The Standard Installation

To do the actual installation, open the App Store program on your Mac. If you don’t see “OS X Lion” advertised right there on the home page, then you can find it by searching for lion. Click the $29.99 button, and then click again when it changes to say Install (Figure A-1).

Enter your Apple ID and password when you’re asked for it, and enjoy a hot mug of your favorite beverage as the download begins. If you have a typical broadband Internet connection, expect to wait about half an hour.

Figure A-1. Enter your Apple ID and password when you’re asked for it, and enjoy a hot mug of your favorite beverage as the download begins. If you have a typical broadband Internet connection, expect to wait about half an hour.

When the download begins, behind the scenes, the App Store puts a 3.8-gigabyte program called Install Mac OS X Lion into your Applications folder.

Tip

If you don’t have a fast Internet connection, or if your Internet provider imposes monthly data limits, you might not be thrilled about the prospect of waiting for a 4-gigabyte download. Fortunately, you have two alternatives.

First, you can take your Mac to an Apple Store and use its free, fast WiFi to download Lion (or a friend’s house, a library, a coffee shop...). Second, you can buy a flash drive with the Lion installer on it for $70 from Apple.

You’ll know when the downloading is over, because the actual installer opens up automatically and presents you with the proud animal shown in Figure A-2.

Your installation adventure is about to begin. You’ve never experienced such a simple operating-system installation. You don’t even have to restart the computer before you start. You have far fewer options and decisions to make.

Figure A-2. Your installation adventure is about to begin. You’ve never experienced such a simple operating-system installation. You don’t even have to restart the computer before you start. You have far fewer options and decisions to make.

The procedure from here:

  1. Click Continue.

    The installer follows a pattern: Read the instructions, make a couple of choices, and then click Continue to advance to the next screen. As you go, the list on the left side of the screen reveals where you are in the overall procedure.

  2. Click Agree to pass the Software License Agreement screen, and then Agree again.

    The Software License Agreement requires you to agree with whatever Apple’s lawyers say.

  3. Choose the disk or partition where you want to install Mac OS X.

    The installer proposes the screamingly obvious hard drive: the main one inside your Mac.

    If you have other drives, you can click Show All Disks to see their icons and choose one. Yellow exclamation-mark icons mean, “You can’t install here,” for one technical reason or another. You can install Lion only onto a blank hard drive, formatted as a Mac drive (technically, Mac OS Extended [Journaled] format), or onto a drive that has Snow Leopard on it.

  4. Click Install. Enter an administrator’s account name and password when you’re asked for it.

    Now you’re in for a 20- to 30-minute wait as the Installer copies software onto your hard drive. (That’s why, if you’re using a laptop and it’s not plugged in, you’ll be encouraged to plug it in.) At one point, it restarts the Mac and carries right on.

Mac OS X 10.7 is now installed on your Mac. Rest assured, it was a far less harrowing experience than previous Mac OS X installations. You’re never asked what kind of installation you want, which language translations or printer drivers you want installed, which optional components you want, and so on.

Still, you’re not quite ready to use Lion yet. See The Setup Assistant on the next page.

Power Users’ Clinic: Reinstalling Lion: Tricks of the Trade

You can install Lion on as many Macs as you own, all for the same $30. To install it on a second Mac, for example, open the App Store. Click the Purchases tab at the top. You’ll see your previous Lion purchase listed there; just click Install to start installing Lion on that Mac.

That’s what most people will do, anyway. Unfortunately, that means downloading the 4-gigabyte installer again for each Mac. That takes a lot of time and eats up a lot of your monthly Internet data allotment.

There is, fortunately, a trick that saves you the trouble of redownloading Lion over and over again: Copy the Install Mac OS X Lion installer program from the first Mac to all your other Macs (over the network or on a flash drive, for example). There’s also a tricky part to this trick: Ordinarily, installing Lion on the first Mac deletes that installer program once it’s finished, to save you the disk space.

The trick to this trick, then, is to copy the installer to another Mac or drive (or at least take it out of your Applications folder) before you install Lion on the first Mac.

There may also be times when you want to install Lion again on the same Mac. But if you visit the App Store, you’ll discover that you’re not allowed to download it again on that machine; the “$29.99” button becomes an unclickable “Installed” button.

To fool the App Store, Option-click the OS X Lion link in the App Store. Or Option-click the Purchases tab at the top of the screen. Or hold down the Option key as you open the App Store program. One of those three tricks should restore the Buy button for Lion so that you can download it again. (You won’t be charged again.)

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