One of the biggest worries when Apple announced Lion would pounce onto our Macs without an actual disc was, well, that there was no disc. What if, what if, what if. Most of us have experienced at least one bad OS install in our lives, or at least a moment when you needed the original OS disc to make something work that was no longer working. Having that disc felt like a little shiny life preserver, a digital age security blanket. 

It was bad enough Apple going to kill our collection of new OS box art, but to make us install without a safety net just seemed mean. Well, fear not, because Cupertino has your back. Kind of.

See, the new Mac safety net is built right into OS X Lion and is called, wait for it, Lion Recovery. According to Apple's product page, "Lion Recovery lets you repair disks or reinstall OS X Lion without the need for a physical install disc." So there; no worries. And, just in case you needed a little double speak to make sure you are feeling OK about this, the site goes on with "Since Lion Recovery is built into your Mac, it’s always there when you need it. Even if you don’t need it, it’s good to know it’s there." Finally, Apple reminds us that the biggest problem with having a silly old disc was, of course, all the time you spent trying to find it: "And you don’t have to search through original packaging to find install DVDs to get your Mac back up and running."

All you need to do to leverage the power of Lion Recovery is hold down Command-R during startup and then you get to choose from common utilities: Disk Utility to check or repair your hard drive, erase your hard drive and reinstall a fresh copy of Lion, or restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup. Safari will be available in this mode to get help from Apple Support online; in fact, if Lion Recovery encounters problems, it will automatically connect to Apple over the Internet.

You know what is cooler than Lion Recovery? When Lion Recovery springs into action before you even try to remember Command-R. If your hard drive fails or something equally catastrophic, a little something called Internet Recovery takes over for you. It reaches out to Apple servers and automatically downloads and starts Lion Recovery over a broadband Internet connection, giving your barely breathing Mac the same Lion Recovery life support features online. Only, you will have to pony up for a new Mac mini or MacBook Air if you want this level of awesome, as only newly-released Macs get Internet Recovery built in. As if you needed another reason to drool over those devices.

For more information about Lion Recovery, go here.