
OS X Lion Recovery removes need for physical media - TwistedWeasel
http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/
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seanalltogether
"Internet Recovery. Help is everywhere.

If your Mac problem is a little less common — your hard drive has failed or
you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet Recovery
takes over automatically. It downloads and starts Lion Recovery directly from
Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection. And your Mac has access to
the same Lion Recovery features online. Internet Recovery is built into every
newly-released Mac starting with the Mac mini and MacBook Air."

Anyone wanna guess how that mechanism works? Micro kernel on some internal
flash memory?

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lobo_tuerto
"...or you’ve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example — Internet
Recovery takes over automatically"

Could a dual boot system (Lion + Ubuntu) be confused with "hard drive without
OS X" and be taken over by the Lion Recovery automatically?

Hope this doesn't means that only OS X should be installed in a Mac.

~~~
matthewlyle
I doubt it, since Boot Camp is a native OS X feature.

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natesm
Boot Camp only allows for one other OS. Back when I tri-booted, I had to do it
all manually (and use refit). Boot Camp had no idea what was going on.

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sp332
Please change the headline. Lion Recovery is awesome, but in August, you'll be
able to buy Lion on a USB stick for $69.
[http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/20Mac-OS-X-Lion-
Avai...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/20Mac-OS-X-Lion-Available-
Today-From-the-Mac-App-Store.html)

edit: thank you

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TwistedWeasel
Done.

Interesting that the USB stick version is so much more, I assume it's really
only for those upgrading from pre 10.6, so it's similar to the cost of Snow
Leopard + Lion + cost of media

~~~
wlesieutre
Or those with high bandwidth costs. While $40 might be more expensive than a
single download, if you know multiple Mac users in an area with small caps it
might make sense to split one of these.

I'm curious how (/if) the license ties in to the App store. Hopefully they
don't make you tie it to a single account once your computer is running.

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xpaulbettsx
On a related note, does Lion delete its own installer once you install it? I
don't want to have to download Lion on all of my machines separately, seems as
if I should be able to buy it once from the App Store then copy it (does the
OS have the same license rules as apps, i.e. n copies? I'm not looking to
pirate anything, just want to save download time)

~~~
wlesieutre
I'm not sure if it removes it after installing, but you can probably just copy
it to another drive beforehand if you're concerned.

If authentication is handled like other App Store software, you may have to
enter your apple ID and password to run it after it's copied, but there
shouldn't be a limit on the number of computers.

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j_s
An interesting, slightly related project for PC's: <http://www.netboot.me/>

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nhangen
This is slick, my only problem with it is that Lion is a huge download. It's
bad enough waiting on fresh OS installs, but waiting on a download and install
would knock the wind out of my sails. I'll be buying the USB stick.

~~~
wlesieutre
You can also pull the disk image out of the installer and make your own,
rather than paying the $40 premium

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karl_nerd
Could u please go a little more into detail on that?

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ugh
There you go: <http://eggfreckles.net/tech/burning-a-lion-boot-disc/>

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chopsueyar
Wifi only?

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napierzaza
This is cool. Mac OS X is really moving away from dependence on having an
optical drive or any other external. I have and SSD instead of optical and
it's a nightmare to disk first aid or re-install os x.

~~~
vacri
"network connection required" is still an external to me. I guess also that
it's going to require a wired network connection - or have they really
incorporated a wifi detect-select-and-password system into the internet
recovery version?

While it's convenient for certain unusual situations, I'd rather have a USB
stick than internet recovery, simply for speed reasons.

~~~
zerohp
Wifi selection and authentication in the bootloader was already part of the
old Macbook Air. So I'm sure it works here too.

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vacri
Is that the bootloader on the disk, or a chip on the board?

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zerohp
In the firmware, not the disk.

