“Now that Lion has attained ‘golden master’ status, it may be just days before Apple releases Mac OS X 10.7,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“Only Apple knows the release date — the latest rumors have it as July 6, maybe July 14 — but you can prep your Mac now to make the upgrade go faster and more smoothly,” Keizer reports. “According to Apple, you can only upgrade to Lion from Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard.”
Advertisement: Students, parents and Faculty save up to $200 on a new Mac.
Keizer reports, “Lion’s system requirements are slightly different from Snow Leopard’s, so you need to verify that your Mac can run the new operating system.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Apple completes OS X Lion, sends GM to developers – July 1, 2011
I hope Lion installs the same as a clean install from a disc. I always did that and never an “update” install.
Also, cue the “you need to repair permissions” crowd in 3, 2, 1…..
That’s always been my method too, until Snow Leopard. I did a test initially as an upgrade install, and honestly haven’t had any issues with it. Apple seems to have that pretty well sorted.
But, to answer your question, the default behavior would be an upgrade install. However, once it has been downloaded, you can ‘show package contents’ one layer down and find a .dmg, which you can burn to disk. Presumably, once you have a disk you can boot off of, the ‘clean install’ option would be doable.
I installed the Developer Preview 4 and found out that once you installed Lion for the first time as an upgrade, it’ll create a partition on your HDD with the installation image.
In future, you can boot from that image (press option key during boot to select partition), and do a clean install of Lion. You’ll never need a disc again, think MacBook Air.
Realistically, this article is a gross overkill. If you are running time machine and have Snow Leopard, all you need to do is run software update, and then go to the App Store to download and install Lion. That’s it for 99 percent of everyone.
Because there is no “disc” to boot from, when you install Lion on a drive (as an upgrade of Snow Leopard), I heard it creates a small hidden partition on the drive called “Recovery,” and puts a minimal system with utilities on it. If you boot with the Option key held down, to go to Startup Manager, you’re supposed to be able to select to boot from the Recovery volume, and that acts somewhat like booting from the old installation disc (except probably much faster).
So, I’m thinking that a way to do a “clean install” without burning a DVD is to do the following. Back up your data. Install Lion over 10.6.8, per usual procedure. Boot from the Recovery volume, and use Disk Utility to erase “Macintosh HD” (or whatever you call your primary startup volume). Install Lion on the erased volume. Clean install, the new way…
(I’m not sure if the above is accurate, but I think Apple would provide a way to do clean installs without having to burn a DVD. After all, the days of built-in optical drives in Macs are numbered.)
Oh, and I’m bitter that my Cube isn’t supported.
😉
Due to the lack of rosetta, I’m holding off as long as possible. Photoshop CS works for me as well as a number of other applications and I really don’t need to drop $2K right now.
Still using Photoshop CS? Surely, you must unaware of things like the clone stamp tool or layer styles. I can’t imagine anyone choosing a version of Photoshop that lacks those essential features.
If all someone needs to do in their garden is dig 2″x2″ holes, a hand trowel will do fine. They have no need for and do not care about the latest titanium bladed shovel with self-sharpening blade and laser-assisted aiming. There are plenty of people who simply do not need that absolute latest and greatest and most powerful.
Thanks and well said…. the point is that some programs work just fine, some projects are legacy files to software that I don’t want to reinvest in (strata 3D), etc. When dealing with 3 stations, updating can be muy expensive. Why toss rosetta? But in usual apple fashion, they’ll make lion required to update the ipad or some such….. It’s not like I’m asking for OS9 support but to continue an existing product that works reasonably well.
Although I use Photoshop CS5 on my desktop Mac, there’s still a copy of Photoshop CS on my old powerbook G4. It works well for what it is, but is very frustrating to use after getting accustomed to CS5. I certainly wouldn’t want to go back! But to each his own.
David – If you’re happy with CS, you certainly don’t need to drop $2,000 to get a version of Creative Suite that’ll run under Lion. There are LOTS of people who upgraded to CS5 who are selling their old boxed versions of CS3 and CS4 online. Just have to look.
I cleared out my MBP over the weekend, and installed snow leopard fresh.
Got everything back on I wanted, ready to go.
Doing lion on th MBP first, will do the iMac after I make sure lion works 😉
And let’s hope we can still do the disk/flash install… If apple doesn’t change the way the beta was from the app store, were good.
Now bring it!
What about 2 year old MacBooks that don’t have Multi-touch?
Don’t bother asking me about the Magic Trackpad. Not interested. Magic Mouse too. I want to know if this OS works with a non-multitouch trackpad.
You should be fine.
Chill.
It works just like a mouse. No gestures though, that requires multi-touch.
Used to have an Al MacBook and it had Multi-Touch. I also seem to remember Apple offered a SW update to enable MT on certain models.
