To be honest, I have no idea what the "DSM-V" stuff is referring to. The people I've encountered like this... harmless. Sometimes annoying, but harmless. Asking me weird questions at conferences, but harmless. I don't care if people believe NASA claims it invented a lot of current technologies. In some cases it's even got a point, and in the rest, people can believe what they want. There are plenty of people believe that moon landings never happened - and I'm willing to believe that there are as many of them as the bonkers-crazy space nuts you're talking about. Some I've met are even actually extremely intelligent and better than me at vast swathes of physics, and yet believe the moon landings never happened. And even these people don't have really much impact.
Ultimately, yes, I believe they're harmless. People who believe them can be reeducated. Those that can't were probably useless in the first place. And no-one has ever found any use for bizarre crazy 60s sci-fi fans who think its all real. Thankfully they don't receive government grants.
I agree... but out of interest, why doesn't Linux satisfy that for you? I can see the argument that Hurd gives you a totally different philosophy to look at to Linux - but if you wanted that, why wouldn't Darwin suit you?
I'm all for developing new kernels anyway. But if we're purely looking at use we don't need it (we've got Linux and Darwin) and if we're looking at contrasting designs we don't *need* it (Linux and Darwin)... but it's still a new design so frankly all power to it. Just I doubt I'll use it myself, at least not for production.
Yeah.. but we're adding new particle physics on the understanding that Newtonian gravity is sufficient. It's not. We're also doing so on the understanding that our application of GR is also sufficient. It's not. I'm not a galactic dynamicist; I'm a cosmologist. The dark matter in my field is seen in the Friedman equations which, regardless of whether they're valid or not, are from a naive application of GR on (at least) Gpc scales, assuming homogeneity and isotropy. This may or may not actually be valid, not least because it involves a whole collection of undefined uses of the phrases "on average" and "on large scales". Assuming "on average" that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic does lead to the FLRW metric; that's true. Maybe that's even actually a true assumption and that "on large scales" FLRW is an accurate description of the universe -- but even if that's true it's only true for null geodesics and it *isn't* true for the dynamics. The Einstein equations are non-linear, or they'd just be a rephrasing of Newtonian gravity. That non-linearity means that regardless of whether we can talk about "average" quantities in GR (and, currently, *we can't*), and regardless of whether FLRW will hold "on large scales" (and it may very well do and I suspect it does), the dynamics are different from FLRW dynamics.
Quantifying that is, of course, a different matter. Interestingly, so far, the deviations in the dynamics using a naive definition of a scalar average and a rather unsatisfactory averaging on 3-surfaces, have tended to look like dark matter. Does that solve the (cosmological) dark matter problem? Of course not. It would be bizarre to claim it did. Does it suggest that there may at least be something in this idea? Yeah, sure.
But more than that, you can go the other way and avoid questions of averaging at all. Instead, you can take a look at the effects of inhomogeneities in GR. That's remarkably ill-researched given that we tend to stick in Schwarzschild, Reisser-Noerdstrom, Kerr and FLRW metrics (three of which are inhomogeneous). Sure, people are putting in LTB metrics in cosmology now,and a few people are using Szekeres solutions, but it's very under-studied. And if you like dropping the Copernican principle (which many don't, myself included) you can drop a requirement for dark energy, at least.
I don't have a strong point here, but the relativistic effects in cosmological (and astronomical) systems remain badly understood. We work with strong assumptions -- in cosmology, that FLRW is an accurate description and in astrophysics, that Newtonian gravity is applicable -- and very rarely question that properly.
In reality I suspect the "answer", if we ever find one, will be a mixture of things. Will SUSY turn out to be true? God, I hope not, but quite possibly it will. Then that gives us a dark matter particle. Are neutrinos a dark matter? Yes, that's incontrovertible. Are relativistic effects (from inhomogeneities, for instance) significant? Yes, I strongly suspect so. Are seemingly arcane theoretical arguments about averaging actually significant? Yes, I suspect that, too.
