One should note that Apple sometimes has multiple "Gold Master" seeds, so this does not necessarily mean release is imminent. (Though I think chances are pretty good, since Lion's been rumored to be released sometime in the next two weeks.)
The time between GM seed and release could be much shorter this time around, because they don't need to press millions of shiny plastic discs and ship them around the world.
DP4 was also likely tagged at least a month before its release to developers.
Their DP releases aren't current. They're older, generally more stable snapshots.
EDIT: This means that they've been improving stability long since the last DP, and have been using the bug reports and crash reports from the DPs to diagnose and fix problems as well.
As someone running DP4 as their primary OS (running it full-time makes it easier for me to run into edge-case issues with apps I care about), Lion lacking stability is news to me.
I'm using DP4 to make sure my app (getcloak.com) is compatible -- I've found DP4 to be quite buggy: Kernel panics not evidently tied to third party drivers, crashes in Safari, plenty of UI glitches etc. Oh, and Ableton Live doesn't work, not that this is necessarily Apple's fault.
This is on a late-2010 MacBook Pro. My impression talking to friends is that this is not an uncommon experience, though clearly not everyone has these issues.
That said, I used to work at Microsoft. Next to the (years of) beta builds of Vista I had to suffer through, Lion is practically paradise. ;-)
There were a couple of issues with NVIDIA graphics drivers in DP4 which could cause kernel panics, UI glitches, etc. Fixed in the latest DP4 update. The folks over at netkas.org forums do a lot of exploring in those kexts. It seems like Lion and the 10.6.8 update share basically the same drivers at this point.
I can second this. I used DP4 for about a week with no problems whatsoever. I am now using DP5 as my primary, again with no issues. I was even using a seed from February that was stable. My experience with Lion has been very good so far. I'm wondering what specific hardware people are having problems with? Perhaps laptops?
Interesting. My experience with a couple of releases (10.4 and 10.5, I believe) was that the seeds would be wildly unstable, and built a long time ago, and then, out of the blue, the GM would be stable. I.e., Apple seems to clean up a lot of things at the last minute and roll them into the GM.
In DP3~4 when trying to do a clean install from the recovery partition, Setup requires you to be online, you may or may not have to enter your AppleID (can't remember) and then a dialog states the purpose to be so your CPU serial number will be sent to Apple to determine if the OS may be installed.
That's the definition of online activation. /cue shitstorm
They announced Lion would only be available via the Mac App Store. Did that trigger backlash? After all, most people will need to enter their Apple ID on every machine on which they wish to install Lion.
What you describe sounds like an extension of that very process. Enter your Apple ID to validate purchase, so you can legitimately download the bits. Or, if you purchased a computer that already had Lion installed, as determined by the machine's serial number, you can get the bits without your Apple ID.
Very different from controversial forms of online activation, like Window's, where you must enter a serial number to install and then, after the install, activate Windows so they can verify you haven't exceeded your unique machine quota and aren't using a cracked copy of Windows.
Apple's process is basically just asking for a serial number. I doubt it'll cause a shitstorm.
This is not enforced by the software in any way whatsoever. Sure, you can only access the download link if you're a registered developer, but the installer doesn't check.
Follow my directions: install to the rescue partition, boot DiskUtility, erase drive, then try to clean install. After that, come back and report your results.
meta: It's getting insane the lengths you must go to to back up a simple statement on HN. I'm seriously about to do blowup an entire machine just to win this.... :(
What evidence? Sorry but this is simply baseless FUD. I've installed the seeds, I've done so without an Internet connection, and I've never had to provide any kind of license or proof of purchase.
Never.
If you want to make a claim that Apple is moving towards the Windows licensing model or even just the requirement of a license with Lion then you better be prepared to back up that claim with proof. Also please explain how I was able to install without running into the supposed "licensing" difficulties you seem to have run into? (e.g. the requirement of being connected to the Internet)
Edit: by requiring a license, I mean that the software enforces it. The "AppStore validation" notwithstanding, which the current seeds do not seem to use fwiw, where is the evidence? Because the seeds can be installed sans-Internet and without an Apple ID, there doesn't seem to be any evidence for this claim.
Edit 2: the image linked below is not of a local install: "To download and restore Mac OS X, your computer's eligibility will be verified with Apple." As previously stated, installation does not require online activation. Also I would like to point out, if you are restoring from a back up in the cloud, e.g. iCloud, you damn well better hope Apple verifies your credentials! If you're simply wanting to re-download, I don't know why you're complaining Apple is checking your credentials? At any rate, installing from the local media works without any such requirements; you do not need an Internet connection and you do not need an Apple ID. Now, can we stop with the FUD?
