Remember when Apple said to drag your Mac into your local Apple Store and piggyback their WiFi to download Lion if you didn’t have high-speed internet? It seemed silly at the time, but we didn’t take into account that Apple might set up dedicated Lion install servers in their retail locations to help with the load. Silly us.
In a report, 9to5Mac says that’s just what is going to happen… and that those servers will be top of the line, fully-specced Mac Pro towers.
Furthermore we’ve heard rumblings that some stores will be receiving maxed out Mac Pro towers to be used as Lion distribution caching centers. Some believe that these stations would allow customers to purchase Lion (3.5GB) from the Mac App store and download it directly from the store server in minutes. This would be a huge help to customers who do not have access to a broadband Internet connection or users who want to walk through the install process with an Apple employee during a personal training session.
It also means that the Apple Store’s internet connection won’t be bogged down by a bunch of customers slowly downloading Lion over WiFi, nor will stores be filled with loiterers waiting for a 4GB download to finish. Instead, it seems they’ll connect to a special WiFi server, which will be able to pump Lion almost instantaneously to connected machines.
Fantastic news for those who don’t have broadband. Well, laptop owners without broadband, that is. If you’ve got an iMac, a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro, things still could get a little awkward.
