Apple announces Remote Disc to wirelessly install software on MacBook Air

Wondering how you were gonna install all your software on that forthcoming optical drive-deprived MacBook Air? Enter Remote Disc, which essentially enables users to "borrow" the optical drive of another machine on the wireless network and pass along the data sans wires. Notably, hosts can be Macs or PCs, meaning that even a household Wintel rig can be used to beam OS X applications to your shiny new MBA. No word on where the "special software" for the host machines will come from, but here's to hoping it's boxed right in from the start.

[GHynson @ Feb 12th 2008 3:08AM]

So what happens when you lose the HDD?
Since new HDD's have no boot loader or partitions,
How's the system know where the installation files are?
Is this done through some BIOS magic?
I've used ghost server to multicast recovery images over networks,
even then I had to add a ghost boot partition to the blank drives
inorder for the system to find the OS files.
(That was done with a floppy or a CD.)

[hipnado @ Jan 15th 2008 1:54PM]

The software comes on the OS X install disc in the Macbook Air box.

[looseinthedeuce @ Jan 15th 2008 1:58PM]

How exactly do you reload the OS without an optical drive? Am I the only one that doesn't see this as a practical laptop?

[Andrew @ Jan 15th 2008 2:02PM]

The optical drive in my HP laptop broke a few months ago. I'm running Vista/Linux/OSX on triple boot. The only thing I would have used the optical drive for is installing the os's, but instead I adapted and booted from usb drives. I, for one, am very willing to get rid of my optical drive, and I think in the near future, you'll see there's no point in having one. Very innovative on Apple's part.

[System48 @ Jan 15th 2008 2:04PM]

Well if you have to reload OSX, you simply go to the Apple store, buy the $99 USB drive, wait 5-7 business days for it to arrive. Connect it to the single USB port and hold down "C" while booting. See that wasn't so hard now was it.

[pkc @ Jan 15th 2008 2:52PM]

what about games that require you to have the disc in the drive to play it?

[ethana2 @ Jan 15th 2008 4:26PM]

He's not using the apple BIOS. He just said he has a triple boot hackintosh. If it's pretty recent it should have a boot from USB option..

[MattyG @ Jan 15th 2008 4:52PM]

i don't remember the last time i had to reinstall my os, on several desktop machines so why would you need to do that on a laptop is beyond me

[zoara @ Jan 15th 2008 7:27PM]

Did you read *any* of the article you commented on? It answers the exact question you are asking.

[Indeed @ Jan 15th 2008 2:13PM]

Huh... I must be missing something here.
Is this just sharing an optical drive in your network?

[nathan @ Jan 15th 2008 2:19PM]

Exactly. This is nothing new at all. Mounting a drive as a network share... I did this in Windows 95.

[fh @ Jan 15th 2008 2:23PM]

Yep, Apple's just rebranding iSCSI.

As for reinstalling OS X, I imagine that Remote Disc will cache the entire install DVD into the MBA's hdd before initiating the process (similar to Windows), hence you won't be required to purchase the $99 optical drive in order to do so.

[Falsoman @ Jan 15th 2008 2:21PM]

Well, i would belive that you can use an external drive like i do with my old broken laptop to reinstall software... just booting from the usb... that's easy enough.

If you are paranoid you could always make an on the fly partition on the internal drive of the mac and make it bootable with leopard's install disk. So you don't have ever to look for an external drive to format the computer.

Then again, i like the design but i hate the fact that it only has 1 USB port and no firewire... so i think i'll have to look to the other models for my laptop needs.

[Morgan @ Jan 15th 2008 2:20PM]

Can somebody explain to me how this is any different to the default share that is automatically on drives (including optical drives) on Windows systems since Windows 95? I have been doing this for years.

[kizane @ Jan 15th 2008 2:30PM]

Nothing... see above... Maybe it's just some software program that does the work for you so any tard can do it without issues.

[Jonathan Bruck @ Jan 15th 2008 2:24PM]

This is the one of the coolest parts of the keynote. For troubleshooting, you're supposed to boot off the DVD. Now maybe you can boot off a wireless connection.

[looseinthedeuce @ Jan 15th 2008 2:28PM]

Unless the Intel Macs are different than the G4 and G5 Macs, you cannot boot from anything but an internal or firewire drive...from my experience.

[Joey Schenning @ Jan 15th 2008 3:46PM]

The Intel Macs have been updated so that they can boot from USB drives as well. It's a wonderful feature that my iBook will never be able to use... D:

[kizane @ Jan 15th 2008 2:34PM]

I don't see why you'd need a $99 USB drive. Why not take an external IDE case and hook an optical drive up to it. Even if you have to buy an optical drive and external case or one of those IDE/SATA to USB adaptors, still only like half the price.

[phlippy22 @ Jan 15th 2008 2:44PM]

You don't need a $99 USB external Superdrive, but half of the Apple store walkup market does, when it's upsold to them.

