A supposed new email from Steve claims that the only way to clean install Lion on a new machine is to install Snow Leopard first. We think it’s bogus, though: not only is that proposed solution just stupid and un-Apple-like, but we think there’s proof right in the email that it wasn’t sent from Steve’s iPhone, or even an iPhone at all.
According to MacRumors, this is an actual email exchange with Steve Jobs forwarded to them by a reader:
On Jun 20, 2011, at 9:57 PM, xxxx wrote:
Steve,
I’m really exited about Lion, but I’m a bit anxious about the absence of any physical media in the event of a crash where I need to do a clean install. Will Lion still provide a way to make a bootable image in the event that I need to start from scratch?
From: Steve Jobs
Subject: Re: Lion clean install
Date: June 21, 2011 7:55:05 AM PDT
To: xxxxYou can clean install Snow Leopaard [sic] first.
Sent from my iPhone
Here’s the problem. See that “Leopaard [sic]?” How would Steve Jobs have mistyped Leopard on his iPhone when that exact misspelling autocorrects under iOS to “Leopard?” It’s highly unlikely that error would have crept through if it wasn’t typed on a different operating system entirely. We’ve tested it under iOS: “Leopaard” autocorrects everytime entering that sentence.
We’re really skeptical of this. Even in the developer preview, there’s a way to do a clean install of Lion: create a blank partition, format it as HFS+, and tell the installer to install Lion there.
Apple’s got a more elegant way to clean install Lion n a new system planned. There’s a million ways to do this gracefully. Making people keep their Snow Leopard discs around — or buy two separate Apple operating systems in order to perform a clean install of one of them— is not graceful. Apple’s moving Lion to the Mac App Store to get rid of optical discs, not make us keep obsolete ones around indefinitely.
Update: Here’s another purported email from Steve, saying the same thing, for what it’s worth. We’re still highly skeptical.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
104 responses to “Did Steve Jobs Just Say That You’ll Need To Upgrade From Snow Leopard To Clean Install Lion?”
Last paragraph, do you mean “Apple’s got a more way to clean install LION on a new system planned”? instead of Leopard?
That is one mean looking kitty…
apple sux
Whats wrong with the lepoards body, why is it heavily deformed?
You could also burn a Lion disc if you already have Snow Leopard.
I did indeed. Thanks, and corrected.
This make sense… Steve is right… If you buy new Mac with Lion OS X then u have no need to install Snow Leopard then upgrade to Lion. If you are still using old Mac with Snow Leopard then you need to install clean Snow Leopard then download Lion at Mac App Store if you already purchase it’s free download and upgrade. This make sense… any problem? I don’t think this is problem.
why not u sux?
im creating good free opensource solutions, apple create proprietary shit. you are protection and populate this shit.
It’s kind of true. The only possible way to install Lion is from the Mac app store. And nthe only way to get the app store is to have snow leopard. Unless some installs it on a USB drive or Dvd but other than that you can’t have it. It’s obvious
apple = beelzebub
So get out of our forums? Troll.
Yeah = Troll. http://goo.gl/YXyY
Then get out of our forums. Duh!
Sorry, you had a few typos. Here, let me help:
“im creating good free opensource solutions, apple create proprietary shit. you are protection and populate this shit” is what you said. THIS is what it should have been. “I’m self-righteous in my creation of open source solutions that haven’t been able to compare to or compete with Apple. I’m bitter because a solution other than the one I’ve chosen seems to be working relatively well. Apple creates proprietary software that is easy to use, if a little limiting to code geeks like me. You are truly witty for turning my own purposeful misspellings against me. Let me buy you a celebratory beer!”It’s ok that English is a second language for some of us – I fixed the apostrophe in “I’m”, capitalized some words, added some punctuation and tweaked a few other things. This reads much better now – you’re welcome!
Hehe – you said it better.
i found alot problems with your awesome and best OS. just because you know one tehnology dosnt make it the best solution for everything and everyone. go studdy someelse then mac and english and be more usefull to people around u.
Just wrote up a quick post on creating a bootable lion copy http://www.whatrightclick.com/…
So in theory with my new iMac 27″ coming next week, I can use the “free” download token from Apple to get Lion when it’s released, and burn that to a disk to install on my SL MBP so long as I use the same Apple ID?
