| Sigh. At the risk of exacerbating this, I'll reply once more. Please read the dialogues you posted carefully: "To download and restore Mac OS X, your computer's eligibility will be verified with Apple." You are re-downloading from Apple and thus restoring this new image. I'm not too surprised Apple wants to do a check at this point, just to make sure it's not giving out free, unauthorized copies to whomever may be asking. Also this requires an Internet connection because, well, you're downloading the image again. Using the local media on your computer, say from an installation DVD for instance, you can install the seeds without restoring and without re-downloading. In fact you can even update the seeds with Software Update which does not require an Apple ID. You're right that if you re-download the image you will have to verify the download, similarly when you go to grab the image off the dev site you have to login. However I'm not sure I agree this is comparable to other activation schemes. But for the sake of argument, let's just say it is. The bottom line is I don't think most people want to re-download the image when they're doing an install. I certainly didn't. I just installed from my local media. At the time, the machine I was using was disconnected from the Internet completely and I opted out of providing my Apple ID during set up. The result was that I was able install the Lion seeds and was never at any point required to provide credentials that verified my status as a holder of a developer account. |