I think the reason we haven't heard many complaints about the doing away of physical media is exactly this. As long as power users can make their own offline media, there's nothing to complain about.

A bootable Mac OS X thumb drive comes in handy when you need to troubleshoot OS issues for yourself, your family, or your friends. It’s also extremely useful for keeping your basic setup consistent ...

It's easy to make boot disks on old Macs for older hardware, but as the years have gone on, it's gotten a little more difficult. Here's how to make classic Mac OS 9 and early Mac OS X boot media on ...

How to create an OS X multiboot USB install drive Your email has been sent In an ideal world, sysadmins everywhere would only need to manage one or two operating systems–one desktop, one server–and ...