> Bootable DVD though? Really?

In light of recent events involving the NSA and leaked documents, yes. A bootable DVD. Really.

For some heavy-duty discussion on the withertos and wherefores, take a quick gander at a recent thread, over here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532642

Remember that part where GCHQ stormed the offices of The Guardian, and took an angle grinder to one of their laptops?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-fil...

Still, why not just use a USB drive? DVDs are painfully slow compared to flash drives.

In light of the recent NSA revelations, I'd want to use Linux, not Mac, for an ephemeral offline OS.

Of course, Schneider uses Windows, so to each his own.

Offline means nothing in a world where NSA slides reference jumping airgaps with hardware backdoors.

How exactly will their hardware backdoor transmit its secrets back to the NSA? By sneaking out your apartment backdoor?

As of Mountain Lion, the recovery partition doesn't contain the full OS. Just enough to bootstrap and download the whole thing from Apple. They also do not sell the update on physical media (thumb drives, DVDs, etc.) in store.