Imagine the traffic. Lion's download.

This has to be rather unprecedented.
Lion's download will be somewhere in the vicinity of 4 Gigabytes.

How will the servers handle it on opening day?

I can't think of any other previous download which will so impact web traffic.

 

Xcode, apple's development environment, is over 4 GB in size and was released on the app store as a digital download. I think it will be business as usual compared to the mass of data they push to mobiles, given the popularity of the iOS app store. Apple has a huge web presence at this point. Every iOS release is maybe 400 MB in size but there are probably more than 10x the number of people grabbing that on release day as there will be with Lion.

 

Apple did build a massive data center recently somewhere in North Carolina...

 

that data centre is for there new icloud service not for the mac app store

 

I just feel like they have plenty of capacity to release this. The combined update from 10.6.0 to 10.6.8 is also quite large. Plus you have apps on the app stores for mac and ios, you have music, streaming video in podcasts, streaming movies... so much data, all the time.

 

You guys beat me to it. Exactly. Apple wouldn't be so confident to put out a huge download knowing there will be a massive amount of people downloading it on release day if they didn't have the capacity to back it up. That data center was made for this type of stuff.

 

Anyone know if the download is going to be an image file or as an executable app? I could download and expand the image file to a disk. Really I was hoping to simply pick up installation media from my local Apple Store.

I like to keep major OS releases on disk or to a flash drive for when I need to reinstall something. Some things, such as when installing a fresh bootcamp win7 environment you need to insert the installation disk to install the base version of bootcamp (and then you download upgraded versions from there). Although you could get the base version as a download too.

Anyway, I'll probably just pick up the install disk (or if it is on USB, thats cool too) from the physical Apple store. I'm old school I guess and I like to have installation media in my grubby little paws.

 

Sadly it will only be available through download at the App Store. I'm hoping that Apple builds in the ability to create a disc image of the installation so that re-installs can be done quicker, without first needing to install Snow Leopard prior to Lion...

 

Unfortunately you can't buy it from the Apple store. They will not be selling Lion via physical media. It will only be available via download from the Mac App Store.

 

I really hope they have the ability to put it on DVD or something, downloading it 61 times at work would be a monumental pain and really eat up alot of our 250gb/month cap. I know the guy would rather burn some disks and batch them.

 

From what I understand, it's just a typical installer package, like the XCode download. Download, burn to DVD, or save to external drive.

 

What I want to know is if a clean install can be performed with it. Right now, it looks like people who purchased Snow Leopard Macs will be able to perform a clean install only with the SL DVD and then upgrade with the Lion download. It looks like the Lion download itself isn't capable of performing a clean install.

It also looks like you will have to buy a Mac with Lion in order to get it on DVD from Apple. I am OK with them ditching optical media sales but I don't like the aspect of not being able to perform a clean install on my system with Lion. Not that I would do that upon Lion's release (it is my understanding that OS X upgrades are different from Windows updates) but I would want to clean install Lion if something were to ever happen.

 

Not to argue your understanding, but from where does this understating originate?
I have not seen anywhere that it is "like the XCode download". Maybe it is, I'm just wondering if it is just speculation that Lion will be this way.


Every downloaded App I have made from the App Store has no separate "package" that you can use later at will. There is no "installer package" that is subsequently acted upon by the user, but instead the App Store operates much like an update, inasmuch that the application is automatically installed by the action of downloading, and there is no installer package to save for user disposition.

I am hoping that you are right, and this won't be like previous OS X updates.

 

How to burn a Lion boot disc | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

 

except XCode which is kind of a disaster. They are working on it, though, apparently. I would suspect they have it fixed by the time lion comes out. I'm also sure there will be a boot method available shortly upon release, possibly prerelease.