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OS X Mountain Lion
By Anca Gagiuc on Jul 27, 2012 in Technology
Two majestic felines were spotted this week: a wild mountain lion on the UC Berkeley campus, and the OS X Mountain Lion, the new feline addition to the Mac family. In the case of the first lion, authorities advise not hiking alone, and if the animal is encountered, stand your ground and try to appear large by raising your hands. In the event of an attack, be aggressive and fight back. (To be fair, mountain lion attacks on humans are extremely rare.)
In the case of the OS X Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), we are dealing with a tame and educated feline. At $19.99, its price point is $10 less than the previous Lion version. OS X Mountain Lion doesn’t want to eat you for lunch, but to make your life easier and your compatible Mac devices more seamless and communicative.
A central octet that’s improved in this version is the Messages/Safari Browsing/Game Center/AirPlay Mirroring/Notification Center/Sharing/Power Nap/Dictation. These features are now able to unify their functionality on all of your devices. Just sign in to iCloud once and it’s all set.
You can now reply to messages received on your iPhone from your Mac because iMessage has landed here also; messages will appear on all your devices, allowing you to start your conversation on your Mac and keep chatting from your iPad or iPhone, having the complete history stored on all devices (including photos and HD videos);
Safari flaunts its unified Search field; the system will return the most relevant results based on bookmarks, browsing history and other data. Users will have the luxury to switch from Mac to iPad, picking up the browser where they left off. Moreover, it saves entire web pages in your Reading List (not just the URLs) and you can catch up on your reading offline also. The multi-touch gesture control has been enhanced too, and scrolling is smooth and fast, allowing the user to visually navigate through the open tabs with the swipe of a finger.
The Game Center appears on Mac just as it does on the mobile device. Combined with the cordless AirPlay Mirroring it gives the option to multiple players to share a game regardless of the device used.
AirPlay Mirroring asks for spectators. What’s on your Mac is on your HD Apple TV – webpages, presentations, photos while AirPlay audio streams the sounds on your Mac to AirPlay-enabled speakers.
At any moment there is something happening in your Mac, email, message, software update, calendar alert. The notification Center keeps you in the loop with little popups in the top right corner of your desktop. Swipe from right to the left of the trackpad and find them all in an ordered list.
Apple has also updated the support for sharing built directly into the system: share from Safari, Notes, Photo Booth and iPhoto. Furthermore, users can authorize programs and apps to access and connect to social media and networks. The relationship with Facebook has been improved through a built-in Facebook support. A great tweeter, OS X Mountain Lion enabled tweeting from the Notification Center, too.
It also works even when not on the job. When Mac goes to sleep it updates its Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Photo Stream, Find My Mac, and Documents in the Cloud. When connected to a power source it updates software and makes backups. In perfect silence, without even blinking.
Give up typing for talking, Dictation is your new secretary. And the more you use it, the better it gets as it learns your voice characteristics. Tip: to use punctuation marks, just say them out loud.
What features of OS X Mountain Lion interest you the most?
