Announced and on sale this past Tuesday, Apple's new
OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive has shipped, and is beginning to be delivered. It is
OS X Lion 10.7 Build 11A511s, and almost identical to the InstallESD.dmg inside the Lion App. Simple DVD/USB creation instructions for this were
published back in June by TUAW.
Until now, a clean 10.7 install required the $29 Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD then the $29 OS X Lion Upgrade App, for a total of $60. The USB drive is $69, and allows users to skip 10.6 altogether. It also allows a complete network-free install of 10.7 without the need for a Mac App Store account.
The OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive will soon be the recommended installation media for custom builds, but we need a bit of time to test it first, and develop a direct method to boot it. Until then, the
xMove + MultiBeast method will work with it. Stay tuned for further development.
-tonymacx86 & MacMan
Related Posts:
OS X Lion Installation USB Drive Now Available
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