can't use their system for anything else.
The initial download of an OS upgrade would be fine as the OS upgrade wouldn't start until the whole thing was downloaded and the system would still be useable during that download. Trying to download several GBs with a system that has no useable OS on it would be annoying, slow, painful and ridiculous.
How is that think different ? A field to grab CC info, and send it to the server to authorize the download... How is that any different than the already multitude of questions that these netinstall services can already ask you (or not ask you in the case of fully automated installs) ?
I really don't see anything innovative about what that guy was suggesting. We have had the tech around to do that for the last 15 odd years.
Well, considering I've never installed Linux any other way and I've been installing Linux for quite a while now on my personal PC and other machines...
Seriously, I don't know how many times I've reinstalled my old Pentium and Pentium II systems from scratch using HTTP as the install media from a very small Slackware root/boot disk floppy combo or a RedHat (pre-anaconda) floppy disk. Back in the 90s.
You realize that the entire Mac App Store application is just 7MB right? A stripped down version could be very very small.
If anything, the bit of firmware code that I'm suggesting doesn't even have to be an app store at all. It could simply be code that checks your HDD for an OS. If none is present, it will download a larger piece of code to your HDD to create a boot partition. This would contain the Mac App Store which would then allow you to download and install OS X Lion.
As for Lion being too large for you to download, if this is the case, then you won't be buying it on the App Store to begin with. You'll buy a physical copy so you'll never have this problem. That's the end of that argument.
However, for the growing majority of people who've joined the broadband age, the Mac App Store will work just fine for the rare times that they'll ever have to download the full OS. All of us already download massive point updates every several months anyway.
good idea, some improvements, though
That's a good idea, but you'd want the firmware to have a bootstrap loader that would download the actual MAS loader application. You wouldn't want to put much intelligence in the firmware, or you'd have a support nightmare when something has to change in the MAS protocols - and you have to update all of the supported models with new firmware.
The firmware loader could look on the WAN (www.apple.com), at the local network, for a program on optical or USB, ....
The HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server (no optical drive) does this - it looks on the local network for a system serving the WHS installation DVD. MacBook Air has/had a similar feature.
The PXE boot loader on the system already can do much of this work - it's a primitive network boot which only has to load a somewhat smarter loader application.
Safer to use the word "number" instead of "majority" - I doubt that half the people on the planet can download full DVD images without thinking twice....
That's a good idea, but you'd want the firmware to have a bootstrap loader that would download the actual MAS loader application. You wouldn't want to put much intelligence in the firmware, or you'd have a support nightmare when something has to change in the MAS protocols - and you have to update all of the supported models with new firmware.
The firmware loader could look on the WAN (www.apple.com), at the local network, for a program on optical or USB, ....
The HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server (no optical drive) does this - it looks on the local network for a system serving the WHS installation DVD. MacBook Air has/had a similar feature.
The PXE boot loader on the system already can do much of this work - it's a primitive network boot which only has to load a somewhat smarter loader application.
Safer to use the word "number" instead of "majority" - I doubt that half the people on the planet can download full DVD images without thinking twice....
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The amount of coverage one of these incidents gets is a testimony to how much more secure the Mac OS environment (and Unix overall) is.
It looks like you will be able to reinstall OS X from the recovery partition, which I imagine would be an internet download.
Where was the server that you were installing from? What was the speed of the connection to the server? How long did it take you to do the installation? Was it your only computer?
Okay not knowing the size of the Lion DP download, I am going to use 4GB as my basis for the following based on what I've read about the DP. If Apple can blast the download at the maximum speed my connection can handle, I'm estimating about 4 hours to download Lion. From what someone said, Apple throttles the App Store downloads and it can take a day or so to get the DP.
So that's basically a day (or more) used just to install Lion - then you get to restore your data.
Is the suggestion doable? Yes.
Is it reasonable? NO!
Good information. But I doubt it will be an internet download as that would take at least hours for most people if not well over a day.
Also, it does sound like this recovery partition will be noticeably more than a GB as suggested elsewhere - which makes it a significant chunk of the 64GBs of SSD in the low end Air.
However, in my opinion (and others as well apparently) it doesn't eliminate the reason I would want to have a Lion Installation DVD. (As stated in many places in this thread.) If one can easily make it from what I get form the App Store great. If not then I will definitely be buying a physical copy of Lion. I may still buy the physical copy - I haven't used the Mac App Store yet.
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Who knows where it was, some US university I imagine, mirror lists back in those days weren't quite that explicit. The speed of the connection to the server varies greatly, my own broadband cable was something around 5 mbps. Installation always took between 30 and 60 minutes depending on the packages I selected. And yes, it was always on my only computer (I've never actually had multiple computers, always just one).
It is for people who have the proper broadband for it. That you don't does not mean that the solution isn't reasonable. Quite the contrary, it's very reasonable. However, like in all things, there should always be options for those who want to do it another way.
I'm all for options. I'd rather Lion be available on DVDs in physical stores, be available in the MAS for people who like that thing, and be available as a download of a simple .ISO image for people who don't like or want the MAS.
Is there going to be any help from Apple if you are still at 10.5.8?
Edit. I am referring to this MacDefender thing.
Edit. I am referring to this MacDefender thing.
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Yes, though it's not obvious or user-friendly at the moment.
They should, but probably not because their solution relies on the Malware protection added in 10.6
Then what would it be for? The Recovery partition is only 800 MB.
I'll concede that 30 to 60 minutes for an install is reasonable.
What do you consider proper broadband? And what percent of households in the US have that?
You would need unthrottled downloads from Apple for this to be at all reasonable for even some people.
I would say an hour or or maybe even 2 hours for download and installation of the OS is reasonable when your computer is in need of a fresh install. However several hours to over a day isn't at all reasonable.
Also, Apple has to pay for their bandwidth usage. And they need the pipelines to handle the bandwidth. That's why App Store downloads are throttled.
Yes connecting your computer to the net and saying go install the OS is in theory a nice thing. In the current state that things are in, it's not reasonable. Maybe when we all have inexpensive 100 megabit connections to the net it will be.
That's what Akamai is for.
That's because guys like me and Aiden have been doing this stuff for years. It's not new at all.
Apple have iStore content caching deals with a lot of ISP's these days.
Which is why the ISP I'm with doesn't meter iTunes or App Store content I download. It also means they would have a machine on their LAN that hosts the boardband connection with the LION installer (even maybe the full NetInstall Server). That would have no trouble saturating your connection at full speed to receive the download as quick as possible.
You wouldn't be relying on the speed of the Internet at large.
I would be quite annoyed if the Mac App Store price was the same as the boxed copies considering how much they would save from not having to print manuals etc and not having the physical media. Oh how i hope it is aggressively priced like snow leopard was.. however i doubt that somehow.
Seems to me, with FCX and Lion coming via the App Store, that Apple intends on migrating to an App Store only distribution scheme for all software - e.g., nothing sold at retail stores or online, just everything via the App Store. Optical drives RIP?