This is the first thing I did today after Lion was downloaded. I have noticed that on some of my machines, Lion will delete the Install app at the end of installation, so I’d create this in Snow Leopard first.
Notably, this same method can be used to create a Lion DVD, but since any machine that can run Lion can boot from USB, I just don’t see the point.
Josh and I were tired of talking about the same old news and rumors, so we just chatted for a bit on this week’s show. Bobby Ghosal, founder of FLUD dropped by for a bit at the end, too.
I printed it out this time around. It clocked in at 112 pages from Safari Reader. I can’t wait to dive into it this evening. If you are a Mac nerd by any stretch of the imagination, this is the review to read.
This is why you don’t ever upgrade your production machine on Day One.
While the fact that Lion installs a recovery partition is fairly common knowledge at this point, a lack of physical media could leave users with a blank hard drive stranded without an OS. Thankfully, for some Mac users, there’s a solution
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.
I’d love to see this expand to other Macs as quickly as possible.
Last week, I wrote a little bit about the complications that can arise when writing about software.
But there’s a whole other side to writing in-depth reviews, like the one I published on OS X Lion.
While I am proud of the almost 3,000 words in that review, it was utterly exhausting to spend so much time digging into beta software, trying to explain things I discovered in a way that would be helpful for my readers. Coming up with ways to describe Launchpad and Mission Control isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Stitching a collection of informational tidbits and editorial opinions into something coherent with an actual point is mind-melting.
There’s a weight to all of this beyond the writing itself.
When Lion is released, there aren’t going to be many — if any — surprises in store for tech writers. Reviewing pre-release software takes away some of the magic of launch day.
Granted, the rush of publishing is usually enough to make up for it.
I guess what I’m trying to get around to saying is this: it’s such a relief to have this review out the door, and nerve-wrecking that people are finally reading it.
It’s here. This review was exhausting to write, and I hope you enjoy it.
I recommend before installing Lion that even if you’re using Time Machine you also create a working clone of your Mac. This is because while you can restore data from Time Machine, it’s faster and simpler to do so from a clone.
Amen, brother.
This is a great piece by Shawn Blanc. Instapaper it now.
I’ve subscribed to The New York Times for over a decade now and … I just give up. This paper is so pro-Apple and so anti-Microsoft that it’s hard to excuse anymore. It’s blatant, it’s constant, and it’s too much.
When my kids ask me what “the pot calling the kettle black” means, I’m going to send them to this post.
From our experience, it’s entirely possible that all the revenue for a product can be eaten up by legal fees. After years of pouring your heart and soul into that product, it’s devastating. It makes you question why the hell you’re in the business: when you can’t pay salaries from product sales, there’s no point in building it in the first place.
So, just as in the days of magnetic media, the independent developer now finds him or herself at a point where it is again becoming very expensive to distribute their products to a mass market. This time the retail channel itself is very cheap, but the ancillary costs, both financially and emotionally, are very high.
And, of course, only large companies and publishers can bear these costs. My fear is that It’s only a matter of time before developers find the risks and expenses prohibitive and retreat to the safety of a larger organization. We’ll be going back to square one.
Starting to get seriously concerned about my future as a software developer due to these patent issues.