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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
grelber #18472 10/17/11 10:13 AM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
Originally Posted By: artie505
Just to put a bit of perspective on the direction in which this thread has spun, what is your d/l speed with your dial-up connection...how many Kbps?


The best estimate I can give is based on my download meter, which usually indicates somewhere between 4.0 and 5.1 Kbps.
As noted elsewhere, Apple estimated a 435MB download (OS 10.7.2 update*) to take 27 hours.
* When I went to the Apple support site on another computer, it stated that the size of the download was 768MB; I don't know why the discrepancy.

Thanks.

The larger one was probably the Combo, i.e. 10.7.1 + 10.7.2, whereas yours was the Delta, i.e. 10.7.2.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18473 10/17/11 12:05 PM
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Quote:
The larger one was probably the Combo, i.e. 10.7.1 + 10.7.2, whereas yours was the Delta, i.e. 10.7.2.

Cursory research would've told you that's not true. The 10.7.2 Delta is the 768 MB package; the Combo is 818 MB. (The 10.7.1 Update is under 80 MB in size.)

My guess is that the 435 MB figure was obtained via Software Update on grelber's own iMac, and therefore didn't include components not applicable to his system.



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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
dkmarsh #18474 10/17/11 12:15 PM
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Originally Posted By: dkmarsh
My guess is that the 435 MB figure was obtained via Software Update on grelber's own iMac, and therefore didn't include components not applicable to his system.

Your guess is correct.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
dkmarsh #18485 10/17/11 04:22 PM
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Originally Posted By: dkmarsh
Quote:
The larger one was probably the Combo, i.e. 10.7.1 + 10.7.2, whereas yours was the Delta, i.e. 10.7.2.

Cursory research would've told you that's not true. The 10.7.2 Delta is the 768 MB package; the Combo is 818 MB. (The 10.7.1 Update is under 80 MB in size.)

My guess is that the 435 MB figure was obtained via Software Update on grelber's own iMac, and therefore didn't include components not applicable to his system.

So I was correct about the smaller one being the "grelber-specific" Delta, or am I misusing the term "Delta" in applying it to Software Update's offering?

And as for the larger one, I've never paid attention to the sizes of Apple-offered Deltas, and I'm amazed to learn of the huge difference between it and SU's, thus my erroneous conclusion that it was the Combo.

Thanks for the clarification.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
dkmarsh #18510 10/18/11 01:50 AM
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Originally Posted By: dkmarsh
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...they simply cannot take it upon themselves to deprecate a means of Internet access that is used by a significant number (even if it's only a small percentage) of people.

Why on earth not?

This is the company whose phenomenal resurgence, dating from the return of Steve Jobs, has been marked by the continuous deprecation of things used by significant percentages of its customers: floppy drives, ADB, SCSI, the Motorola 68000 processor family, OS 9 bootability, the PPC processor family, OS 9 emulation, optical drives (MacBook Air and the latest Mac mini), keyboards and removable batteries (iPhone and iPad), etc. ad nauseum.

You may not like all or even any of these forced obsolescences, but the fact is that Apple, simply, can discontinue catering to those on dialup. Indeed, they already have: Macs haven't shipped with internal modems in over five years.

grelber is free to choose not to join the broadband mainstream, but if there's a solution to be found to the dilemma of how to keep a broadband-era Mac up to date with dial-up tools, it won't be induced via sermonizing.

You're correct, of course... Apple can deprecate whatever they care to deprecate, and, in fact, I'll bet that if they deprecated toilet bowls in favor of enforced employee regularity they'd still have lines of hopefuls stretching around the block in search of employment.

I've got no issue with modems having gone the way of all flesh; their current niche is too small to expect support from...well, from almost anybody. (Witness the dearth of fax software, which, you can bet, would still be available if enough of a market existed.) Nor have I got any ongoing issues with other technology that Apple has deprecated (OK... Their premature killing of FireWire 400 was an exception.) despite any initial objections I may have raised. Time and technology march on hand-in-hand, and since there's never a clear dividing line between the old and the new, it is inevitable that there'll be major objections to the new prior to its having fully replaced the old.

What I really meant is that I refuse to accept, until, of course, it's rammed down my throat, that Apple's much-vaunted, world-class Customer Support has been reduced to having to tell customers such as grelber who may have their HDs go south on them that their only option is to unplug their Macs, carry them down the road or across town, and borrow somebody's broadband (which may even require the installation of new software Edit: if, in fact, there's actually somebody down the road or across town who's got broadband) to d/l a new Lion installation.

