New Macbook Airs and Pros (forked image?)

Build 11E53 is the one I have currently installed on my MacBook Pro mid 2011 model, and is the last unified version before this got forked, so no, that won't be the one that would work with the new models. I can't say if it would NetBoot or not, but it most likely won't boot up from it. You won't be able to download the specific build for the new Macs unless you actually have one in your hands.
The link Greg posted suggests that the Mac App Store figures out the Mac model you have and let's you download the appropriate one. Otherwise, I assume the standard Lion install on the MAS is just the same build as what was released with 10.7.4 Combo.

10.7.4 11E53 will not netboot the new 13" MBP's.

I'm going to try adding MacBookProMid2012SoftwareUpd1.0.pkg to a 10.7.4 11E53 build and see what happens.

@caspersally Greg Neagle provided this nugget on that same thread:

http://afp548.com/2011/08/11/downloading-hardware-specific-lion-installers/

HTH

Don

10.7.5 is rumoured to be seeded soon http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1389795

I just imaged a new 13" Pro with a 10.7.4 11E53 image. In the configuration I added MacBookProMid2012SoftwareUpd1.0.pkg (after the image of course). The MBP started to boot, but is now stuck in some kind of a loop. This appears to have failed.

I'm not surprised. Seems to me its the new build that's needed for these guys to boot, not just that software update. It was worth a try though - would have been nice if that worked, but it almost would have been too easy :)

My Macbook Air 2012 came with 11E2705.

My big questions is whether or not 10.8 will bring the loads back together.

P.>S This is a rhetorical statement. We're all under NDA here.

Can't imagine 10.8 wouldn't unify the builds again. My question, or really concern, is that Apple may just decide to not release a 10.7.5 update and just go with 10.8 as the "unified" build. which would cause some serious issues for us. We're not ready to start supporting 10.8 just yet, and probably won't be ready for several months as we test it and wait for a couple of point revs. We all know that stuff is usually broken in the x.x.0 release. Y'know, that pesky, boring enterprise stuff like AD binding, mounting shares, etc.

I think the real question is what is Apple's motive behind the split images? one would think that all the laptop models could have a single image at this point and why not everything? since all of the MBP have been updated as of last week, there was no reason to not have a unified image. they are shipping 3 different 10.7.4 images out of the factory for MacBook Air/Pro, plus i would assume they also have separate images for iMac, mini and Pro workstations, since i do not get those models from the CSS team I don't know specifically if their images updated last week or not, i would guess not though. Is apple yet again trying to make the life of an Enterprise support person more difficult by making the installer be very hardware specific thus eliminating the monolithic image option for enterprise and schools? Because i am sure we all have the bandwidth and time to download the specific image we need from the app store. It worries me that the old tried and true method of installing to your newest computer and grabbing and image or using instadmg are going to start having weird errors on a different piece of hardware.

10.7.5 has been seeded.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/19/apple-seeds-os-x-10-7-5-build-11g15-to-developers/

thanks for posting bentoms!

That's good news. Thanks for the heads up.