I wouldn't say "Dark matter is just better right now". I'd say "a naive model where you put in a totally pressureless fluid is a reasonable approximation to reality but still has issues". LCDM is struggling with a few oddities, with large bulk flows, a seemingly never-ending tower of structures on ever-larger scales (not virially bound, just *there*), remaining issues (on a naive dark matter model) with galaxy formation, cusps at the centre of galaxies, an under-abundance of small satellite galaxies, and a few other issues. On the other hand, while no-one, Milgrom included, would pretend that MOND is anything other than pure phenomenology, you surely have to admit it's pretty fucking impressive that such a simple modification of gravity can fit the dynamics of galaxies at least as well as a collection of dark matter halos. Sure, MOND dies on cluster scales, and very badly. I'd never pretend it's anything other
Provocatively stated but I do tend to agree anyway. Well, except the stuff about the DSM-V. Also I think these Space Nutters themselves number in about the hundreds, and are pretty much harmless.
Well, not really. If you're invoking Occam's razor, GR itself violates it horribly compared to Newtonian gravity... unless you look at it a particular way. I mean, who the hell wants to change
* F=m_i a * F=G M m_g/r^2
into
* G_\mu\nu=\kappa T_\mu\nu
where \mu and \nu each run from 0 to 4? High-school maths into university level maths? It's only if you look at it from the level of an action that it looks so simple...
Personally I feel adding in extra matter fields that are unmotivated other than SUSY (which is itself a horrific violation of Occam's principle unless you look at it the right way - the "right way" being some symmetry arguments based ultimately on group theory) and are barely motivated there is less palatable than accepting that Einsteinian gravity is potentially flawed, and our application of Einsteinian gravity *certainly* is. (It is. The open questions are just how inaccurate our calculations are. Most likely, the errors are insignificant, but this has to be checked before we run around adding a million scalar fields - none of which have been observed in nature, by the way - and Lord alone knows how many supersymmetric or otherwise exotic matter fields into things.)
Basically, if you assume Newtonian gravity, you're driven straight off to a particle explanation of dark matter straight off. But Newtonian gravity is wrong. Then if you accept GR -- and that Newtonian effects are insignificant on galactic scales -- you're also lead to a particle explanation of dark matter. But that's an *assumption*, that relativistic effects are insignificant. They probably are, but if we model the galaxy more accurately, in a cylindrical metric, we get some effects that look a bit like dark matter. It's not enough and the best calculations are still very speculative (even the most firebrand only claim about 33% dark matter this way) but it's still... indicative. If nothing else, why the hell are we adding in arbitrarily new physics before we properly understand the current physics?
Then, let's assume you can only get a 5% dark matter effect from relativistic effects, which I feel would even then be optimistic. People immediately run, again, to a particle explanation for dark matter. But why the hell are we so sure that GR is right? Why do we keep a theory which is actually still fairly poorly tested, in favour of modifying a theory that's relatively well-tested in our particle accelerators? Put it this way: we've tested GR/Newtonian gravity on scales between about 10 micrometres and the bounds of the solar system. Then we extrapolate that up a few orders of magnitude and pretend it's applicable on galactic scales. Then we extrapolate up *another* six orders of magnitude and pretend it's applicable on cosmological scales. Then we express surprise that something doesn't quite work.
Maybe GR properly describes gravity. But we haven't actually tested that! And observations disagree with the assumption. Do we... invent things to explain the observation, or do we at least question our theory of gravity? Do I add in a bunch of unobserved superpartners simply because one of them would be a stable dark matter particle, or do I slightly modify a potentially inaccurate theory of gravity? Personally, I want to check both. Unfortunately a lot of researchers are focusing on the former, not least because a large number of themare better than I -- much, much, much better than I -- at particle physics and at observations assuming Minkowski space, but worse than I at relativity.
Anyway, that was a long rambling rant:) But I just feel that adding massive neutrinos -- and neutrinos *are* massive; there are at least three species, and at least two of them have mass. If we believe any of our current particle physics, that is unescapable -- and modifying gravity is preferable to adding a plethora of unobserved arbitrary fields and tweaking one of perhaps 130 free parameters. Others feel differently and may very well be proven right, in which case excellent. At least we've also exhausted alternatives.
It's off-topic but you *can* fit the bullet cluster with a theory of modified gravity and at least one species of massive neutrinos (and we have at least two species of massive neutrinos in nature) so long as they're sufficiently massive. It was a major blow against TeVeS that it couldn't fit the bullet cluster... and then it was found that actually it could if you add in a well-motivated species of warm dark matter which is definitely in existence.
This shouldn't be taken too strongly. I don't think anyone really believes that TeVeS is the be-all and end-all, and you do need quite a bit of mass in your neutrinos. But it does show that the bullet cluster isn't necessarily immediately the death-blow for non-particulate dark matter it was initially announced to be.
