OS X Mountain Lion to Be True Mac App Store Exclusive

Sucks for people who don't have fast internet access....

This is a bad move by Apple. There are a lot of people who live out in rural areas where high speed internet access are not available. We can't download OSX. This is the end of the road for us. I upgraded my son's computer to OSX Lion because I could get it on the USB thumbdrive. I paid the extra ($69 total) to get it on the thumb drive. Downloading it is just not feasible. Apple is alienating many users this way.

Apple is alienating many users this way.

How "many" ? I'm willing to bet that the actual numbers are miniscule.

At nearly 3 times the price, no wonder no one was interested in getting the USB stick. Sigh. I don't want to redownload an OS every time I need to format.

I think people would have been more interested if it had been priced appropriately. I didn't take much work for me to find the proper dmg in the app store download and put it on a thumb drive myself. The issue was never that people didn't have broadband - it was that they wanted a backup of the OS installer they could restore from.

Wrong. A lot of people out in rural areas do not have broadband of a speed sufficient to make downloading OSX feasible. The world is not yet interconnected at high speeds. It is attitudes like yours that creates the digital divide. Reality check, please.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10454133-94.html

Actually there are still quite a few living in rural areas who cannot get affordable broadband. There is always sattelite, which is what I used to use when I lived in a Rural area. But it was over $1,200 to install, $75 a month for 512kbps connection, and limited to 5GB per month. Eventually 3G came available so that became our ISP. So it's still not a decent solution for downloading Lion / Mountain Lion. Though, admittedly, if I were in that situation, I'd probably go to somewhere with an access point. Nearest place was 30 minutes away but everything was 30 minutes away. No biggie. Just go get a coffee and download Lion.

I also think it's unfair to tell these people to 'move'. Don't knock it till you try it! It's awfully nice living in a place where you don't lock your doors and you can leave your keys in your ignition, where you don't have the sound of cars driving by... there's a lot of great reasons to live in a rural area. And there is more to life than internet!

You got that right there are a lot of people who have slow internet. Everyone who says just move is a child who doesn't have a mortgage or any bills. Or a snooty jerk.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10454133-94.html

Actually there are still quite a few living in rural areas who cannot get affordable broadband. There is always sattelite, which is what I used to use when I lived in a Rural area. But it was over $1,200 to install, $75 a month for 512kbps connection, and limited to 5GB per month. Eventually 3G came available so that became our ISP. So it's still not a decent solution for downloading Lion / Mountain Lion. Though, admittedly, if I were in that situation, I'd probably go to somewhere with an access point. Nearest place was 30 minutes away but everything was 30 minutes away. No biggie. Just go get a coffee and download Lion.

I also think it's unfair to tell these people to 'move'. Don't knock it till you try it! It's awfully nice living in a place where you don't lock your doors and you can leave your keys in your ignition, where you don't have the sound of cars driving by... there's a lot of great reasons to live in a rural area. And there is more to life than internet!

I think people would have been more interested if it had been priced appropriately. I didn't take much work for me to find the proper dmg in the app store download and put it on a thumb drive myself. The issue was never that people didn't have broadband - it was that they wanted a backup of the OS installer they could restore from.

Wrong. A lot of people out in rural areas do not have broadband of a speed sufficient to make downloading OSX feasible. The world is not yet interconnected at high speeds. It is attitudes like yours that creates the digital divide. Reality check, please.

A Government survey reveals that 40 percent of United States residents have no broadband access and 30 percent have no Internet access at all.

Hum, with a 12 month update cycle like iOS, I would not be surprised if this and future updates are under $10.