Following up on retail availability, Apple has made the USB release of OS X Lion available on its online store. The stick costs $69, as opposed to the normal Mac App Store price of $30, but provides a physical backup and allows a person to install or reinstall Lion without having an Internet connection handy. Shipping times are currently sitting at 1 to 3 business days.
The drive has two key requirements. Aside from an existing Snow Leopard install, an upgrading Mac must have 7GB of disk space free. Apple also warns that if a person wants to reinstall the USB version of Lion, the stick becomes mandatory; the software can’t be reinstalled through Lion Recovery, which redownloads the OS if a person bought it through the Mac App Store.
