Apple’s Developer Forums going crazy about the new way to install OS X Lion through the Mac App Store. There’s complaints about failed downloads, invalid redemption codes and overall installation issues. But once developers get it installed, they say the new OS is awesome and totally opens up the Mac to new possibilities.
What Apple developers are getting used to is the fact that the standard method of installing OS X previews is now the Mac App Store.
This is causing a few grumpy old devs to curse Apple and their new ways.
The process involves first requesting a redemption code for the Mac App Store in order to download the Lion Dev Preview.
The Lion beta release downloads in the background. There’s a small greyed-out icon in the Dock with a status bar (see the screenshot above).
Once the file is downloaded there is a separate procedure in order to install on multiple machines. It does not work like the iOS dev center where UDID’s can be added to a single account.
The confusion comes in when trying to install the preview on multiple machines or machines with different iTunes accounts. Apple usually does not provide a clear installation procedure with their previews or beta builds.
Another curious fact is that if you decide to use the Lion preview, you cannot ultimately upgrade to the public release when it comes out in the summer. Not sure why; other than the way OS X is installed.
As always, using dev builds of any products comes with risk that may outweigh the gain in the long run.