Pretty strange that Apple does something like this, they never did any kind of verification in the past.
I installed DP1 or DP2 on an empty disk using the DMG inside the app bundle and if I remember correctly (I might well not) there was no verification. Maybe it only kicks in when you install from the recovery partition? But why?
I completely forgot to check whether the GM install app still includes the installer DMG and I apparently can’t check anymore since that app was apparently deleted after I installed the update. That didn’t happen before. Since I’m nervous without that DMG I’m going to download Lion from the App Store again (that works but it takes time).
Edit: I just checked, the recovery partition is only 650MB. You are re-downloading the whole or large parts of the installer (3.75GB in size) when installing from the recovery partition. Apple checks whether you can re-download Lion. (The same happens when you re-download Lion from the App Store.)
I guess if you really want you can call this “activation” but I don’t really know how Apple should do it differently. Your Mac sends a request to a Server somewhere in order to download the installer. I’m fairly certain that without any activation it would be very simple to fake such a request and just download the installer at will. It would be no different from Apple putting Lion on a public server somewhere, for everyone to download. The only way to prevent this is – as far as I know – to do some kind of verification. What they could maybe do is to already put parts of the installer on the recovery partition, that way whatever is downloaded from Apple’s servers wouldn’t work without a recovery partition (which you can only get if you at one point had the Lion installer app). I’m, however, not sure that’s worth the trouble.
When you install from the installer app (I don’t know whether a clean install is possible if you do that, probably not) and when you install using the DMG inside the installer app bundle (it’s still there in the Lion GM) your installation is not verified.
I would recommend you get the DMG inside the Lion installer app and put it on some bootable medium (DVD, USB drive, …), that way you don’t have to worry about it.
Here is where you can find it:
Open up the Lion installer app bundle and go to Contents ▸ SharedSupport. InstallESD.dmg is what you want. Copy it somewhere. You can create a bootable install partition with Disk Utility.
I’m also gonna do that, if only to have my peace of mind. I guess I would prefer it if Apple gave us some way to just download the DMG but what they have done is pretty much the next best thing. (The whole installer app is, in fact, only a thin wrapper around the DMG.)
Dude. just. fucking. stop. You are wrong - be a man and admit it. It was a local install where I had simply erased the HD first. I left out the rest of the footage because, seriously, I THOUGHT YOU WOULD GET IT.
Another sad day on the HN, whatever, my apologies for not following wmf's suggestion.
At the risk of exacerbating this, I'll reply once more. Please read the dialogues you posted carefully: "To download and restore Mac OS X, your computer's eligibility will be verified with Apple."
You are re-downloading from Apple and thus restoring this new image. I'm not too surprised Apple wants to do a check at this point, just to make sure it's not giving out free, unauthorized copies to whomever may be asking. Also this requires an Internet connection because, well, you're downloading the image again.
Using the local media on your computer, say from an installation DVD for instance, you can install the seeds without restoring and without re-downloading. In fact you can even update the seeds with Software Update which does not require an Apple ID.
You're right that if you re-download the image you will have to verify the download, similarly when you go to grab the image off the dev site you have to login. However I'm not sure I agree this is comparable to other activation schemes. But for the sake of argument, let's just say it is.
The bottom line is I don't think most people want to re-download the image when they're doing an install. I certainly didn't. I just installed from my local media.
At the time, the machine I was using was disconnected from the Internet completely and I opted out of providing my Apple ID during set up.
The result was that I was able install the Lion seeds and was never at any point required to provide credentials that verified my status as a holder of a developer account.
Apparently there is a confusion between re-downloading from Apple servers (requires verification of the legitimacy of the request) then subsequently restoring and installing from local media (assumed to be legitimate, no Internet connection required).
If you install from local media you don't need an Internet connection, you don't need to provide an Apple ID, and there is no verification of installation. (At least in the DPs, I can't speak for what the final public release will look like obviously.)
For April Fools this year, Blizzard announced the Starcraft II Patch 1.4.11 patch notes and the World of Warcraft Patch 4.1.11 patch notes. I thought that was clever, and a great way to take advantage of a coincidence in the release schedule. In fact, given Blizzard's love of April Fools it wouldn't surprise me if they shifted some patches around in order to set up that joke.
