Firmware Updates Improve Thunderbolt Support, Recovery

Apple issued updates to firmware for MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros and the Mac mini this week. Firmware is a term used to describe small applications and data stored on chips in a Mac, as opposed to hard drives or memory. Firmware that comes with a Mac can be updated by Apple to fix bugs and add features. See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1471.
These new updates include improvements to how the new Thunderbolt port can be used with external displays, as well as in target disk mode — a way to access your Mac as a hard drive from another Mac with the Thunderbolt connector.
In addition, the updates provide more support for recovery in case of a hard drive failure. Newer Macs with Lion can recover and even re-install Lion with an Internet connection thanks to a special recovery partition and software in firmware. This way Lion can be restored without needing an optical drive or other storage device with a Lion installer. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 for details.