Apple announced earlier this month that the next version of Mac OS X, Lion, will not be available on physical media in favor of electronic distribution on the App Store. This is just fine for end users and families with several Macs, but was not an acceptable strategy if you need to upgrade many dozens of computers. It was recently announced that such customers will be able to buy volume licenses from the App Store, and deploy the upgrade to many computers the just as has been done before.
NetInstall is one solution for automating these upgrades and has been a part of Mac OS X Server since Leopard. You can also use Apple Remote Desktop to push the downloaded package from the App Store to as many clients as you wish. Lion will install in place, and does not require that you boot from an external disk, further simplifying the process.
As Lion will be available only through the App Store, and the App Store requires Snow Leopard, you’ll need to upgrade yourself to Snow Leopard while supply remains available. Once Snow Leopard is gone, it’s gone, and you will likely not be able to upgrade yourself from Leopard or Tiger.
I went ahead and created a special for Tech Tails readers to save $30 off Apple Remote Desktop for the next week. It should be noted that any computer purchase from now until the Lion release is entitled to a free copy of the new operating system through Apple’s Mac OS Up-To-Date Program so there’s no cause for delay if you’re looking at a new Mac.