Apple may let you download Lion in minutes at Retail Stores

As rumblings of the launch of OS X Lion get ever louder, we’re getting more information about the supposed rollout of Apple’s next operating system. Yesterday came the news that the Golden Master version of OS X 10.7 may be being shipped out to stores on hard drives for an overnight install on store computers.

Now, 9to5Mac is reporting that Apple is shipping out Mac Pro workstations loaded with a cached version of OS X Lion that visitors to Apple’s Retail Stores will be able to download directly to their computers in minutes, instead of doing it over their own internet connections.

This makes a lot of sense, as Apple Retail Stores would have to have a way to install OS X Lion on customer’s computers cleanly and easily, and they wouldn’t want to promote something like a disc or USB drive that wasn’t easily available to the customer. This way, a Genius will be able to assist someone in installing OS X Lion by launching the Mac App Store, but instead of it pulling from Apple’s servers, it will pull from the store’s server.

This will make sure that customers are seeing it happen as it would at home, keeping the experience identical, but enabling the employees to grab it incredibly quickly, speeding up the process. There is no word on how this installation would take place, but 9to5Mac is hearing that there are in fact three different versions of OS X Lion showing up at stores. These include a normal version, a ‘pro’ (server?) version and an edition for JointVenture small business customers.

The JointVenture edition might also contain new applications for those customers.

OS X Lion has not been officially announced for launch tomorrow, but many signs are pointing to an early morning announcement and availability.