Lion OS X opinion

hiddenknight821

I am surprised I did not see a thread about this (or I might have missed it ), so I decided to create one. I know TE doesn't have many Mac users here, but don't get me wrong. I am not an Apple fanboy either. I thought I was until I learned more about the flaws two years ago. I was a noob then. I am sure you guys heard about the new Lion OS that's suppose to be released this month. Here's the catch. As far as we know, Apple will NOT ship out the cd/dvd. We can only get it through their "app store".

I was not happy about this news either. I know most vendors do not normally ship out the OS restoration disks with their PCs, but we are still entitled to purchase our copies of the restoration disks from them. However, that's not the point in this case. We're buying an OS, so we should have the right to obtain it in another form of medium. If it turns out that we can download the ISO image from the app store and burn it to a disk, then that's good news for apple, but no one can verify this. I was reading this link, and I have to say I despite some idiots who commented there claiming that we do not need the disks as long as we may will a hidden recovery partition created after installing.

Rumors suggest that Apple was doing this as a "go-green" incentive and they're trying to stop the piracy issue with the hackintosh systems. No offense, but I don't like the hackintosh folks bragging about their setups either. Makes me wanna puke. Anyway, I want to hear what you guys have to say about Apple's decision since i am not interested in hearing from the bandwagon apple users that doesn't have a good understanding of clean install.

Forsaken_GA

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

I am surprised I did not see a thread about this (or I might have missed it ), so I decided to create one. I know TE doesn't have many Mac users here, but don't get me wrong. I am not an Apple fanboy either. I thought I was until I learned more about the flaws two years ago. I was a noob then. I am sure you guys heard about the new Lion OS that's suppose to be released this month. Here's the catch. As far as we know, Apple will NOT ship out the cd/dvd. We can only get it through their "app store".

They will eventually ship a version for the brick and mortars, and I'm fairly certain that new Mac's will ship with install media.

With the ability to do a full restore from a Time Machine backup, I don't need direct install media, I just need something to boot the computer from, and the disc that came with my mac works ust fine for that.

Honestly, I don't have a problem with not having install media. It's just one more thing for me to keep track of. I haven't bought a physical game in years, it's all been digital downloads from the likes of Steam or Direct2Drive, or from the game company directly (ie, EA or Blizzard). I've reinstalled my Mac preceisly once in the last 4 years.

If worse came to worse, and my Time Machine backup was dead, I would simply reinstall from my Snow Leopard disc, and then upgrade to Lion again from the App Store, and move on from there. It's a non-issue, and I like the fact that the day of release, all I'll need to do is plugin my credit card number, and then it'll do the upgrade in the background.

MentholMoose

So far it works great on my hackintosh!

hiddenknight821

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

If worse came to worse, and my Time Machine backup was dead, I would simply reinstall from my Snow Leopard disc, and then upgrade to Lion again from the App Store, and move on from there. It's a non-issue, and I like the fact that the day of release, all I'll need to do is plugin my credit card number, and then it'll do the upgrade in the background.

I'm surprised you are not complaining about it. I mean... What would you have done if you didn't have a broadband connection?

demonfurbie

MentholMoose wrote: »

So far it works great on my hackintosh!

do you notice any lag on the hackintosh?

jahsoul

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Rumors suggest that Apple was doing this as a "go-green" incentive and they're trying to stop the piracy issue with the hackintosh systems. No offense, but I don't like the hackintosh folks bragging about their setups either. Makes me wanna puke. Anyway, I want to hear what you guys have to say about Apple's decision since

Guess I won't talk about my pimp setup then..

But seriously, I will wait until the first update because 10.6 wasn't really ironed out (IMO) until 10.6.3. 10.6.0 made me want to revert my Macbook Pro back to 10.5.7.

As far as restore disk, I think that they will have to send one out unless they have something implemented in the OS that allows it from start up CLI..

Webmaster

I don't have a problem with this move either, I only touched the Snow Leopard disc when I installed it. I don't have original Windows 7 discs either yet I run a genuine legal copy of Windows 7.

hiddenknight821 wrote:

What would you have done if you didn't have a broadband connection?

Same thing as when I don't have water, gas, or electricity: get it. Seriously though, if you can download the regular software updates you should be able to download this OS upgrade as well, and maybe even faster than they can deliver a disc.

hiddenknight82 wrote:

I know TE doesn't have many Mac users here,

To be exact, 5.27% of visits made to TE last month come from a Mac OS machine, that's 20,556 (compared to 86,4% from Windows).

tbgree00

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

I'm surprised you are not complaining about it. I mean... What would you have done if you didn't have a broadband connection?