I'll be beyond shocked if Apple hasn't got some sort of backup "fulfillment" plan to cover that inevitability.

And that's all my "simply cannot" translates to...astonishment that Apple may have decided to treat some of its customers so shabbily.

Last edited by artie505; 10/18/11 02:17 AM.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18511 10/18/11 03:32 AM
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Originally Posted By: tacit
However, if one is to accept the notion that a backup hard drive with a cloned OS on it is an acceptable substitute for install media, one must accept the notion that it is necessary to walk out of the store when one first purchases a computer with an additional hard drive.

The need for a backup hard drive has nothing to do with install media. Whether you get install media or not, you still need a hard drive (or two) for backup.

Apple makes and sells great computers, but they're not the best place to buy hard drives. Get your drives (and any RAM beyond the bare minimum) elsewhere. I wouldn't walk out of the store with either.

Originally Posted By: tacit
And making a computer unable to boot if the hard drive fails is also not reasonable.

But it does boot after the hard drive fails (and is replaced). If you have a slow internet connection, it boots really really slowly, but it does boot.

If you choose to have only a dial-up connection, you have to accept that you have a slow connection. Everything runs slow, not just the first boot after replacing the hard drive.

Note that I'm not saying having only dial-up is a wrong decision. I can conceive of many justifications, ranging from budget to availability. I'm just saying that it has consequences. Unavoidable consequences. Even the very best of reasons for having only dial-up won't make it fast.

Apple does what they can to mitigate the problem by offering the use of their in-store bandwidth. If the store is too far away, you're free to look for alternatives that are closer to hand. Or you can dial up, start the download, and check back in the morning.

There are services that provide guaranteed up-time. Web hosting services, especially for business web sites that include an on-line store, often guarantee an upper limit on downtime (both as a percentage over the year, and per-incident). Those services come with a hefty premium. Apple's not in that business. They sell you a computer. Contingency plans for what you'll do if it goes down are your responsibility.

If instead of a disk, it's the screen or power supply or mother board that goes down, Apple will repair the computer under warranty. Heck, they'll replace the disk under warranty, and even take care of re-installing the OS. (They won't replace your data. Backup is your responsibility.) But you're looking at a trip to the store to get any repair work done. It may be FedEx that makes the trip, but Apple is not going to ship you the spare parts and tools to do it yourself. They also aren't going to bundle the tools and spare parts with the computer, to be used just in case the computer breaks.

Think of the install media as a tool that you can, if you're so inclined, use as part of an in-house disk-replacement procedure. It's a tool that makes the procedure faster and more convenient, but it's not essential. It's a tool you can make on your own, or buy from Apple.

But Apple isn't required to give you every tool and part you might need. Your computer no longer comes with USB and FireWire cables, and has never come with a ThunderBolt cable. Apple used to include a blank CD-R (and later a DVD-RW) with their computers; they don't do that any more either. My first iPod came with a very nice carrying case. They don't do that any more, either. So now Apple has added installation media to the list of freebies that are no longer thrown into the box.

Originally Posted By: tacit
Why not include installation media? What's the compelling argument against it?

They cost money, and for most users do absolutely no good. The software comes pre-installed, so most users never use them even once before filing them in some forgotten corner where they'll never be found again. Even if it only cost a penny (and it'll cost a lot more than that for the packaging alone), it's wasted money.

It also looks bad. Apple prides themselves on their packaging. No extra styrofoam, no extra cardboard, no extra plastic. And now no never-to-be-used DVDs.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18512 10/18/11 04:01 AM
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But that's the kind of nickel & dime stuff businesses do when they're digging for an extra penny in the bottom line, and it's not at all becoming for a company that's riding the crest of one of the biggest profit waves in history to act that way.

It underscores corporate greed!

(Edit: Even if they must eventually do it,) (t)hey'd look waaay better saving it for when they need it.

Last edited by artie505; 10/18/11 04:05 AM.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18515 10/18/11 05:56 AM
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Originally Posted By: ganbustein
Originally Posted By: tacit
Why not include installation media? What's the compelling argument against it?

They cost money...


That argument, at least, I find compellingly unpersuasive. Apple is one of the most profitable businesses in the world, with greater market capitalization than any existing company save ExxonMobile and more cash on hand than any other company period. The amount of money those DVDs cost is quite literally below the noise threshold; a momentary blip on the world oil futures market that drives up the cost of shipping by a tenth of a percent quite literally costs Apple far more than those DVDs.


