Back to the Mac: OS X 10.7 Lion Review
by Andrew Cunningham, Kristian Vättö & Anand Lal Shimpi on July 20, 2011 8:30 AM ESTLike Windows 7, the Lion installer creates a small hidden system partition on your hard drive - in Lion, this recovery partition is to be used in lieu of your install CD in the event that you need to run diagnostics or reinstall your OS (if you burned Lion to a DVD, booting from it will get you the same interface and tools as the recovery partition, so pay attention). This partition is normally hidden from the end user in the Finder and Disk Utility, but is selectable when pressing the alt/option key at boot (and visible in System Profiler as a 650MB partition on your hard drive).
Missing from this list are the System Profiler and the Password Reset utility - I don’t know why the former is gone, but the latter is presumably missing for security reasons, since basically anyone armed with the Password Reset utility and physical access to your machine can change any local account’s password at will. To replace the functionality of this tool, Lion now gives you the option to recover your account password if you associate it with your Apple ID, which should work fine for most individuals (though perhaps not so much for system administrators).
If you didn’t burn a disc as outlined previously, the recovery partition also gives you your only option for a clean install of Lion - erase your hard drive using Disk Utility and then elect to install a fresh copy of Lion. At this point, you will be prompted for your Mac’s serial number, which is then communicated to Apple, and if it clears your Mac will re-download (sigh) and re-install the OS. This serial number check is OS X’s first real implementation of what anyone could call activation, though it’s worth noting that if you install Lion from a .DMG copied to another disk, the OS will still install without any checks.
The last thing the recovery partition is used for is to store FileVault information, which we’ll talk more about later on in the review.
Once the installer is complete, people who did an upgrade install will be able to start using Lion pretty much immediately - aside from the (optional) registration form, there’s not really anymore to it. People who did a clean install (or who have new Macs preloaded with Lion) will be taken through the standard first-time setup process, which is mostly identical to that of OS X versions past with a couple of changes: first, the customary OS X welcome movie has been completely removed (possibly in another effort to save on download size). Second, users are now given the option to associate their Mac with an Apple ID, and to give that Apple ID the ability to recover their local account password. Last, on Macs with multitouch-enabled trackpads and mice, the OS literally forces you to use a two-fingered scrolling gesture to click the “Start Using OS X” button. How’s that for pushing new features?
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GotThumbs - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Apple has recognized the money maker it has with its App Store (Or can we now call this an application store). I'm not a mac user and most likely never will be, but I have to say their business model works very well for squeezing income from every corner of their empire. The IOS app store has been a huge money maker (30% of every purchase adds up quickly) and now Apple is moving the same business model to its computers. Apple does have a tendancey to repackage and sell its products in various versions, but with the same underlying technology (develop once, repackage multiple times). True to form, all the apple fans will swarm around and gladly deposit their coin into the machine.GotThumbs - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Realistically, They should give away their OS to invite more users, who will then shop their true money maker....the app store. Kinda like a drug dealer would give the first taste for free. :-)ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Apple's CFO Peter Oppenheimer has already said they operate the App Store as a break even venture, ie. their 30% cut basically goes directly to operating expenses. Unless you believe their CFO is actually lying to investors at shareholder meetings in which case you should report this and your evidence to the SEC.GotThumbs - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
$1,634,000,000 in revenue from Other Music Related Products and Services (3)(3) Includes sales from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore in addition to sales of iPod services and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories
Lets not be too naive.
ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
The App Store no doubt generates revenue for Apple, but how much profit do they actually make?steven75 - Friday, July 22, 2011 - link
Please educate yourself. As much as you might think it, yuo aren't smarter than the SEC.GotThumbs - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
I think ALL investors are looking for profits, and if Apple happens to turn a profit through their iTunes store (whoops), do you really think the investors will be angry about the white lie?Taft12 - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Accountants can paint a revenue picture to look any way they want it to. Look no further than "Hollywood Accounting" in the movie industry. Don't take that break even comment at face value.parlour - Monday, July 25, 2011 - link
I would call up the SEC and tell them about your great insight. If what you are saying is true Apple is in deep, deep trouble.In reality it would be stupid for Apple’s CFO to lie about something like that, not worth the trouble at all.
Puppies04 - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
$1,634,000,000 just to break even! Sheesh that is some massive overhead.