"I think astrophysics really needs to move beyond the assumption that if we can't see it it isn't there"
Disclaimer: I am an astrophysicist and I get the impression one or two others replying to you either are, or are very well-informed laymen themselves.
My brief comments: Firstly, there are plenty of people - thousands of them - who are highly educated and thinking about this professionally. Not meaning to sound arrogant, but it's pretty damn unlikely that you'll think of something that someone else hasn't, studied in detail, and constrained against data. No offense but the fields in which a layman can significantly impact against a few thousand highly trained professionals are pretty limited. It's not impossible... but you have to be at least as highly trained, as Einstein was.
Secondly, since when has astrophysics assumed that if we can't see it it isn't there? You're even referencing dark matter... and the standard assumption (notice "standard"; it's not the only assumption made and better models are tested constantly) is that we can't see it and it is there.
No, no point. But it might speed up the discovery of systems with so many precious metals they pay you to take them away. I think we should look at Cemeiss.
If I could:) I don't have *that* much software needing Rosetta anymore, but it would still be useful. Thing is, Apple already have Rosetta and there's no immediate reason for ditching it other than to finally sever the links with PowerPC, so I still think they could offer it as a download on the App store even if they want to remove it from Lion. I'd even pay a few extra dollars for it.
I'm saying (in an exaggerated manner) that people who can replace a hard drive and find that because Apple didn't make it clear that there's a bootable image in the Lion download they're going to have additional difficulty reloading their OS are likely to think worse of Apple as a result, and that will factor into their future purchases.
Your view of "the middle of nowhere" is quite interesting. There are large parts of Britain with surprisingly slow internet and next to no access to an Apple store... despite being right in the middle of a well-developed country.
Anyway, this seems to have spiralled a bit. My only point is that I think it would have been better for Apple to be providing physical media in addition to the download. Obviously Apple disagree with me. Obviously you also do, as is your prerogative.
No, not really. There's an online presence, technical support, and resellers who offer repair services. Ultimately I've no doubt those resellers will have Lion images and anyone running into any of these issues can just go in and have it put on their computer. (That's pretty much what I found in South Africa, which also has no Apple stores.)
If I remember I'll get back to you about that. There are Apple resellers here (in Norway) and if Apple are releasing any physical media it would go to them. But the internet company I'm with offer uncapped broadband, so it might be in Norway, at least, Apple assume people will be able to download without killing their bandwidth allowance.
No, you're wrong there. There's a big difference between knowing how to put a DVD in the drive and turn the computer on, and knowing (on a system he's not really used to) how to burn the DMG to disc. I can't imagine you can't see the difference.
Of course I understand Apple's desire to "push new paradigms". Personally I feel they're doing it too vigorously -- I still have a Power Mac stuck on Leopard, and now I have Intel Macs that may or may not stay on Snow Leopard since they're needlessly dropping Rosetta and I have a couple of PowerPC applications I still use -- but they disagree, and their bank balance vindicates them. The difference there though is that I can understand the PowerPC-Intel transition; that Power Mac of mine was nice in its day but it was very much the end of the line. I can't really see why they're dropping Rosetta and not offering it as a download through their precious App store, but it's part of the same transition, so fair enough. I can even understand them dropping support for all the Core Duo chips.
Swapping to a download-only distribution of your main OS, though? To me, that's just... odd.
But this is all a bit besides the point, which was a pretty small one, that people with SL Macs now are liable to upgrade to Lion without burning any installation media. Then when something goes tits up, they've no recovery media. Their alternative is to put in their SL DVD (assuming they still have it), install SL, and *then* upgrade to Lion. Not an ideal solution, really.
yes, we will. but i also said about two or three times in this thread (and doubtless hundreds of others have said too) that there are people on capped broadband, and that 4gig download will wipe a massive chunk out of their monthly allowance. there are people on slow internets, and that download will take them forever. and many of those people won't live near an apple store to use the alternative of downloading it there. this won't affect me personally - i'm on uncapped and reasonably fast broadband so if i choose to upgrade to lion i'm fine, but i can imagine people it will affect. apple obviously can, too, but from the announcements i've read it doesn't look like they care very much.
it just seems that we can say "what if i can't get it from the internet?" and people reply "go to the apple store". "but i don't have an apple store in my *country* let alone my city." "download it from the internet".