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18528 10/18/11 10:30 AM
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Quote:
What I really meant is that I refuse to accept, until, of course, it's rammed down my throat, that Apple's much-vaunted, world-class Customer Support has been reduced to having to tell customers such as grelber who may have their HDs go south on them that their only option is to unplug their Macs, carry them down the road or across town, and borrow somebody's broadband...

But they haven't been reduced to that.



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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18534 10/18/11 01:49 PM
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I am often asked to help Mac users who are having problems. Almost invariably when I ask for their install DVD, the answer is, "I didn't know I needed to keep it so I threw it away" or "there were disks in the box?" Call it user error or buyer beware or whatever you want those install disks are too often missing to be of any real value. It seems to me the new download system is ultimately more usable for the vast majority of users.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
joemikeb #18537 10/18/11 02:47 PM
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Good point!!!


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
dkmarsh #18539 10/18/11 02:50 PM
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Originally Posted By: dkmarsh

only $70 for a thumb drive!?!
take two, they're small. wink

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
joemikeb #18547 10/18/11 04:50 PM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
I am often asked to help Mac users who are having problems. Almost invariably when I ask for their install DVD, the answer is, "I didn't know I needed to keep it so I threw it away" or "there were disks in the box?" Call it user error or buyer beware or whatever you want those install disks are too often missing to be of any real value. It seems to me the new download system is ultimately more usable for the vast majority of users.

I'm not decrying the new d/l system per se, merely one aspect, grelber's, of it.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
dkmarsh #18549 10/18/11 04:56 PM
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Originally Posted By: dkmarsh
Quote:
What I really meant is that I refuse to accept, until, of course, it's rammed down my throat, that Apple's much-vaunted, world-class Customer Support has been reduced to having to tell customers such as grelber who may have their HDs go south on them that their only option is to unplug their Macs, carry them down the road or across town, and borrow somebody's broadband...

But they haven't been reduced to that.

In grelber's shoes, would you find the option of buying a $70 thumb drive an acceptable alternative to the free discs you used to get with a new Mac?

Same end, in my view, anyhow... In this one particular instance, Apple Customer Support has been reduced to clown status.

I think we maybe ought to drop this discussion at this point and wait for some real-world reports; I suspect that Apple will come up with something when the skata starts hitting the fan.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18555 10/18/11 08:35 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
I think we maybe ought to drop this discussion at this point and wait for some real-world reports; I suspect that Apple will come up with something when the skata starts hitting the fan.


We can only hope and pray and prey.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
grelber #18557 10/18/11 09:07 PM
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Originally Posted By: grelber
Originally Posted By: artie505
I think we maybe ought to drop this discussion at this point and wait for some real-world reports; I suspect that Apple will come up with something when the skata starts hitting the fan.

We can only hope and pray and prey.

At the moment it looks like it's Apple that doing the preying; we be the prayees.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18559 10/18/11 10:08 PM
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Quote:
In grelber's shoes, would you find the option of buying a $70 thumb drive an acceptable alternative to the free discs you used to get with a new Mac?

Hmm...if I could afford the purchase of a new iMac with four times as many processors as my first Mac, running at 100 times the clock speed, with a hard drive with 3125 times the capacity, 1000 times as much RAM, and a camera, wireless and Bluetooth built in, for 70% of the price of that first Mac, I think my insistence on feeling screwed over by Apple because of the need to shell out $70 I didn't need to spend back then would be misplaced.



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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
dkmarsh #18560 10/18/11 10:45 PM
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How much would it cost to put the flash memory needed for the Mac OS X Installer into the computer itself, as a kind of built in thumb drive?


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
MicroMatTech3 #18562 10/18/11 11:39 PM
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DVDs are still cheaper...


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
artie505 #18563 10/18/11 11:50 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
In grelber's shoes, would you find the option of buying a $70 thumb drive an acceptable alternative to the free discs you used to get with a new Mac?

No, but I would find the free Lion Recovery Disk Assistant an acceptable alternative. Make as many install discs and/or USB installers as you want.

And when I mentioned the cost of shipping the discs with the computer, my concern wasn't the impact on Apple's bottom line, so much as the impact on the planet. We need to get away from the attitude that it's harmless to ship extra styrofoam, cardboard, plastic, vinyl, and whatnot, just so we can fill our landfills faster.

Apple gets it. If they didn't, they've got Al Gore on their board, and Greenpeace sniping at their every misstep, to keep them on course. They've removed BFR's from their cables, and use more eco-friendly production processes for motherboards and other components. It's a greener world, my friends, and reducing waste is an essential part of that.

