How to create custom Mountain Lion Installer

Is it possible to create custom image of the Mountain Lion with the certain third party applications (Chrome , Adium , Firefox) pre-installed with the operating system. This will not require me to separately download and install these software. This should be similar to installation of the iLife along with the OS installation from the DVDs which came with Macbooks.

Solution 1:

Since hacking the actual install process is quite painful in terms of time and knowledge required, most people image rather than do the work to change the actual OS installer.

For this, you will want to use a packaging / deployment tool if you do this professionally. Here are three in terms of decreasing cost (and total functionality):

• JAMF's Casper Suite
• OS X Server's NetInstall
• DeployStudio

You can also, just use Disk Utility or another tool to clone a drive and remove the parts you don't want on the standard image. There are lots of tools and ways to accomplish your basic task, so choosing a workflow often depends on what else you need and how often you will be imaging. If you want a linux based NetBoot appliance, this appliance might be a good place to start.

Solution 2:

You could do a clean install of OSX on a drive, install your base software, and set up any user accounts you use by standard (or just one "admin" account). Then use a tool like Disk Utility to copy that install over to a USB drive as a DMG file (in disk utility you use the backup/restore tool).

Or you can just install the OS on that thumb drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone it to any systems you need it on.

Naturally you would need to follow all the terms of the EULA and not install this on anyone's machine who asks.