But a problem there is if there *are* no Apple stores nearby, and you're on capped broadband.
I just think Apple probably should offer Lion on DVDs, too. As it is, a lot of their customers aren't likely to have burned any recovery media and will have to go to an Apple store... and there might not even be any. (I live in Norway. We don't have any here. We've got quite a few resellers, but they're just resellers, and I've got absolutely no idea what they will or won't be able to do.)
From the original post: "If you don't want an apple id, are on AOL dialup, etc. you could still get it in person at an apple store the old fashioned way."
Fuck's sake. Learn to read. And if you assumed I was just talking about the App store, what part of "And perhaps you have capped broadband, with a 4gig download taking a massive chunk out of the monthly limit?" seems confusing?
I'm not arguing or trolling - do you have a source for that? The last I knew that was properly clear, it claimed that Lion would only be available as a download from the App Store. That came straight from Apple's comments at the WWDC.
Or, they're going to buy a much cheaper Dell machine and say "Fuck Apple". Which is a scenario Apple obviously think isn't going to happen - and hell, they're a big company with some good market research so it's entirely possible they're right and the bulk of their target demographic would just go out and buy another Macbook Pro - but which is a scenario I know would happen with a good few people like my dad who know enough about computers to be comfortable, but aren't nerdy enough to read the tech press or dig through a download to find a.dmg, or to think "I should burn that to a DVD in case my drive goes down".
I guess Apple don't really want that market, in which case all power to them, but they'll lose at least some custom that way.
It's BS and FUD to you, certainly - any of us here know (or should know) that the download includes an image for a bootable DVD. But how many normal Mac users are going to know that? In all honesty I don't know how well publicised this is. I read the tech press so I've known it for a while, but if I asked someone like my dad? I'm not so sure. Then their drive goes down, their computer is unbootable, and they're mightily pissed off with Apple for either not making it clearer (though as I say, it's possible they did and I've not seen) or simply not giving them bootable media in the first place. Given the cost of DVDs, I still don't quite see why Apple are so desperate to make this a download anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
To be honest, I have no idea what the "DSM-V" stuff is referring to. The people I've encountered like this... harmless. Sometimes annoying, but harmless. Asking me weird questions at conferences, but harmless. I don't care if people believe NASA claims it invented a lot of current technologies. In some cases it's even got a point, and in the rest, people can believe what they want. There are plenty of people believe that moon landings never happened - and I'm willing to believe that there are as many of them as the bonkers-crazy space nuts you're talking about. Some I've met are even actually extremely intelligent and better than me at vast swathes of physics, and yet believe the moon landings never happened. And even these people don't have really much impact.
Ultimately, yes, I believe they're harmless. People who believe them can be reeducated. Those that can't were probably useless in the first place. And no-one has ever found any use for bizarre crazy 60s sci-fi fans who think its all real. Thankfully they don't receive government grants.
Fair enough :) I was wondering if that was the case, but with the 20+ year delay to Hurd I thought I had to ask.....
I agree... but out of interest, why doesn't Linux satisfy that for you? I can see the argument that Hurd gives you a totally different philosophy to look at to Linux - but if you wanted that, why wouldn't Darwin suit you?
I'm all for developing new kernels anyway. But if we're purely looking at use we don't need it (we've got Linux and Darwin) and if we're looking at contrasting designs we don't *need* it (Linux and Darwin)... but it's still a new design so frankly all power to it. Just I doubt I'll use it myself, at least not for production.
Yeah.. but we're adding new particle physics on the understanding that Newtonian gravity is sufficient. It's not. We're also doing so on the understanding that our application of GR is also sufficient. It's not. I'm not a galactic dynamicist; I'm a cosmologist. The dark matter in my field is seen in the Friedman equations which, regardless of whether they're valid or not, are from a naive application of GR on (at least) Gpc scales, assuming homogeneity and isotropy. This may or may not actually be valid, not least because it involves a whole collection of undefined uses of the phrases "on average" and "on large scales". Assuming "on average" that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic does lead to the FLRW metric; that's true. Maybe that's even actually a true assumption and that "on large scales" FLRW is an accurate description of the universe -- but even if that's true it's only true for null geodesics and it *isn't* true for the dynamics. The Einstein equations are non-linear, or they'd just be a rephrasing of Newtonian gravity. That non-linearity means that regardless of whether we can talk about "average" quantities in GR (and, currently, *we can't*), and regardless of whether FLRW will hold "on large scales" (and it may very well do and I suspect it does), the dynamics are different from FLRW dynamics.
