One key feature of Macs is the ability to do share one computer's drives as if they are external FireWire drives connected to a second computer. This is useful for large file transfers. One of its best uses is of FireWire sharing is installing OS X on a computer with a faulty optical drive. Unfortunately, some newer Macs do not include FireWire.

• How we installed 10.6 Snow Leopard an a MacBook with no DVD drive
• Install Tiger from an iPod
• Installing Mac OS X 10.4 without DVD
• Create a hard-drive based OS X installer