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Re: Apple's 10.7 Distribution

And in no particular order. By Mack Diesel. From the forum.

Get It

Try It

LICENSING

IT departments require physical media. No one in their right mind is going to repeatedly download a copy of the OS especially if we're talking about a shop of 15, 20, 30, or even 50 Mac OS X boxes.
The Mac App Store model in its current form cannot reasonably handle business accounts. See next point.
Employees come and go. No one in their right mind is going to tie company credit cards to personal AppleIDs nor is one individual in a company going to tie his or her AppleID to multiple company boxes. Having to manage AppleIDs and the credit card accounts associated with them is going to be problematic for sysadmins everywhere.
Sysadmins want clean installs and images, not mere upgrades. The lack of physical media will prevent this. (Hopefully I'm wrong.)
Because Lion installations will be tied to AppleIDs, any sale or transfer of Lion-based Macs to different owners will require a full wipe with the new owners having to furnish their own AppleIDs (and another $30). The days of passing along physical media which came with the hardware are long gone.

APPLE IDs & PRIVACY

Apple can now effectively enforce OS X licensing by tying installations to AppleIDs.
Mandatory AppleIDs remove any last vestiges of privacy on the platform unless one jumps through numerous hoops to obtain a credit card and set up an AppleID without compromising any valuable information to an adversary.
Users might be able to get away with prepaid cards but I'm sure that Apple will close that potential loophole.
Users are now at the mercy of Apple to keep their information secure. Refer to all of the news about compromised AppleID accounts.
Of course, all of the previous concerns about AppleIDs apply. Rub Apple the wrong way and you've just screwed yourself.

PRE-INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS

Lion requires the App Store, which means it requires Snow Leopard. Leopard users are now forced to upgrade to SL just to upgrade to Lion. This effectively makes the upgrade process of OS X a SUBSCRIPTION MODEL as users are forced to upgrade to the latest version of OS X just to be able to upgrade to the latest+1 version.
This also assures ISVs a minimum install base since end users will be forced to upgrade to the next version in order to take advantage of new features which also minimizes fragmentation.

BANDWIDTH

Many ISPs are now capping downloads with absurd monetary penalties for exceeding those caps.
Not everyone has a high speed connection. Moreover, not everyone can simply waltz over to an Apple Store or some other public location to download Lion. That is if said public location will tolerate such usage of bandwidth.
iCloud won't mean jack shit since syncing to other devices still means downloading 4 GB worth of data.

PHYSICAL MEDIA / REINSTALLATION

At this point, no one really knows if Apple will provide a way to burn a bootable DVD or create a USB startup disk.
No one knows if clean installations will be possible. Phil Schiller's comments suggest that users won't have that option.
The recovery partition not only steals HDD/SSD space that's YOURS, but is hypocritical of Apple after years of mocking PC OEMs over the lack of physical media.

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

Mac OS X is dead as we know it. (Actually, you could argue it was dead when Forstall took his best programmers over to iOS.) It will be a matter of time before Pilgrim will be proven right once again and all consumer-based Macs will be morphed into iOS devices. If the rumours about ARM-based MacBooks are true... ;)
Current trends seem to point to smartphone OS-like environments as evidenced with Windows 8 and Ubuntu Unity. Yours truly migrated to Mint because of Unity. If I want a smartphone environment, I'll have it on a smartphone. Leave my fucking desktop alone.
Macs will still exist at some level... for the content producers. The hardware will be priced out of the reach of consumers. Again, just as Pilgrim predicted, suggested by Jobs when he relegated the Mac to just being another device, and demonstrated by Forstall when he revealed how you can now 'cut the cord'. Now think about the 'Post-PC era' and recall what Jobs said he would do if he were in charge of Apple in 1996. iOS is currently 'the next big thing'. The iPod was just a warmup.
Optical disc drives will be a thing of the past. Ditto those proprietary USB drives (eg MacBook Air).
Ask yourself why Forstall was eager to demonstrate all of those new 'PC free' things you could do on the iPhone.
Mac OS X/iOS are subscription-based operating systems. How so with iOS? Look no further than your monthly carrier bill.
Lion is the first step into locking everyone into the App Store. Think about where Phil Schiller was going when he exclaimed how the App Store is already the #1 way to get your Mac OS X apps. Mac OS X 10.8 (if it will be called that) will have the App Store as the ONLY way to get your apps.
With the App Store lock-in, root access will be a thing of the past. Just as Pilgrim predicted. Hell, go back and listen to what Jobs said about getting rid of the filesystem in the keynote. He's convinced that users will have no good reason to access the underlying filesystem. Seems like he'll finally get his wish of getting rid of shell access after all.
Tying AppleIDs to OS X installations raises the question of what happens when it comes to transfers of ownership.
As ISV support drops for Leopard and eventually SL, you will be forced one way or another into Lion and the App Store model. Resistance is futile.

Honestly, I feel sorry for anyone still stuck on this fucking platform because of the promise of what it could have been. Those of us who bought into this platform knowing its potential, we've all been had. :( To the iLemmings, however, they have deserved their Brave New World. As for me, I'm still hoping that someone steps up to fill this void before we're all peddling around our little tablets running a smartphone OS and getting sodomised by the telco cartel.

Really, I'd like to see someone type up a term paper on a fucking iPad. Or doing some other actual work. Maybe I'm a graybeard, but I'd rather watch paint dry instead.

Anyone else?