Quantifying that is, of course, a different matter. Interestingly, so far, the deviations in the dynamics using a naive definition of a scalar average and a rather unsatisfactory averaging on 3-surfaces, have tended to look like dark matter. Does that solve the (cosmological) dark matter problem? Of course not. It would be bizarre to claim it did. Does it suggest that there may at least be something in this idea? Yeah, sure.
But more than that, you can go the other way and avoid questions of averaging at all. Instead, you can take a look at the effects of inhomogeneities in GR. That's remarkably ill-researched given that we tend to stick in Schwarzschild, Reisser-Noerdstrom, Kerr and FLRW metrics (three of which are inhomogeneous). Sure, people are putting in LTB metrics in cosmology now,and a few people are using Szekeres solutions, but it's very under-studied. And if you like dropping the Copernican principle (which many don't, myself included) you can drop a requirement for dark energy, at least.
I don't have a strong point here, but the relativistic effects in cosmological (and astronomical) systems remain badly understood. We work with strong assumptions -- in cosmology, that FLRW is an accurate description and in astrophysics, that Newtonian gravity is applicable -- and very rarely question that properly.
In reality I suspect the "answer", if we ever find one, will be a mixture of things. Will SUSY turn out to be true? God, I hope not, but quite possibly it will. Then that gives us a dark matter particle. Are neutrinos a dark matter? Yes, that's incontrovertible. Are relativistic effects (from inhomogeneities, for instance) significant? Yes, I strongly suspect so. Are seemingly arcane theoretical arguments about averaging actually significant? Yes, I suspect that, too.
I wouldn't say "Dark matter is just better right now". I'd say "a naive model where you put in a totally pressureless fluid is a reasonable approximation to reality but still has issues". LCDM is struggling with a few oddities, with large bulk flows, a seemingly never-ending tower of structures on ever-larger scales (not virially bound, just *there*), remaining issues (on a naive dark matter model) with galaxy formation, cusps at the centre of galaxies, an under-abundance of small satellite galaxies, and a few other issues. On the other hand, while no-one, Milgrom included, would pretend that MOND is anything other than pure phenomenology, you surely have to admit it's pretty fucking impressive that such a simple modification of gravity can fit the dynamics of galaxies at least as well as a collection of dark matter halos. Sure, MOND dies on cluster scales, and very badly. I'd never pretend it's anything other
Provocatively stated but I do tend to agree anyway. Well, except the stuff about the DSM-V. Also I think these Space Nutters themselves number in about the hundreds, and are pretty much harmless.
Well, not really. If you're invoking Occam's razor, GR itself violates it horribly compared to Newtonian gravity... unless you look at it a particular way. I mean, who the hell wants to change
* F=m_i a /r^2
* F=G M m_g
into
* G_\mu\nu=\kappa T_\mu\nu
where \mu and \nu each run from 0 to 4? High-school maths into university level maths? It's only if you look at it from the level of an action that it looks so simple...
Personally I feel adding in extra matter fields that are unmotivated other than SUSY (which is itself a horrific violation of Occam's principle unless you look at it the right way - the "right way" being some symmetry arguments based ultimately on group theory) and are barely motivated there is less palatable than accepting that Einsteinian gravity is potentially flawed, and our application of Einsteinian gravity *certainly* is. (It is. The open questions are just how inaccurate our calculations are. Most likely, the errors are insignificant, but this has to be checked before we run around adding a million scalar fields - none of which have been observed in nature, by the way - and Lord alone knows how many supersymmetric or otherwise exotic matter fields into things.)
Basically, if you assume Newtonian gravity, you're driven straight off to a particle explanation of dark matter straight off. But Newtonian gravity is wrong. Then if you accept GR -- and that Newtonian effects are insignificant on galactic scales -- you're also lead to a particle explanation of dark matter. But that's an *assumption*, that relativistic effects are insignificant. They probably are, but if we model the galaxy more accurately, in a cylindrical metric, we get some effects that look a bit like dark matter. It's not enough and the best calculations are still very speculative (even the most firebrand only claim about 33% dark matter this way) but it's still... indicative. If nothing else, why the hell are we adding in arbitrarily new physics before we properly understand the current physics?
