I wanted to blog about something similar myself, but currently lack a blog. Apple's rejection of physical media is, I would argue, extremely harmful. I have an old, 2008 Macbook (not Pro) 4,1. The old white plastic kind. Lion performs atrociously (at best) on it, so around half a year ago I installed Linux on it. Recently, I got around to buying a new laptop (a Lenovo), and wanted to restore OSX on the old Macbook in…
Apple didn’t remove Lion from the App Store for me. I can download it without a problem. (It’s in my purchase tab, as is Mountain Lion. I’m running Mountain Lion.)
I think the point isn't that is impossible to be able to do a clean install of an OS and apps (Time Machine included) you have already paid (premium!) for but the fact that it is non-trivial and very much involved - all the things for which the Apple system stood against. Most of the newer Apple products are a black box which cannot be fixed unless even the technically competent users take extra efforts(^). And this…
> I think the point isn't that is impossible to be able to do a clean install of an OS and apps (Time Machine included) you have already paid (premium!) for but the fact that it is non-trivial and very much involved - all the things for which the Apple system stood against. I'm not sure I agree? Apple's always optimized for the average person's average case. "Those of us that need to maintain machines" aren't the ave…
Why did Apple customer support steer him down an "edge case"?
I wanted to blog about something similar myself, but currently lack a blog. Apple's rejection of physical media is, I would argue, extremely harmful. I have an old, 2008 Macbook (not Pro) 4,1. The old white plastic kind. Lion performs atrociously (at best) on it, so around half a year ago I installed Linux on it. Recently, I got around to buying a new laptop (a Lenovo), and wanted to restore OSX on the old Macbook in…
Apple didn’t remove Lion from the App Store for me. I can download it without a problem. (It’s in my purchase tab, as is Mountain Lion. I’m running Mountain Lion.)
That's interesting. I tried for quite some time to find it (on both one friend's MBP w/ Mountain Lion, and another's with Snow Leopard, in case it wasn't present in the ML App Store), but couldn't. The support guy said they'd removed them from the store. I wonder if it's because you've already downloaded it on that hardware, or are running Lion currently (are you?)?
At this point it's academic; the laptop is gone... but if I did something wrong I'd definitely like to know :).
It had surprised me when Lion came out that the installation was done by an "app", not as a bootable image. This is an unnecessary complication for those of us that need to maintain machines. Earlier, when updating a different machine, I had learned how painful this could be when the installation app destroyed the boot sector and I needed to reinstall Snow Leopard from DVD, and then upgrade that to a version of the s…
I think the point isn't that is impossible to be able to do a clean install of an OS and apps (Time Machine included) you have already paid (premium!) for but the fact that it is non-trivial and very much involved - all the things for which the Apple system stood against. Most of the newer Apple products are a black box which cannot be fixed unless even the technically competent users take extra efforts(^). And this…
You seem like a smart guy, but heres an FYI: the Lion installation app, as well as ML installer, is just a wrapper application with preflight functions for the installer. This app wrapper contains the disk image of the Lion installer that functions just like any other disk image of OS X. To find the disk image for lion in the "Install Lion.app" app wrapper, you right click on the app and click show contents, find a resources folder and bam, there it is. The disk image can be burned to DVD or restored to a flash drive using disk utility. No excuses now, they didn't fail anyone. Time machine has never failed me. The only time things get dicey is when you encrypt, using vault or etc, large file sets or systems. All he needed to do from the first go is 1) back up to time machine, 2) install new drive, 3) restore the time machine backup with option at boot (snow leopard install disc might be required, but he scratched his disc, not apples fault), if disc is scratched for DVD install, there's a good chance he could have still restored a usable copy of it to a flash drive or a new DMG on his desktop using disk utility. 4) restore the disk image of lion from the install lion.app, the DMG you were unaware of and bitched so much about, to the flash drive w/ disk utility and 5) upgrade his SL to lion using option at boot. Also, before backing up a dying drive, make sure to repair permissions using disk utility. Also, if you kept your old drive, you can buy an enclosure for 30$ and turn the drive into an external disk and restore your original installation. And not the time machine backup. Works every time even with dying unrepairable drives.. Cheers.