I don't think an update to Lion is so important to him that it couldn't wait until he got to a broadband connection to finish the install.

If you're asking more in a general sense then the lack of broadband is a problem with any cloud services/digital distribution. I don't think that companies actively plan for this anymore since broadband is pretty much everywhere but in rural areas. I would hope that Apple would let you call support and open media but it could be a case of having to take your computer to a friend/public place and get it there.

I'm not bothered by this change and will likely update after a week or so of feedback. I'm lucky enough to have a fruit stand within 10 minutes of my house so if things are hosed I can get them to fix it!

hiddenknight821

Interesting to know that I am the only one that does the clean install at least once a year as an alternative to defragging. Sometimes, I mess around with the OS X and try to install some softwares (including bootcamping) that I regret installing in the first place, so I had to reformat my hard drive a few time for that reason. I used to have bootcamp, but I realize it's not what I wanted, so I am thinking about doing a reformat soon with a dual partition this time with Ubuntu installed. I didn't want to suffer from the long wait on the updates after reinstalling snow leopard so I thought why not wait for the Lion to come out, but now it's a waste of time for me to wait for the release. I plan to reinstall snow leopard soon.

Just wondering. How often do you guys use your Mac? I mean I would reformat my PC once in a while too when I realize I may have messed up a couple of things on it. I use my macbook pro everyday since this is my only laptop beside my netbook. I am too lazy to get on the desktop.

Webmaster

hiddenknight82 wrote:

Just wondering. How often do you guys use your Mac?

Almost everyday, and although I don't install/uninstall software often that is for most applications irrelevant on a Mac anyway. I mostly use Xcode+iOS SDK, some Photoshop, and some Dreamweaver, iTunes and various third party tools/utilities. It's connected to my TV and speakers so I also use it to play movies and music. No keyboard/mouse attached because I always VNC to it from my Windows notebook.

hiddenknight821 wrote:

Interesting to know that I am the only one that does the clean install at least once a year as an alternative to defragging.

I very much doubt you are the only one, but I personally never felt the need to reinstall my Mac over the past 3 years, and without an occasional restart it's always running. It's basically dedicated to developing but simply put I'm a "user" when it comes to my Mac so as long as I can use it for my needs I'm not going to spend precious time on reinstalling an OS (and applications and reconfiguring all preferences/settings). Don't get me wrong, I have as little love/hate for Windows as I do for Mac OS X, though that differs per day and the tasks, but reinstalling the OS when it's not really necessary feels like treating it as if it were Windows.

I was worried Lion wouldn't run on my Mac (it's an older Mac Mini) but I recently upgraded it to 2GB (now there is something to complain about, opening it up without damaging it is a challenge by itself) which just makes it meet the sys requirements. I doubt Lion OS will change much for me but considering the cheap and yes easy online access to it I am actually looking slightly forward to it.

Forsaken_GA

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

I'm surprised you are not complaining about it. I mean... What would you have done if you didn't have a broadband connection?

I'd go get one.

Let's be realistic - Most folks who are going to be running Mac's are going to have access to broadband connections. There may be the occasional corner case here and there, but corner cases are the exceptions to the rule, not the rule itself.

Forsaken_GA

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Interesting to know that I am the only one that does the clean install at least once a year as an alternative to defragging. Sometimes, I mess around with the OS X and try to install some softwares (including bootcamping) that I regret installing in the first place, so I had to reformat my hard drive a few time for that reason. I used to have bootcamp, but I realize it's not what I wanted, so I am thinking about doing a reformat soon with a dual partition this time with Ubuntu installed. I didn't want to suffer from the long wait on the updates after reinstalling snow leopard so I thought why not wait for the Lion to come out, but now it's a waste of time for me to wait for the release. I plan to reinstall snow leopard soon.

Well, my use case for reinstallation was because I made my Bootcamp partition too small, and I needed to repartition to fix that. Time Machine was wonderful in this case. Boot off my install media, Restore from Time Machine backup, and an hour later, I've got my computer back up and running like normal, and my repartitioning is done. There's really no point in doing a full reinstall without a very good reason to do so.

Just wondering. How often do you guys use your Mac? I mean I would reformat my PC once in a while too when I realize I may have messed up a couple of things on it. I use my macbook pro everyday since this is my only laptop beside my netbook. I am too lazy to get on the desktop.

