Lion installer now delivers OS X 10.7.1

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 24 August 2011 09:31

Business IT - Technology

It wasn't clear whether Apple would keep the OS X Lion installer up to date on the Mac App Store, or if we'd need to apply any subsequent updates. Now we know.

Apple has updated the Lion installer on the Mac App Store to version 10.7.1. How good a thing this is depends on your perspective.

For those downloading Lion for the first time, it is clearly more convenient. One of the big advantages of online distribution is that it makes it easier to provide the current version at all times, saving customers from the chore of applying patches.

That also applies to those who manage multiple Macs, especially at smaller sites that can't justify the use of remote management tools and where a 'standard image' isn't appropriate. If you were in the habit of carrying around a Mac OS X installer DVD plus a copy of the latest combo update, using the most recent Lion installer on a DVD or thumb drive is even simpler.

But don't think you must download the installer each time Lion is updated - keeping an existing installation current with Software Updates or individual updaters is still the way to go for most people as it is quicker and uses less of your download quota. Downloading the latest installer is for those who need the easiest and quickest route to a fresh and current Lion installation.

So what's the downside? The main problem is that only the latest version is available. So if you encounter a serious compatibility issue that would stop you working after an update, you can't get out of it by downloading Lion 10.7.n-1 and installing that. If you didn't keep a copy of an earlier installer, you're stuck. (The Lion installer deletes itself after use, so you need to either squirrel away a copy before installation, or look inside it with the Finder's Show Package Contents command and transfer the contents of the Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg image to a DVD or thumb drive.)

Page 2: are you a cloner?