Then, let's assume you can only get a 5% dark matter effect from relativistic effects, which I feel would even then be optimistic. People immediately run, again, to a particle explanation for dark matter. But why the hell are we so sure that GR is right? Why do we keep a theory which is actually still fairly poorly tested, in favour of modifying a theory that's relatively well-tested in our particle accelerators? Put it this way: we've tested GR/Newtonian gravity on scales between about 10 micrometres and the bounds of the solar system. Then we extrapolate that up a few orders of magnitude and pretend it's applicable on galactic scales. Then we extrapolate up *another* six orders of magnitude and pretend it's applicable on cosmological scales. Then we express surprise that something doesn't quite work.
Maybe GR properly describes gravity. But we haven't actually tested that! And observations disagree with the assumption. Do we... invent things to explain the observation, or do we at least question our theory of gravity? Do I add in a bunch of unobserved superpartners simply because one of them would be a stable dark matter particle, or do I slightly modify a potentially inaccurate theory of gravity? Personally, I want to check both. Unfortunately a lot of researchers are focusing on the former, not least because a large number of themare better than I -- much, much, much better than I -- at particle physics and at observations assuming Minkowski space, but worse than I at relativity.
Anyway, that was a long rambling rant :) But I just feel that adding massive neutrinos -- and neutrinos *are* massive; there are at least three species, and at least two of them have mass. If we believe any of our current particle physics, that is unescapable -- and modifying gravity is preferable to adding a plethora of unobserved arbitrary fields and tweaking one of perhaps 130 free parameters. Others feel differently and may very well be proven right, in which case excellent. At least we've also exhausted alternatives.
No, it's mass is far too small. I know how ropy Wikipedia is as a source, but the page on brown dwarfs is pretty good.
It's off-topic but you *can* fit the bullet cluster with a theory of modified gravity and at least one species of massive neutrinos (and we have at least two species of massive neutrinos in nature) so long as they're sufficiently massive. It was a major blow against TeVeS that it couldn't fit the bullet cluster... and then it was found that actually it could if you add in a well-motivated species of warm dark matter which is definitely in existence.
This shouldn't be taken too strongly. I don't think anyone really believes that TeVeS is the be-all and end-all, and you do need quite a bit of mass in your neutrinos. But it does show that the bullet cluster isn't necessarily immediately the death-blow for non-particulate dark matter it was initially announced to be.
"I think astrophysics really needs to move beyond the assumption that if we can't see it it isn't there"
Disclaimer: I am an astrophysicist and I get the impression one or two others replying to you either are, or are very well-informed laymen themselves.
My brief comments: Firstly, there are plenty of people - thousands of them - who are highly educated and thinking about this professionally. Not meaning to sound arrogant, but it's pretty damn unlikely that you'll think of something that someone else hasn't, studied in detail, and constrained against data. No offense but the fields in which a layman can significantly impact against a few thousand highly trained professionals are pretty limited. It's not impossible... but you have to be at least as highly trained, as Einstein was.
Secondly, since when has astrophysics assumed that if we can't see it it isn't there? You're even referencing dark matter... and the standard assumption (notice "standard"; it's not the only assumption made and better models are tested constantly) is that we can't see it and it is there.
No, no point. But it might speed up the discovery of systems with so many precious metals they pay you to take them away. I think we should look at Cemeiss.
If I could :) I don't have *that* much software needing Rosetta anymore, but it would still be useful. Thing is, Apple already have Rosetta and there's no immediate reason for ditching it other than to finally sever the links with PowerPC, so I still think they could offer it as a download on the App store even if they want to remove it from Lion. I'd even pay a few extra dollars for it.
I'm saying (in an exaggerated manner) that people who can replace a hard drive and find that because Apple didn't make it clear that there's a bootable image in the Lion download they're going to have additional difficulty reloading their OS are likely to think worse of Apple as a result, and that will factor into their future purchases.
Your view of "the middle of nowhere" is quite interesting. There are large parts of Britain with surprisingly slow internet and next to no access to an Apple store... despite being right in the middle of a well-developed country.
Anyway, this seems to have spiralled a bit. My only point is that I think it would have been better for Apple to be providing physical media in addition to the download. Obviously Apple disagree with me. Obviously you also do, as is your prerogative.
No, not really. There's an online presence, technical support, and resellers who offer repair services. Ultimately I've no doubt those resellers will have Lion images and anyone running into any of these issues can just go in and have it put on their computer. (That's pretty much what I found in South Africa, which also has no Apple stores.)
