Apple Debuts Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Features

Apple introduced OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion halfway thru Feb to a pleasantly surprised tech media, and several extra features implemented into the update include some stuff straight out of iOS. Though the announcement stunned us, we were expecting Apple to make the two operating systems more alike over a long period of time. Clearly, it’s weird to note the incorporation of certain features in iOS that are excluded from the organization's tougher desktop OS, but that will no longer occur in Mountain Lion.

There’s a lot of new stuff, but we are able to only get so deep in an article like this. For example, Share Sheet allows for system-level sharing between programs, but that is not as interesting as the more tangible stuff we mention below.

The most discussed feature so far appears to be the addition of Messages, the desktop version of the Messages app in iOS, but this OS X version adds Facetime functionality in the app. Of course, the conventional iChat interface is still available, but Apple will clearly concentrate on creating a seamless messaging experience across all of its hardware options. That suggests Apple will probably kill iChat in the future , but that is not going to happen in 10.8 Mountain Lion.

You'll be notified of any inward-bound messages thru the new OS X Notification Center, which seems to funciton exactly like the iOS Notification Center. More importantly, Apple retained the ability to customize your notifications and alerts just the way you’d customize them in iOS.

Game Center also made the jump, but Apple actually needs to enhance both the interface and effectiveness of this feature in both of its operating systems. What’s really great is you can play multiplayer games thru Game Center with iOS users as long as the game is available on both platforms. That's a pretty special feature, but it will really matter when iPad users and Mac users are playing the next Diablo, World of Warcraft or Battlefield together.

iCloud, Contacts and Calendar are hold overs from OS X 10.7 Lion, but Notes and Reminders get thrown into the mix this time. All these applications connect to iCloud to keep your info constantly and automatically synchronized across all of your hardware, and they function about the same as their iOS or Lion counterparts.

AirPlay Mirroring is another feature that made iOS more helpful in many ways (to Apple TV and AirPlay accessory owners) than OS X. The feature mirrors your device’s display and/or sound output through your Apple TV or AirPlay accessory, so you do not have to manually connect anything together to maximise your media or share your display.

We can’t wait for the official release, which sould occur around August or September.

Fausto Mendez is the editor of ReleaseDates.co, a free website and subscription service that updates its readers only about the gadgets and companies they care about.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 at 9:02 pm and is filed under iPhones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.