When the new MacBook Airs shipped with Snow Leopard on USB disk drives, many of us hoped that the days of DVD-based operating system installs were behind us. Optical media is pretty much dead, after all, largely thanks to Apple’s successful push into digital delivery with their iTunes service. Sure, you need to ship operating systems physically somehow… but as more and more of us jettison our DVD drives, USB is just a heck of a lot more ubiquitous.
It doesn’t look like OS X 10.7 Lion will be the first Apple operating system to ship exclusively on USB drive, though. A listing for Lion has just popped up on German’s Amazon website, and it’s for a DVD, not a thumb drive. My guess is that users will have a choice at retail — how else to satisfy the need to upgrade of MacBook Air users like me? — but still, it’s a tad disappointing. Maybe Apple’s waiting to go all-in on flash media OS installs until it can be done through Thunderbolt?
[via AppleBitch]
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.
37 responses to “OS X Lion Will Ship On DVD, Not Just Thumb Drives”
hopefully on the mac app store too. considering the push of digital delivery you mentioned
Optical is not dead yet just moving that way. DVD is still 70% of the movie market. The mainstream is slow to adopt new things and it will take a while for optical to go the way of the 8 track.
I heard that Lion was installed via Mac App Store for some developer previews. Possibly another option when it’s released.
Don’t forget the hoopla that surrounded Apple’s decision to omit a floppy drive from the iMac in 1998 (as Next had done in 1988 with their cube). It’s funny now to read the comments from those who predicted utter failure for the iMac as a result of the omission of such an ‘important’ component as a floppy drive.
Judging by the method that the preview was sent to developers (Via the App Store), I would say that this was an absolute certainty.
You heard correctly.
That thumb drive is really nice looking. As always, Apple gets kudos for the minimalist design.
And an “F” for ESD (electrostatic discharge) tolerant design. There are the interface conductors right out there just waiting for someone to zap them. I’d prefer to have a metal shield around them, as most thumb drives do.
And an “F” for ESD (electrostatic discharge) tolerant design. There are the interface conductors right out there just waiting for someone to zap them. I’d prefer to have a metal shield around them, as most thumb drives do.
Superb point. Thumbdrivegate to follow antennagate if this is the design for the Lion flash drive.
how exactly can I boot my Macbook from a USB drive? I think it didn’t work when I last tried (pressing the ‘C’-Key) (late 2008 Macbook)
The OS X Lion setup not only installs Lion on your computer, but also creates a small partition with the setup files in case you need to install it again, which pretty much eliminates the need for any media and any physical distribution (at least in the future, when OS X upgrades no longer support upgrading from Leopard (you must have Snow Leopard to have the Mac App Store)).
Teyblyy, you are right that DVD is still very popular, but sometimes it is companies (especially Apple) that force or speed-up the death of an older technology (see the comments about the floppy drive).
Stupid, but obvious question: How am I supposed to load Lion on my MacBook Air?
Not all of us have MacBook airs. I own a 17″ MacBook pro that I use for music and film editing. I don’t won’t a flash dricpve OS upgrade. I want the DVD. Things are changing but not hthat quickly just yet. Ill bet they offer both. The zip drive for the air’s and dvd’s for the more powerful computers. Yes this is the way of the future to all you Mac air guys. But your Mac air’s could not even begin to do the work load I put my MacBook pro though or my home iMac. So don’t sound all disappointed. It’s heading in that direction but I absolutely still use and need my optical drive… Very much so!!!
Not to mention. I want the disc copy. Les easy to lose
this is entirely inaccurate. you cannot install an os from another os that it was downloaded in. notice how you need to restart your computer to do an os install…. the new software has to be on a separate device. not to mention the situation you would be in if your hard drive failed. just replace it? okay, now you have an empty disk with no os and no way to acquire one (unless you have a PHYSICAL copy).
the lion app store downloads are ISOs that need to be either burned to DVDs or otherwise copied to other devices/partitions in order to install.
They aren’t ISO files… I’m a developer and you launch the application after downloading it… It’s exactly what you said it wasn’t. It installs from the drive you download it to… It works exactly the same way that Software Update does with updates that you need to restart to install do.
Looked this post up again to correct myself, although my original post was not entirely wrong.
I said that there is no way for pure digital distribution to work, which is incorrect.
There are two different ways to install an OS, clean and upgrade. (I usually do clean, as do most people I know. Upgrades are prone to a lot of random problems.) In the same manner as applying minor software patches from Software Update, I guess you could do an entire OS update in-place (although that seems like a bad idea. I’m sure Apple will NOT do this — you will restart before performing the update.) When a clean install is performed, you cannot just replace your host OS out from underneath you, you have to boot another host, and install over the old OS while it’s not running. This is the source of the misunderstanding.
Apple is using a cool trick in Lion, which is to create a hidden partition on your system for installation/recovery. This is essentially the same as installing form another disk. You download the installer in the AppStore, which contains an ISO for the new installation disk. A new partition (not mounted) is created on your HD, the ISO is imaged to it, and your computer restarts from that partition as if you’d stuck a DVD or whatever in there to boot from. (I’m using ISO to be generic, I guess Apple will choose DMG instead… who cares?)
I’m a developer, too. I’ve done commercial OS X development for 10 years. I routinely do clean installs of several different versions of OS X for testing. The way I do it is that I have the install DVDs each imaged onto their own partition on an external FW HD. When it’s time to install a fresh OS one some other disk/partition, I just boot one of the installer partitions, and install onto the other disk. It’s fast as hell. Same idea.
So, yes, it’s possible to distribute Lion for installation purely digitally. But no, it’s not even close to the “exactly the same way” Software Update works.
Via Apple Mac Store.. http://www.apple.com/macosx/ho…