My Mac Pro running 10.8 has some issues such as applications with blank icons, pixelated icons, etc. I was told to boot into safe mode (which I tried about 5x) and it hangs at about 1/4 into it.
It seems pretty silly to include a "safe mode" that won't even allow someone to use it. I always end up holding the power switch in for a few seconds until I reboot into normal mode, which apparently includes having blank/pixelated icons :-/
Apple didn’t remove Lion from the App Store for me. I can download it without a problem. (It’s in my purchase tab, as is Mountain Lion. I’m running Mountain Lion.)
That's interesting. I tried for quite some time to find it (on both one friend's MBP w/ Mountain Lion, and another's with Snow Leopard, in case it wasn't present in the ML App Store), but couldn't. The support guy said they'd removed them from the store. I wonder if it's because you've already downloaded it on that hardware, or are running Lion currently (are you?)? At this point it's academic; the laptop is gone...…
Ah, no, I figured it out. You can make Lion re-appear in your Purchase tab by option-clicking on the Purchase tab icon. I did that some time ago and now Lion is permanently visible for me.
Who thinks of something like that? If you do something stupid like that, at least support should know about it. For shame Apple, for shame! m(
I remember already being annoyed about that some time ago.
> I think the point isn't that is impossible to be able to do a clean install of an OS and apps (Time Machine included) you have already paid (premium!) for but the fact that it is non-trivial and very much involved - all the things for which the Apple system stood against. I'm not sure I agree? Apple's always optimized for the average person's average case. "Those of us that need to maintain machines" aren't the ave…
What? I fail to see what is "non-average" about wanting to restore a machine from a Time Machine backup after a hard drive failure. Time machine is the only backup solution an average user will ever use, and is supposed to be a backup solution, not a placebo. As indicated in the article, it doesn't actually work for the the most (or second most) common case. Rob Pike is most decidedly average in this case, he is most…
many things are wrong with this story.. FYI: the Lion installation app, as well as ML installer, is just a wrapper application with preflight functions for the installer. This app wrapper contains the disk image of the Lion installer that functions just like any other disk image of OS X. To find the disk image for lion in the "Install Lion.app" app wrapper, you right click on the app and click show contents, find a resources folder and bam, there it is. The disk image can be burned to DVD or restored to a flash drive using disk utility. No excuses now, they didn't fail anyone. He scratch his SL install disc, not apples fault.
IMHO not having install media as the default option is a problem. It doesn't matter if all the media does is boot up a network stack and FTP it from somewhere and then run it but recovery scenarios aren't something you should have to twist yourself into a loop to solve. One of the advantages of the App Store model is that software is (AFAIK) easily redownloaded and reinstalled, so much so that I know people who have…
many absolutes that are wrong with this story.. And if you wanna be a pseudo power user heres an FYI: the Lion installation app, as well as ML installer, is just a wrapper application with preflight functions for the installer. This app wrapper contains the disk image of the Lion installer that functions just like any other disk image of OS X. To find the disk image for lion in the "Install Lion.app" app wrapper, you right click on the app and click show contents, find a resources folder and bam, there it is. The disk image can be burned to DVD or restored to a flash drive using disk utility. No excuses now, they didn't fail anyone. He scratch his SL install disc, not apples fault.
That's interesting. I tried for quite some time to find it (on both one friend's MBP w/ Mountain Lion, and another's with Snow Leopard, in case it wasn't present in the ML App Store), but couldn't. The support guy said they'd removed them from the store. I wonder if it's because you've already downloaded it on that hardware, or are running Lion currently (are you?)? At this point it's academic; the laptop is gone...…
Ah, no, I figured it out. You can make Lion re-appear in your Purchase tab by option-clicking on the Purchase tab icon. I did that some time ago and now Lion is permanently visible for me. Who thinks of something like that? If you do something stupid like that, at least support should know about it. For shame Apple, for shame! m( I remember already being annoyed about that some time ago.
Thankyou for that. That'd have saved me a lot of drama :).