I wanted to blog about something similar myself, but currently lack a blog. Apple's rejection of physical media is, I would argue, extremely harmful.
I have an old, 2008 Macbook (not Pro) 4,1. The old white plastic kind. Lion performs atrociously (at best) on it, so around half a year ago I installed Linux on it. Recently, I got around to buying a new laptop (a Lenovo), and wanted to restore OSX on the old Macbook in order to give it to family.
I figured off the bat I'd do a clean install of Mountain Lion. I have old Leopard installation media, but that's a dead upgrade path: you can't buy Snow Leopard media anymore, so you cannot upgrade it. Apple don't sell physical media for Mountain Lion either, so I went to a friend's house, logged into the Mac App store, purchased and downloaded Mountain Lion.
When I got home, the installer (which took an hour or so to image onto a USB stick) didn't work. I figured it might be balking on the HDD being Linux, so dd'd it. Nope. It turns out Mountain Lion is incompatible with my hardware.
This is where the vortex begins. I returned to my friend, and tried to get the Lion installer off the App Store (on my account), which I had previously purchased. No dice. Apple have removed Lion now that Mountain Lion is out.
I tried to install the copy of Snow Leopard my friend had. Not possible. As OEM media, it's got (very basic, admittedly) DRM onboard which restricts the installation to his hardware.
I tried to get the copy of Snow Leopard I had originally installed, when my previous employer had (kindly) purchased a stack of us personal copies alongside upgrades for work machines. Nope; they'd stopped using Macs and those were gone.
Being frustrated, I figured I'd install Leopard on the laptop and be done with it. Nope. The disc, it turns out, is scratched.
At this stage, I called Apple. I asked what I could do. I was advised I could purchase a physical copy of Lion off them, if I paid full price -- despite already having purchased it on the App Store. Frustrated, but at this stage just wanting to be rid of the device, I agreed. It turns out this was also not possible. Apple's support is in Australia, and NZ can't get the physical media (at least, I believe this to be the case; I may have conflated the issue on the phone with needing to get the media within a week).
The next day, I took the laptop to a Yoobee store (our Apple store equivalent). They told me they'd have to ship the laptop to the support centre to fix it.
So, to recap: I can't install Mountain Lion, because my hardware is too old. I can't get physical media for Snow Leopard or Lion, because Apple no longer sell it. I can't retrieve a copy of Lion from the app store and create my own, because Apple has removed it. I can't install Leopard, because my media is damaged (not Apple's fault) -- but even if I could, it's unsupported and with no physical media, there's no upgrade path. The only solution was to pay to ship the laptop off to a support centre. Ultimately, I was very lucky to find another friend on IRC who still had a Lion USB stick he'd imaged earlier, but the fact I needed to do this is... well, awful.
This is a _terrible_ customer support situation. I'll admit it's compounded by the fact I'm in New Zealand, and we have no Apple stores (fair enough: our entire population is less than several US cities), so support is harder to come by. I'll admit that, having installed Linux, I'm probably in somewhat of a minority. However, Apple's forced hardware deprecation, and removal of physical media, have made it almost literally impossible to restore a working copy of OSX on their own hardware.
I haven't heard of Apple's legal team going after anyone for OS X piracy. Either you've purchased the Apple machine already, so whatever, or you're trying to make a Hackintosh in which case it's a bag of hurt anyway and probably not that lucrative to go after you. (Besides, the legal team is busy with Samsung, anyway - much more money in iPhone patents.)
Apple didn’t remove Lion from the App Store for me. I can download it without a problem. (It’s in my purchase tab, as is Mountain Lion. I’m running Mountain Lion.)
That's interesting. I tried for quite some time to find it (on both one friend's MBP w/ Mountain Lion, and another's with Snow Leopard, in case it wasn't present in the ML App Store), but couldn't. The support guy said they'd removed them from the store. I wonder if it's because you've already downloaded it on that hardware, or are running Lion currently (are you?)?
At this point it's academic; the laptop is gone... but if I did something wrong I'd definitely like to know :).
