Apple announced the preview to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, just seven months after OS X Lion’s release last July. Here are the new features in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in summary form for quick digestion:
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has a serious looking cat.
Similar to Snow Leopard, the name Mountain Lion suggests it is a fine-tuning release of Lion.
Apple surprised everyone by announcing the preview release without the usual press event. Instead, only selected tech publishers are invited to closed door briefings by Apple.
Apple released a preview of Mountain Lion to its developers as part of the announcement.
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is scheduled to release in late summer 2012.
With OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple is changing to an annual release cycle of OS X, to be on par with its iOS counter part.
Apple started using “OS X” without the “Mac” naming since the release of Lion. But “Mac OS X” is still the title when view from within let say the “About This Mac” screen in Lion. In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple officially drops the “Mac” title from within the operating system.
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will be exclusively available from the App Store. It will not be available in USB stick like in Lion.
iCloud is integrated deeper with Mountain Lion. You will be asked to sign-on with or create new Apple ID during installation. This is similar to the startup of iOS 5.
iCal is renamed to Calendar and Address Book is renamed to Contacts, making apps to have consistent naming in iOS and OS X.
Messages app will replace iChat in Mountain Lion. Messages app supports existing iChat services and iMessage, allows you to message to anyone using iMessages on their iPhone and iPad without the carrier texting charges. Apple released a public Messages beta for existing users to try out Messages before it’s release in Mountain Lion.
Reminders will be moved out from iCal into a standalone Reminders app. The app looks similar to its iOS counterpart and will sync with iCloud, enable you to have the same tasks on your Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Notes will be moved out from Mail app into a standalone Notes app. The app will sport the same look as iOS version and will sync between the OS X Mountain Lion and iOS.
Notification Center will be a system feature in OS X Mountain Lion. Apps can publish notifications to pop up in a sidebar. This is a port of Notification Center from iOS, and is likely to replace Growl to become the de facto notification standard in OS X.
Apple will bring the Game Center app from iOS to OS X. This will bring social gaming to the desktop, let you play games and chat with friends, and keeping your game score.
AirPlay Mirroring allows you to mirror the content of iPad 2 and iPhone 4S to your HDTV via Apple TV. With Mountain Lion, you can stream 720p content from your Mac to HDTV via Apple TV.
Share Sheets is a system window component that allows app to implement standard sharing mechanism. Safari, Preview etc in Mountain Lion will have a small button at toolbar to trigger the Share Sheets, allowing you quick access to email, message, tweet, AirDrop, share to Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo etc.
Twitter is integrated with Mountain Lion, as with iOS 5.
You can install apps from anywhere or from App Store in Lion. With Mountain Lion, Apple introduced a third type of app which is available outside the App Store but is digitally signed with Apple. This is a measure to combat malware as Apple is able to remotely prevent digitally signed apps from installing. Signed apps also can not be modified as it will break the signature. Gatekeeper is a new security mechanism introduced in Mountain Lion that allows the users to choose the type of apps that can be run. By default, Mountain Lion will allow only apps from App Store and identified developers with digital signature.
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion reflects the rising importance of the China market. Mountain Lion will have integration with Chinese services such as Baidu, Weibo, Youku, QQ etc.
Mountain Lion brings a new Documents in the Cloud view to the traditional Open/Save File Dialog for apps that support working on documents in iCloud. iCloud will appear as another location besides your local disk for opening and saving your documents.
The usual Software Update will be relocated under App Store app in Mountain Lion.
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion comes with an improved Safari 5.2. One notable new feature in Safari is its integration of search bar within the address bar. Apple has seeded a beta release of Safari 5.2 to its developers.
There are reports that some older Mac models can run Lion but not Mountain Lion. Those affected are mostly machines with integrated graphics. It is still too early to confirm the minimum requirement since there is no official statement from Apple and Mountain Lion is still months away from release.
Alfred is a productivity app that can do many things. You invoke Alfred with a customizable hot-keys which will bring out the command bar. Enter an app name or search term and Alfred will execute your order. Alfred is an app launcher and a search helper. Alfred can also do basic calculations, check word spellings and helps you issue system commands.
QuickTime Player in OS X Lion has the capability to merge multiple video clips into one movie. Simply drag the clips you want to add into a movie window. QuickTime Player will automatically scales or crops the clips so they match the dimensions of the movie. You can even trim the head or tail of any clips before saving the combined clips as new movie. If your video editing is just trimming and combining clips, instead of the more elaborate iMovie, you can just use QuickTime Player to achieve the same result.
If you find the sidebar icons in Finder and Mail a little too big or small, you can change it from System Preferences.
From System Preferences > General, click on “Sidebar icon size”. A drop-down menu will give the options “Small”, “Medium” and “Large”. The default settings is “Medium”.
If you use the dock but hate the blue indicator light below open applications, OS X Lion now allows you to turn the lights off. Go to System Preferences > Dock, uncheck “Show indicator lights for open applications”.
OS X Lion comes with a new “iTunes Artwork” screen saver, which displays album covers from your iTunes library as flipping grids of images. When you click on an album cover, the songs from the album will start playing.
The settings for screen saver is under System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver.
AirPrint is the printing module of iOS that enables wireless printing from apps from your iPhone and iPad. However in order to support AirPrint, printers need to have wireless networking feature and specifically enhanced in hardware in order to support AirPrint. You can check out the list of current AirPrint compatible printers from Apple support site. Before you rush out to buy an AirPrint printer specifically, read on.
If your current printer is not AirPrint compatible, you can still enable AirPrint by running an agent software such as AirPrint Activator on your Mac. AirPrint Activator app will broadcast the printers connected on the Mac to your iOS devices via the AirPrint protocol. When you send a print job from iPhone, AirPrint Activator will route the print job to the printer.
The prerequisite for AirPrint Activator is a running Mac in order for the connected printers to be accessible. You also need to enable OS X’s “Printer Sharing” from System Preferences > Sharing.
AirPrint Activator is a third party solution and is not endorsed by Apple. There are other similar apps but AirPrint Activator is recommended as it is simple, it works and it is free (donation is happily welcomed by the developer). Until Apple release similar feature in future OS X, AirPrint Activator is the next best thing without spending the extra for a new printer.
You might be familiar with the File > Duplicate (Command-D) command in Finder. New in OS X Lion is the function “Duplicate Exactly”. You can access Duplicate Exactly by pressing Command-Option-Shift keys while in the File menu. The “Duplicate” menu item will change to “Duplicate Exactly”. Or you can just press the keys Command-Option-Shift-D.
When you choose the normal “Duplicate” command, OS X will create a copy of the file and set the file owner to your login account. “Duplicate Exactly” will create a copy of the file but the ownership of the file follows the source, thus ensuring the exact same file even for file permissions.
New in OS X Lion is the build-in support for Emoji characters. Feeling moody or a little playful? You can now add smiley faces and cute animals to your email, chat or the monthly report. In TextEdit, Pages. iChat or any apps that support this system feature, select from menu File > Special Characters… or press Command-Option-T. A “Characters” window will popup. Select Emoji from the sidebar. Choose the category such as “People” or Nature”, and double-click on a character to place it into your document or chat window.