I actually don’t see the issue of upgrading to the latest OS from the -1 latest OS. Having to support all the skipping would be wasteful IMHO. Why would people still be on just Leopard anyway, that just seems Microsoft-ish… if I wanted to do that I’d have stuck with XP.
yeah, but we don’t care
Actually, this may be true. I emailed Steve yesterday, and got a similar response. I asked if Apple intends to give us any kind of physical install media since a dead hard drive, or hard drive upgrades would create the need for physical media to install from. I mentioned that it’s ridiculous to first install Snow Leopard (which a new Mac buyer as of next month would not have), and then install Lion. His response: “Nope”. Maybe Steve just doesn’t want to give out information right now, but if this is true, it’s got to be the stupidest thing that Apple has ever done. I’m all for ditching CDs and DVDs, but a thumb drive like the ones that come with the MacBook Air would be perfect. I wouldn’t mind paying more for that. Otherwise, we will just have to hack the Lion installer to extract the install DMG file.
I know how to use a mac.. and for me.. IT IS A PROBLEM
I thought we already knew that.
The average person isn’t going to care. They will do whatever must be done and not even consider that there’s a different way.
myself, I never just upgrade to a new OS. I always use a split system so that I still have my old OS to fall back on while the bugs are worked out. So it’s no big deal for me to install SL then update then Lion, install my apps, get them all serialized etc. THen clone that to an external that I can boot and clone from if needed. Then I’ll bring over my data and have at it. When I feel that everything is good. I’ll clone my frozen old system just in case and pull the partition down. No real big for me.
Why burn it to a disk? You can just install it off the store. Lion is allowed on multiple computers that you own.
Also, anyone else notice that almost all the stores are out of SL disks. This is likely because Lion is due any day. Plus the disks they had were only up to 10.6.3 (and you need at least .6 to get the store). So they are likely about to ship out 10.6.8 disks for those that don’t have SL and need it and Lion will appear within a few days after that.
When you install Lion it creates a 650MB hidden partition called Apple_Boot Recovery HD (at least it did when I did a clean install). If you are using Lion do a “diskutil list” in terminal to confirm this or reboot and hold down alt and you will see an option called Recovery HD. This partition allows you to do a clean install of Lion onto any disk you like. Perhaps someone who installed via an upgrade from Sonow Leopard can confirm if they see this too?
If you’ll peruse my profile, you’ll find that I am not one of the blind faithful that subscribe to every word that Apple utters. I develop for OSX, iOS and Android, and each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, many of them purely based on perception (and thus completely subjective). However, all things being equal I find blind prejudice just as objectionable as blind allegiance. However, reading your last few posts I’m guessing that most of what I’ve written is unintelligible to you, so I’ll end with a nice simple statement like Robert X:
You no like Apple. You on Apple fan site. You post mean. You want us agree. You not so smart.
The package for Lion contains a disk image. I would assume that Apple will add a tool to extract that and image it to DVD or USB/Thunderbolt drive by the time they release. But if not, it seems so trivial there will be a third party utility written by someone to do it if Apple don’t.
The hackers hoever are going to have to go back to distributing patches to work around the activation requirement for their hacintoshes though, as I’m sure this will be tied to hardware IDs.
This is no good if it’s your disk that has failed, and it’s three years down the track out of warranty or applecare support.
I should add this isn’t new news: http://www.cultofmac.com/mac-o…
yeah seriously don’t post your hater comments here :/
Good work, gonna bookmark it for later use. Thanks.
Let me see, Why would I not want to download a 4GB install package for every machine I own? Umm… Because in the rest of the world we have DATA CAPS! It’s bad enough when iOS go in for an update, my wifes 3G (no more updates though for that), my iPhone, the iPad all add up to 2GB (as it never seems to comedown clean the first time and has to be downloaded again for at least one device)
Then if I add Lion for my Air, Mac mini, and updating iTunes on the remaining Windows PCs in the house, there goes a big chunk of my 40GB data allowance for the month before I have to start paying NZ$3/GB.
Oh, and I have purchased movie rentals 4 times from iTunes, and on one occasion, the download was corrupt and had to come down again, and two of them would not activate the DRM because iTunes store was unavailable. Apple are not getting any of my money again on DRM Media.
And iCloud, I’m skeptical about Apple maintaining up time on this service seeing as they still have to take their entire appstore off-line whenever they update inventory. But the iTunes cloud service won’t be available here in NZ for a long time yet. We still don’t even get any iBooks that aren’t in project Gutenburg.