If I remember I'll get back to you about that. There are Apple resellers here (in Norway) and if Apple are releasing any physical media it would go to them. But the internet company I'm with offer uncapped broadband, so it might be in Norway, at least, Apple assume people will be able to download without killing their bandwidth allowance.
No, you're wrong there. There's a big difference between knowing how to put a DVD in the drive and turn the computer on, and knowing (on a system he's not really used to) how to burn the DMG to disc. I can't imagine you can't see the difference.
Of course I understand Apple's desire to "push new paradigms". Personally I feel they're doing it too vigorously -- I still have a Power Mac stuck on Leopard, and now I have Intel Macs that may or may not stay on Snow Leopard since they're needlessly dropping Rosetta and I have a couple of PowerPC applications I still use -- but they disagree, and their bank balance vindicates them. The difference there though is that I can understand the PowerPC-Intel transition; that Power Mac of mine was nice in its day but it was very much the end of the line. I can't really see why they're dropping Rosetta and not offering it as a download through their precious App store, but it's part of the same transition, so fair enough. I can even understand them dropping support for all the Core Duo chips.
Swapping to a download-only distribution of your main OS, though? To me, that's just... odd.
But this is all a bit besides the point, which was a pretty small one, that people with SL Macs now are liable to upgrade to Lion without burning any installation media. Then when something goes tits up, they've no recovery media. Their alternative is to put in their SL DVD (assuming they still have it), install SL, and *then* upgrade to Lion. Not an ideal solution, really.
yes, we will. but i also said about two or three times in this thread (and doubtless hundreds of others have said too) that there are people on capped broadband, and that 4gig download will wipe a massive chunk out of their monthly allowance. there are people on slow internets, and that download will take them forever. and many of those people won't live near an apple store to use the alternative of downloading it there. this won't affect me personally - i'm on uncapped and reasonably fast broadband so if i choose to upgrade to lion i'm fine, but i can imagine people it will affect. apple obviously can, too, but from the announcements i've read it doesn't look like they care very much.
it just seems that we can say "what if i can't get it from the internet?" and people reply "go to the apple store". "but i don't have an apple store in my *country* let alone my city." "download it from the internet".
You poor baby.
It's only a mildly opinionated post in another thread about Apple. You'll live.
Damn straight.
Unfortunately I wouldn't argue with that.
But a problem there is if there *are* no Apple stores nearby, and you're on capped broadband.
I just think Apple probably should offer Lion on DVDs, too. As it is, a lot of their customers aren't likely to have burned any recovery media and will have to go to an Apple store... and there might not even be any. (I live in Norway. We don't have any here. We've got quite a few resellers, but they're just resellers, and I've got absolutely no idea what they will or won't be able to do.)
From the original post: "If you don't want an apple id, are on AOL dialup, etc. you could still get it in person at an apple store the old fashioned way."
Fuck's sake. Learn to read. And if you assumed I was just talking about the App store, what part of "And perhaps you have capped broadband, with a 4gig download taking a massive chunk out of the monthly limit?" seems confusing?
I'm not arguing or trolling - do you have a source for that? The last I knew that was properly clear, it claimed that Lion would only be available as a download from the App Store. That came straight from Apple's comments at the WWDC.
Or, they're going to buy a much cheaper Dell machine and say "Fuck Apple". Which is a scenario Apple obviously think isn't going to happen - and hell, they're a big company with some good market research so it's entirely possible they're right and the bulk of their target demographic would just go out and buy another Macbook Pro - but which is a scenario I know would happen with a good few people like my dad who know enough about computers to be comfortable, but aren't nerdy enough to read the tech press or dig through a download to find a .dmg, or to think "I should burn that to a DVD in case my drive goes down".
I guess Apple don't really want that market, in which case all power to them, but they'll lose at least some custom that way.
It's BS and FUD to you, certainly - any of us here know (or should know) that the download includes an image for a bootable DVD. But how many normal Mac users are going to know that? In all honesty I don't know how well publicised this is. I read the tech press so I've known it for a while, but if I asked someone like my dad? I'm not so sure. Then their drive goes down, their computer is unbootable, and they're mightily pissed off with Apple for either not making it clearer (though as I say, it's possible they did and I've not seen) or simply not giving them bootable media in the first place. Given the cost of DVDs, I still don't quite see why Apple are so desperate to make this a download anyway.