I use it every single day. I no longer have a desktop, and the rest of my hardware is dedicated to servers, so other than the laptop works gave me, it's my main machine.

tpatt100

Microsoft was talking about ditching CD/DVD installs for a while now, I think digital distribution or a restore on a small partition will become the norm. Last couple of my laptops did not come with DVDs only a restore partition.

demonfurbie

tpatt100 wrote: »

Microsoft was talking about ditching CD/DVD installs for a while now, I think digital distribution or a restore on a small partition will become the norm. Last couple of my laptops did not come with DVDs only a restore partition.

thats all great till you have a hard drive failure

tpatt100

If you have a hard drive failure then you request a copy of the OS if your still under warranty. If not then your still going to buy a hard drive and an OS. Most OS discs are restore discs anyways tied to a particular desktop or laptop. Still don't see why like Linux Microsoft doesn't require installs from boot discs and make you download an image to install from their servers.

onesaint

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Interesting to know that I am the only one that does the clean install at least once a year as an alternative to defragging. Sometimes, I mess around with the OS X and try to install some softwares (including bootcamping) that I regret installing in the first place, so I had to reformat my hard drive a few time for that reason. I used to have bootcamp, but I realize it's not what I wanted, so I am thinking about doing a reformat soon with a dual partition this time with Ubuntu installed. I didn't want to suffer from the long wait on the updates after reinstalling snow leopard so I thought why not wait for the Lion to come out, but now it's a waste of time for me to wait for the release. I plan to reinstall snow leopard soon.

Just wondering. How often do you guys use your Mac? I mean I would reformat my PC once in a while too when I realize I may have messed up a couple of things on it. I use my macbook pro everyday since this is my only laptop beside my netbook. I am too lazy to get on the desktop.

Fixing Windows servers / workstations is part of what I do for a living. I like to be able to go home and have a machine that just works which the Mac does (for 3 years now). Also, I don't have to reformat every so often. My windows VMs, well those are VMs. Destroy, replace, repeat.

On my older windows workstations I used to do an annual clean install. The registry would just get to messy and bloated after a while. With OSX, I've found that isn't called for as much (if at all).

I use my Mac Pro as my main machine at home (so almost daily). It serves for *nix-ish CLI, Windows VM, and OSX. Plus I can RDP into anything else if I need to.

On the delivery note, Its not that big a deal. Besides, it just means Apple can store the OS on their servers and not take up space on mine.

demonfurbie

tpatt100 wrote: »

If you have a hard drive failure then you request a copy of the OS if your still under warranty. If not then your still going to buy a hard drive and an OS. Most OS discs are restore discs anyways tied to a particular desktop or laptop. Still don't see why like Linux Microsoft doesn't require installs from boot discs and make you download an image to install from their servers.

if i have a hard drive failure im gonna go buy a blank hard drive pop it in and install from a disk

tpatt100

Meh in ten years our kids will ask us what an operating system disc is.

Forsaken_GA

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

I'm surprised you are not complaining about it. I mean... What would you have done if you didn't have a broadband connection?

And honestly, let me reiterate why I don't mind it so much.

Last year, I got an itching to play Red Alert 3 again. Only problem was, I couldn't find my discs. I could find the tin they came in (I popped for the collector's edition), but no discs. This resulted in me buying another copy.

A few weeks ago, I got a hankering to play Knights of the Old Republic again. I logged into my Steam account and downloaded it and was merrily slashing my way to a dark side ending shortly thereafter.

I have acquired so much software over the years that keeping track of physical discs has become a huge pain in the rear. This is why I also now have a Netflix account and I no longer buy DVD's. Digital distribution has become so incredibly damned convenient. Allowing storage of non-critical data be someone else's problem allows me to focus on securing my critical data.

hiddenknight821

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

And honestly, let me reiterate why I don't mind it so much.

Haha, okay! I got your point the first time I was being obnoxious when I asked about the broadband connection. Who am I kidding? Everybody love Broadband and Cloud! Not Raymond.

Forsaken_GA

hiddenknight821 wrote: »

Haha, okay! I got your point the first time I was being obnoxious when I asked about the broadband connection. Who am I kidding? Everybody love Broadband and Cloud! Not Raymond.

Well, I'm normally not a big fan of the cloud, but utilizing cloud storage for digital distribution is definitely one of it's better uses.

the_Grinch

This should help you out:

Create A Bootable Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Flash Drive - SubRosaSoft.com Inc.

Never had to reimage my Mac. I did have my hard drive die, but other then that it has been smooth sailing. I wouldn't say it is as fast as the day I got it, but it hasn't slowed that much. I can leave it on for 30 days or more at a time without issue. It is my daily machine, though since I got my HP Touchpad I haven't used it as much.