Ah, no, I figured it out. You can make Lion re-appear in your Purchase tab by option-clicking on the Purchase tab icon. I did that some time ago and now Lion is permanently visible for me.
Who thinks of something like that? If you do something stupid like that, at least support should know about it. For shame Apple, for shame! m(
I remember already being annoyed about that some time ago.
A bit of toothpaste diluted with water, and a gentle fingertip, may take that scratch out of your Leopard disc. Do less than you think is necessary, then stop and assess.
In part, it seems some people "have the touch" for such work. I've fixed up a few abused (by others) music CD's this way.
What I've done in the past is spin the disk on a drill, and drop a very tiny amount of superglue onto the surface. The super glue spreads out like a disk, and fills in any scratches leaving a nice even surface.
Eh, you bought a working Leopard system, you messed with it (removed the OS and installed an unsupported alternative), you broke the original media sometime over the next 4 years, and you didn't make a backup, and chose not to use any other backup copy, of which there are many millions floating around the world. It's not all Apple's fault here.
I have an old, 2008 Macbook (not Pro) 4,1. The old white plastic kind. Lion performs atrociously (at best) on it, so around half a year ago I installed Linux on it. Recently, I got around to buying a new laptop (a Lenovo), and wanted to restore OSX on the old Macbook in order to give it to family.
I figured off the bat I'd do a clean install of Mountain Lion. I have old Leopard installation media, but that's a dead upgrade path: you can't buy Snow Leopard media anymore, so you cannot upgrade it. Apple don't sell physical media for Mountain Lion either, so I went to a friend's house, logged into the Mac App store, purchased and downloaded Mountain Lion.
When I got home, the installer (which took an hour or so to image onto a USB stick) didn't work. I figured it might be balking on the HDD being Linux, so dd'd it. Nope. It turns out Mountain Lion is incompatible with my hardware.
This is where the vortex begins. I returned to my friend, and tried to get the Lion installer off the App Store (on my account), which I had previously purchased. No dice. Apple have removed Lion now that Mountain Lion is out.
I tried to install the copy of Snow Leopard my friend had. Not possible. As OEM media, it's got (very basic, admittedly) DRM onboard which restricts the installation to his hardware.
I tried to get the copy of Snow Leopard I had originally installed, when my previous employer had (kindly) purchased a stack of us personal copies alongside upgrades for work machines. Nope; they'd stopped using Macs and those were gone.
Being frustrated, I figured I'd install Leopard on the laptop and be done with it. Nope. The disc, it turns out, is scratched.
At this stage, I called Apple. I asked what I could do. I was advised I could purchase a physical copy of Lion off them, if I paid full price -- despite already having purchased it on the App Store. Frustrated, but at this stage just wanting to be rid of the device, I agreed. It turns out this was also not possible. Apple's support is in Australia, and NZ can't get the physical media (at least, I believe this to be the case; I may have conflated the issue on the phone with needing to get the media within a week).
The next day, I took the laptop to a Yoobee store (our Apple store equivalent). They told me they'd have to ship the laptop to the support centre to fix it.
So, to recap: I can't install Mountain Lion, because my hardware is too old. I can't get physical media for Snow Leopard or Lion, because Apple no longer sell it. I can't retrieve a copy of Lion from the app store and create my own, because Apple has removed it. I can't install Leopard, because my media is damaged (not Apple's fault) -- but even if I could, it's unsupported and with no physical media, there's no upgrade path. The only solution was to pay to ship the laptop off to a support centre. Ultimately, I was very lucky to find another friend on IRC who still had a Lion USB stick he'd imaged earlier, but the fact I needed to do this is... well, awful.
This is a _terrible_ customer support situation. I'll admit it's compounded by the fact I'm in New Zealand, and we have no Apple stores (fair enough: our entire population is less than several US cities), so support is harder to come by. I'll admit that, having installed Linux, I'm probably in somewhat of a minority. However, Apple's forced hardware deprecation, and removal of physical media, have made it almost literally impossible to restore a working copy of OSX on their own hardware.