Apple recently issued a MacBook Pro EFI firmware update to improve compatibility between the MacBook Pro and Apple’s Thunderbolt Display, but included another nice trick in the bag – adding Lion Internet Recovery to Thunderbolt-enabled MacBook Pros!
From the firmware update’s release notes:
This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection and includes fixes that resolve issues with Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance on MacBook Pro (early 2011) models.
Internet Recovery made it’s debut on the 2011 MacBook Airs and Mac Minis as a way to restore Mac OS X Lion on blank hard drives, perhaps following a hard drive failure or upgrade. This works by creating a miniature bootable Lion install right on your Mac’s firmware that can be used to install lion over the internet.
Although the Internet Recovery feature was initially only available on the 2011 MacBook Air and Mac mini models, this new firmware update finally extends the capability to Apple’s Thunderbolt-enabled MacBook Pro released back in February.