[EMoShunz @ Jan 15th 2008 2:36PM]

great. but ya, mapping drives, even changing the 'My Documents' in windows is actually easier and more intuitive in windows...sadly, because it's not really that intuitive.

[Brad @ Jan 15th 2008 2:45PM]

Wait a minute folks.

This is called network file sharing and it's been around forever. Every version of Windows and Linux for a while has been able to do this. This should be an inherent ability of the OSX, not some "new software tool to "borrow"" drives.

Click on optical drive, share it.
On the drive-less laptop, access the now-shared optical drive and map or /mnt it to your own drive. Ta-da.

Unless I've missed something bigtime (and please correct me if I'm wrong), it's just more of Apple's "sell-you-something-old-as-new" tactics. How about we call them out for it when it's appropriate, instead of feed the fire...

[Matt @ Jan 15th 2008 4:15PM]

As an earlier poster pointed out, it sounds more like iSCSI. I wouldn't be too surprised if it actually IS iSCSI.

[Brad @ Jan 15th 2008 4:37PM]

Interesting - whether it's more similar to iSCSI or just a typical network file share, I'm sad to see somewhere like engadget "drink Apple's kool-aid." I expect the mainstream or drive-by media to get excited about "special software to 'borrow' another computer's CD-ROM drive," but not somewhere that claims to be a technologically savvy site like Engadget. I'd hate to think that Engadget is so easily sold on re-branding of old technology by Apple's marketing machine.

[tony @ Jan 15th 2008 8:16PM]

It's not really "selling" or even "upselling" something new since they're making it an included feature on any of the laptops, same as Windows. BUT, it is kinda funny that they're calling it something new. If it's easy to use, it's definitely a good marketing tool and even a good feature (easef use is part of owning a Mac). I agree with you it is kinda cheap on their part, though.

[TurboFool @ Jan 15th 2008 2:52PM]

Now can this be done from a Boot Camped installation of Windows, and does it work with bootable discs?

[sam @ Jan 15th 2008 4:00PM]

I do wonder about the speed of transfer though

[retro77 @ Jan 15th 2008 3:56PM]

Should we applaud Apple for figuring out how to share drives accross a network? I would still rather have a drive connected internally or via USB or Firewire.

[Thomas Gill @ Jan 15th 2008 4:10PM]

In the walkthrough video on the website it says you can reinstall the OS over the network. I assume that the MBA now has the ability to boot over the network to optical drives shared in whatever form Apple is doing it. I'll even bet that unless an external optical drive is connected, holding 'c' at boot up will search the network for a drive. I'm just hoping that they release this seperately for those who have CD-ROM drives only built in (like school iMac G5s, Intel iMacs, and eMacs.)

TEG

[ethana2 @ Jan 15th 2008 4:30PM]

Ha. Installing software from disks? That's funny...
Been a while.
The OS maybe, but really.

I love synaptic.

[dimmy @ Jan 15th 2008 4:30PM]

Nothing new. HP's MediaSmart Windows Home Server already has that "Remote Disc" feature.

[Joe P @ Jan 16th 2008 3:15AM]

Certainly there is plenty of software online, but I too am wondering how you're supposed to run games that require the disk be in the drive. Then again I highly doubt this is any sort of gaming machine so that probably won't be too much of a problem.

[John @ Jan 16th 2008 5:46AM]

lol exactly, it isn't that much of a gaming machine, although the X3100 isn't THAT bad.. Its certainly the best offering from Intel in terms of on-board chips, and with 2GB of RAM, there's loads of games it can play handsomely..

I'd use a Crack for games that would require CDs.. Cracks are legal if you own the game, so this would be the perfect time to use them lol.

This remote feature is nothing new here, except its boot from remote disc feature, which is an intelligent addition, especially for idiots who probably didn't even know OS X already did it..

I wonder now though, does this mean we could mount Blu Ray disks in Blu Ray drives and have it "remote disked" to the MBA then? That would be jawesome! Obviously videos wouldn't work, but data Blu-Ray disks would be very useful if readable..

[foobar @ Jan 17th 2008 6:29AM]

File system sharing (Windows shares, UNIX NFS and similar) are one thing storage device sharing at the lower level (mostly iSCSI these days, if you want to use standard networking) are another. I suspect the solution may well involve iSCSI. None of this is really new.

But there's third thing, and that's the capability to boot from the network. This capability has been around for like two decades on UNIX workstations, and around one decade even on well-equipped networked PCs, not limited to servers.

In PC world, de facto standard in this segment is Preboot Execution Environment, or PXE. When a machine is configured to attempt booting from the network, it attempts to acquire IP address and boot configuration information from a DHCP server. After this, it loads specified boot loader from a TFTP server. This is pretty much like any boot loader loading from the disk, but in this case, the boot loader has also an vendor-independent interface to the network through PXE interface. Whatever the boot loader does after this depends really on boot loader writers' imagination. All of this is very useful when you understand it properly; for instance, I have a system that reinstalls 80 Unix desktop machines from scratch with one short command.

What remains to be seen is if Apple has adopted PXE, or brewed its own "standard" for this purpose.