January 31, 2008
MacBook Air installation discs are unique and exclusive
Posted Jan. 31, ’08, 1:55 PM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Software
While I was idly perusing the newly unveiled MacBook Air support section on Apple.com, I ran across an interesting nugget of important information in the article about the Leopard installation discs bundled with the notebook.
The Mac OS X 10.5 installation media that shipped with your MacBook Air is designed for use on this computer only and not intended for any other computer.What makes this version of OS X so special? Well, the MacBook Air trackpad supports multi-touch gestures and the notebook can access the optical media from other Macs and PCs in the vicinity using Remote Disc. These aren’t standard features on other Macs so we presume that the version of Leopard installed on the MacBook Air is a custom one with these features bolted on.The installer prevents this software from being installed on other Macintosh computers. Furthermore, other Mac OS X 10.5 installation media should not be used when restoring the system software on your MacBook Air.
Therefore, it is important that you preserve the installation disc that comes with the MacBook Air because in case something goes wrong, and you use other installation media for installing Leopard onto the Air, you’ll lose out on the multi-touchness of the trackpad and all the remote disc fun.
This leads me to another question—what if you lose it? The retail version of Mac Os X Leopard does not have those extra features. So are we going to see another retail version of the operating system for MacBook Air users? Or can MacBook Air users get Leopard reinstalled from Apple for no charge, in case they lose the installation media? Your guess is as good as mine.
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When you click on the Apple logo and select "Software Update..." the software you need specifically for the Macbook Air will be automatically downloaded. Problem solved.
what seems reasonable is that if the air is installed through a standard OS DVD then the "extra" info shall be downloaded through software update as any other update like they did. It does not seem that apple will fail in a MS mistake and make different distributions.
Usually, Apple ships a machine specific disc with each machine they sell. As they release point upgrades they roll any machine specific features into the full system installer.
This is important because it allows a remote drive to be used as the startup disk for any of the currently available Macs. Either 10.5.2 or 10.5.3 should support booting MacBook Airs as well as all the other Macs.
I believe they update the version included in the retail Mac OS X package over time as well.
The way Apple have done this kind of thing in the past, is by rolling in any special software that is needed for new models with the next version of the retail disc.
In this case, I would expect the Mac OS X 10.5.2 retail DVD to be able to boot and restore a MacBook Air.
Every Mac ships with an installation disc that is unique to its particular model. It is to minimise software piracy.
I briefly worked at Apple in Tech Support, you could order replacement system discs for a few years after the release of the system, and after that time the newer OS CDs should support the hardware as well...