Got a new, faster and larger drive for my MacBook Pro. Installed and updated Snow Leopard. Nothing else.
Once Tiger arrives, I will load it and do a fresh install via the Mac App Store, my Install Disks and/or DMGs, as well as meticulously migrate files as necessary.
As such, I can use my current drive in case of an emergency boot drive and it will become part of Time Machine archive.
Well worth the $100 investment.
Dude…. TIger arrived like in 2003 or 2004
Lion. My error, asshole.
md8mac … Don’t be so hard on yourself!
Wait a bit & be safe.
Done too many upgrades to a new 10.x.
Not all applications and utilities will be ready.
Instead of a ‘clean’ install of Lion on my iMac and
all the work that entails in saving files externally,
I’ll just buy the new 15″ MacBookPro with Lion
already installed. See, no problems or work, as
I’ll hand down my old 15″ MacBookPro to my
ralatives.
Oops. Me bad. I meant relatives not ralatives. 🙂
the one app on my system that lion said was incompatible was dropbox. can’t really say if it works or not as my dropbox is empty atm, but its there in the task bar running. i wonder if apple introducing airdrop has anything to do with lion declaring dropbox incompatible ? i know airdrop is only local network, but it is similar.
Apple System Profiler says that my copy of Dropbox is a universal app, but it refused to launch when I installed it on my OS X Lion testing partition. An update from the Dropbox team is sure to come quickly (if required) once Lion starts shipping.
Already ready. Cloned my HD to another and will boot that drive once Lion is released. If there are too many issues for me, I will change boot drives. After the first SW update I will clone the new drive over to the b/u.
It’s not exactly rocket science. CCC or any number of other utilities can do it and keep it up to date.
My Mac has “2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon”.
Its not clear if it will run Lion because the article says system requirements must be “Intel Core 2 Duo”
Anybody know if this is one and the same?
Xeon works, too.
It is on the first page of the article…
“…your Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 or Xeon CPU.”
The dividing line is the Core Duo, which I believe was 32-bit, and the 64-bit Core 2 Duo.
I use to like Apple… Not so much anymore. This latest release of Final Cut Pro and the bomb of MobileMe, after the bomb of iTools, makes me wonder if they can handle anything other than making great hardware. I won’t be forking out money for anything other than an occasional laptop. And that is becoming a big maybe too. Hey Steve, remember this statement about dropping the Apple Service agreement when you came back in ’97…. “F the customer, they can buy something else”? Maybe your right after all.
There’s no question that Apple has made a number of bone-headed moves lately; but whether you like Apple or not, what are you going to do about it—switch to Windoze?! Perish the thought!
Apple’s had a couple of software hits too, or don’t you count OS X and iOS? Personally, I even liked MobileMe. For $99 a year, it did what I needed it to do. Now that it’s free. I like it even better!
If you install the Snow Leopard Update to 10.6.8 to prepare for Lion, be aware that there have been numerous reports of incompatibility with USB devices (printers, scanners, pointing devices, etc.) that worked fine under 10.6.7. I hope 10.6.8’s shortcomings do not carry over to Lion.
Clearly none of you have looked into the vastly superior and aesthetically pleasing 7ista. I was the grill guy at the longhorn BBQ and I can tell you first hand Microsoft is light years ahead of Apple. Obviously.
Imagine that, Apple is making this download only. Pretty soon MacBooks won’t even have DVD drives like my superior and obviously better PC. Dead company walking.
I get it… you’re being ironic, right?
I’m obliged to use Windows 7 (Vista) for some research support work in lieu of my Mac Air.
7 is staggeringly slow. I actually have to WAIT for it to save < 100 kb files. And the start-up time is reminiscent of the "computer is booting, go for a coffee" dialogs of the old mainframes.
Is there a 3rd party equivalent of Rosetta?
Not gonna upgrade for me, the last update of iPhoto already left me burned .
So gonna hold off till all the problems has surfaced and solved.
Can anyone enlighten me as to the logic behind Apple being so secretive about launch dates, be it lion, ios5, iphone 5 ipad2 or 3 or whatever. let me put it like this, most people get excited about their up coming birthday, cos they know exactly when it is, same with christmas, thanksgiving, world cup final, or any other type of celebration, you know the date and look forward to it in anticipation. Now it seems kinda contradictory to hold a WWDC and announce this great product and expect everyone to get really excited about it but then treat us like children by hiding the cookie jar and won’t tell us where it is. I’m not saying Apple should tell us exactly when it is releasing their products down to the exact hour, but with the amount of different dates in July rumoured around the net, surely its not too much to ask for a small message on the apple web site with something like, ‘with regards to the rumours of our product being released on –/–/—-, we can confirm that this will not be the release date’. for me, this waiting and not knowing has taken all the excitement and anticipation away from this update.