Apple offer a .dmg that's wrapped up in a self-deleting installer, that's designed to be run from the HDD.
The self-deleting thing is a slight nuisance if you're intent on multiple installs, but thankfully not the end of the world if you've got 5 seconds to spare with Google.

Can you not copy the installer onto a USB stick and copy it to new Macs? That doesn't sound very hard...

Apple is moving to a more digital era. Like it or not.
I know that's not really pisses you off as Linux has done this for years. Your problem is iTunes accounts and App Stores, though I'm not entirely sure why...

but i would have to remove from this download the install file and burn it
its not a direct burn such as an .iso file
i direct you to BigD post , even he failed for the first downloaded DMG
and had to re-download ...
ho hum ...

then make available a DMG.iso, they are in existence
or is it beyond an app store or apples abilities account ...

didnt read the instructions
and this from a very hard core user of IT ...

yet DVDs of lion are available with any new system
ho hum ...

I know, school boy error if you ask me.

maybe but not all of us are school boys ...

Let's face it, the vast majority of people do not have more than one PC. So they don't need to take the OS Install from one PC to another. That's a complete non-issue. And the majority of Mac people are not tinkerers. If the disk in their mac blows up to the point where the recovery partition can't fix it, they're not going to try to source a hard disk themselves and take the thing apart to try and install anew one - they're going to take their mac to an apple store and get it repaired. This is patently true for the vast majority of Apple users. If they'd wanted to tinker, they wouldn't have bought a Mac in the first place. The whole point of a Mac is you pay a premium not to have to do any of that stuff.

The Lion install is pretty much as simple as an OS install could possibly be. You download something from an official store, it runs, you click the ONE BUTTON there is to click and about half an hour later you've got a shiny new OS with all your data and such intact.

This is the experience the overwhelming majority of Mac users want. They don't know an .ISO from a poke in the eye. They don't want a live CD that is dog slow and they can't save anything to so they can' 'try out' the OS. They don't want to have to make technical choices or answer questions they don't understand. They don't know or care about any of that and it'll be a very rare occasion that they'll need to. The idea that Apple should introduce complexity to the process which 99% of their customers do not need or want for the benefit of the 1% who do, who are also all techy enough to figure it out themselves anyway and don't mind doing it at all as long as they don't have a monumental axe to grind, is a fatuous notion.

If you buy a ford fiesta, you don't get variable traction control or the ability to change the suspension stiffness from the cockpit. Why? Because the market of people who buy ford fiestas don't need those features, don't want those features and in all but a very tiny number of cases, wouldn't use them if they were there.

Apple are catering to what their customers want. If you want to argue they are wrong, you can do it when you're in a company with $50billion in the bank.

Jon

i have 5 apples systems and require an app account for this download
no chance on this planet do i have or will allow an account for 5 systems to download from

apple better do better ...

Our family has 4 Apple systems and the download has taken over 7 hours to complete. I'm not doing that another 2 times.

I use 1 Apple system, but the other 3 are in the same house, clogging up the same line when upgrading them all.

That said, the making the DMG into a bootable DVD was a doddle, for all intents and purposes, it is identical to burning an ISO.

I think the point is more about online purchasing and traceability, more than anything else.

My iTunes account isn't linked to a credit card, luckily, here in Germany, we have the option to link it to a bank account, so no pesky cards - a majority of the population still don't have credit cards.

My problem was, I started the update in the evening, completed it between showering and getting ready for work, then finally had time to read the instructions on burning a DVD...

how do i lock an app account for 4 systems and use it only for the one system
which ...

just let me buy a DVD
currently available with all new apple systems ...

I'm not sure I follow what you're asking in the first part, but the fact is that you can set up a single app store account, purchase your copy of Lion on one machine, dig out the .dmg and install it on your other Macs.
Or, if you feel like waiting forever and eating a ton of bandwidth and data, you can then sign in to your app store account on the other machines, and download Lion for a second, third, fourth, etc. time without being charged a second, third or fourth, etc. time.
Then I'd imagine you just sign out of the account on each machine when you're done. Even if you don't sign out, you'll still be prompted for your password before any purchases can be made.

Nobody on this forum is a typical mac user. They don't hang around on Internet forums. Just because people on here have more than one computer doesn't mean enough people do that it's worth Apples effort and cost to cater for them. It isn't, or they would have.
The whole 'I need to make a boot disk' whine is the worst sort of nerdrage and utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Pandering to that is the same logic that told people 'snakes on a plane' would be a massive cinematic success.

We're not the people Apple care about any more. They're not interested in catering to our requirements. Get over it.

To be honest, I don't think anyone's "whining" about it, just asking for the correct way to create a bootable installer DVD, that's all. Some people are on an ISP monthly download limit, so it makes good sense not to "waste" that on downloading the installer multiple times when you can create a master disc to update all your household's Macs. I know a number of people that own more than one Mac, so I don't personally think it's that out of the ordinary.

Speaking as a legacy customer still on PowerPC Macs (yep, there are still some of us left!), I'm all too aware that "We're not the people Apple care about any more." I have got over it... many, many times!