Very true… I just felt the Recovery HD needed mentioning. Personally I’ll boot the the Recovery HD after the final release and then install another version of Lion onto an external drive. That way the external will have a bootable version of Lion and a bootable Recovery HD. Still it does feel a bit un-apple like. However there are so many Apple stores now. If a users hard disk fails that is most likely their first port of call.
Not deformed at all, that is a shoulder blade sticking up on the right of the photo. Cats do that you know!
Not everybody uses autocorrect.
probably even Steve jobs himself hates it :D
Not providing a disk for Lion install for those who want one is just plain stupid. This whole drive everything through the App Store is maddening. The App Store is okay for some things but Lion should not be App Store only. Someone needs a good slap.
Agree. Its a good idea, but its a /horrible/ idea to make stuff app store only.
If Lion came out on a disk, I will upgrade to lion. But as long as it stay mac app store download only, I’m not going to buy it.
Because what if I need to do a complete restore? I’ll need a CD!
this download only is a horrible idea! because:1) you need to have Snow Lepoard. If you don’t, you have to by snow lepoard to install lion. (so $30 upgrade has became $60)
2) high speed internet. don’t have the high speed internet, its going to take a long time to download not everybody has high speed internet
3) data caps. if you have several macs, you’re going to have to download it several times, that could rack up a high bill if you have data caps (which almost everyone does)
I think that this mac app store download only junk will bite apple in the rear. Because are you going to tell a mac owner living in the country who (still) has dial-up that the only way he can get lion is via download which is going to take him (literally) days to download? are you going to tell all pre snow-leopard mac users, hey by the way you need to buy snow leopard, before you buy lion?
I don’t know whose genious idea this was, but its a /stupid/ idea!not everybody has high speed internet! not every body has high data caps, and (defiantly) not everybody is running Snow leopard!
PS crimes!
I think killing off the DVD drive is a bad mistake. I don’t like it. Just because Steve does not like disks, does not mean the rest of the world does not. They are convenient, and offer a level of security and comfort that many may not have with the iCloud or the App Store.
People like to hold the product in their hands, not leave their purchased software in the hands of others or some cloud.
Steve better not ram all this down customer’s throats, or they may be saying hello to Windows again…. If of course they got rid a Ballmer and redesigned the OS from the ground up.
MS is blowing this, and as long as Ballmer is around they will keep missing the point. There is room for new ideas.
If you don’t agree with me, don’t waste your time responding since I will never read it.
Love Apple, but worried about its future.
Concerned Guy.
Send from my Zune..
Maybe you should wait until the product is actually released before bashing it, at least then you would have evidence and not just presumptions. isn’t it sad that you made your presumptions into facts then argue passionately for it, something you don’t know anything about.
Eloquently put.
“I find blind prejudice just as objectionable as blind allegiance”
This is possibly the smartest thing I’ve read on any forum
Apple already said it will be mac app store download only.
…. well, unless they change their mind and decide to come out with a hardcopy.
I live in the country, and my freind across the street has several macs (I have one) So, there is like 4 or more macs right there. Our internet is not fast enough to make a Lion Download feasible. (add to that reliable either)how are we supposed to install lion if we can’t have the CD to install it?
granted its probably a small percentage but there is percentage that don’t have the requirements to make Lion a feasible download. If we had a disc, no problem, but through the internet (mac app store)? that could be near impossible.
This isn’t new nor surprising news. We were told on day one that Snow Leopard would be needed. I’m just a little sad that you can’t install the final version of Lion over the Developers Preview copy and that you have to revert back to Snow Leopard first
You would be deformed too if you had just lost your job.
Thanks for the compliment!
1. Steve could be on iOS 5, whose autocorrect has been reported to be wonky.
2. When typing “Leopaard” in to iOS 4, capitalizing the “L” disables autocorrect on that word, therefore allowing the misspelling of the word, given that he capitalized it. If he didn’t capitalize it, it should autocorrect to “leopard” not “Leopard”.
You’d only have to download it once, use the downloaded data to create a bootable disk image (instructions are already available in multiple places online) and the use the disk to do an installation on each machine while making sure the machine is connected to the net while doing so.
This is all old news already.
I know that, but how am I supposed to get lion in the first place?
I live where the internet is not so great. Meaning downloading large files can me close to impossible. (takes a long time)
I know this may seem a little taboo but you could have a TRUSTED friend log into your Apple account and download it for you (a temporary pswd change before and after) and have them burn it to DVD and give it to you. The image is downloaded by your account, you install it as above. Simplicity itself.