The cost I was referring to wasn't $$, it was forgetting the first R in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Why ship the installer on DVD when you can ship it electronically? Bits don't pollute.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18566 10/19/11 12:23 AM
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Actually, bits do pollute, and more than you might think. Server farms consume astonishing amounts of power.

For example: In the United States, Google currently operates 12 data centers. Each data center consumes approximately 20 megawatts of power per month, representing a little over $2 million of electricity per month per data center. That is approximately half the total output from a very large coal-fired power plant (which is not to say that Google uses coal; they attempt, where possible, to locate their data centers where hydroelectric power is available).

That's not true of Facebook. Facebook operates nine US data centers; the largest, near my home in Oregon, occupies more than 300,000 square feet and consumes a whopping 60 megawatts(!) of power, which is provided by a coal-fired plant in Boardman, Oregon. The 585 megawatt Boardman plant is the worst single source of pollution on the West Coast (it was built long before EPA clean air regulations), and PG&E had actually planned to close the plant before Facebook announced plans to build their data center here. Facebook will be consuming more than 10% of the plant's total peak electrical output.

Apple's new iCloud data center in North Carolina has the capacity to scale to 100 megawatts of power(!!), though Apple won't say how much power it's currently consuming. Roughly half of the power fed to the NC data center comes from coal.

It would be an interesting research project to do a cradle-to-grave energy and environmental impact assessment of data shipped on DVDs vs. data held in data centers and shipped over the Internet. A single-time, single-use download of Lion from Apple's data center would probably come out ahead of a Lion DVD, but given that it's not easy for average non-technical users to burn installers themselves (and doing so would still require considering the manufacture, shipping, and disposal cost of a blank DVD), I bet that a user who has multiple computers to upgrade to Lion may download a copy for each computer, rather thanusing just one DVD on all of them. In an institutional setting, that might shift the environmental cost onto digital downloads away from DVDs.


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
ganbustein #18575 10/19/11 02:41 AM
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Originally Posted By: ganbustein
No, but I would find the free Lion Recovery Disk Assistant an acceptable alternative. Make as many install discs and/or USB installers as you want.

Am I missing something here? Lion Recovery Disk Assistant allows you to make and boot from a Lion Recovery Disk on an external drive, but you'll still need to download several gigabytes of data to reinstall Lion while so booted. The whole point of the "unacceptable" $69 USB drive is that someone in grelber's shoes would be able to reinstall Lion without broadband (or indeed, any) internet access.



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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
tacit #18586 10/19/11 10:04 AM
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Originally Posted By: tacit
Actually, bits do pollute, and more than you might think. Server farms consume astonishing amounts of power.

I knew it was a lot ... but not that much a lot. Oy!

North of the 49th we were treated recently to a documentary on Google which described the acquisition of the property for one of those server farms (in NC). Apparently the community had lost major industry in the area (to somewhere south of the Rio Bravo) and the area was hurting badly economically. Because there was now an essentially unused power station nearby, the defunct company's physical plant was ideally suited for such a server farm. Google, "under cloak of darkness"*, made a deal with the local politicos and administration which saw them acquire the property with major concessions in terms of property taxes and the like. They're now set up and running.

* Much like Walt Disney's surreptitious acquisition of land in and around Orlando for his "world of tomorrow" complex.

Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
grelber #18607 10/19/11 11:23 PM
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Google isn't the only one. If I recall correctly, Google, Yahoo, Intuit, and Apple have all recently taken advantage of cheap power and abundant industrial space in North Carolina to build server farms there.

Granting tax incentives and steep property subsidies to relocate businesses isn't new. Microsoft is building a half-billion-dollar server farm in Texas, and the state and local governments have given the company more than $20 million in tax breaks and subsidies to do so.


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Re: How to create bootable back-up disk for OS X Lion?
dkmarsh #18611 10/20/11 04:42 AM
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Originally Posted By: dkmarsh
Am I missing something here? ... The whole point of the "unacceptable" $69 USB drive is that someone in grelber's shoes would be able to reinstall Lion without broadband (or indeed, any) internet access.


No you are not missing anything. But another person who writes in here is.
He is not paying attention.

He seems to think that every Mac owner should have broadband. And if a Mac owner doesn't but wants to reinstall Lion and asks how, the answer according to him is, in effect, to get broadband. But that is not an answer. The question at issue is what answer to suggest given the absence of broadband.

Smart people can sometimes miss the point though inattention (or for other reasons).


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