Arthur Posted February 16, 2012 Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) I wasn't expecting 10.8 so soon. Features: www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html Hands on with Apple's new OS X: Mountain Lion Apple updates its iOS mobile operating system once a year. But why should the iPhone and iPad have all the fun? On Thursday Apple announced that it will release a new version of OS X—Mountain Lion—this summer, just a year after the release of OS X Lion. Like Lion, Mountain Lion offers numerous feature additions that will be familiar to iOS users. This OS X release continues Apple’s philosophy of bringing iOS features “back to the Mac,” and includes iMessage, Reminders, Notes, Notification Center, Twitter integration, Game Center, and AirPlay Mirroring. As the first OS X release post-iCloud, there’s also much more thorough integration with Apple’s data-syncing service. Mountain Lion also brings options to limit which kinds of apps users can install. And although there are no actual mountain lions in China, OS X Mountain Lion does add a raft of features to speak to users in the country that’s Apple’s biggest growth opportunity. Mountain Lion will be a paid upgrade to OS X; like Lion, it will be available only via a Mac App Store download. Apple hasn’t yet set a price or a release date more specific than “summer". Mac developers will be able to download a developer release of Mountain Lion on Thursday, giving them several months to update their apps to take advantage of the new features in the release. I’ve had a few days to use an early development version of Mountain Lion. Here’s a look at what’s new so far, keeping in mind that Apple may add and change features over the next few months as we get closer to the planned release... (Source) http://i.imgur.com/sne6p.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Xmxdy.png Edited February 16, 2012 by Arthur
mac_shinobi Posted February 16, 2012 Posted February 16, 2012 on a side note, how many other cats are left name wise for apple to use. I've only been an apple user since 10.4 aka Tiger.
Arthur Posted February 16, 2012 Author Posted February 16, 2012 There are still a few big cat names left (Lynx, Ocelot etc.). Btw, the Mountain Lion is also known as the Cougar. 1
Arthur Posted February 16, 2012 Author Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) The Verge have a great hand-on video showing the 10.8 developer preview in action... http://i.imgur.com/SdFEc.png Also worth mentioning is that OS X 10.8 will only run on the Mac's listed below... As we suggested might happen in our Lion review, Mountain Lion's developer preview appears to do away with support for any Mac that cannot boot into OS X's 64-bit kernel. I'll link you to that page of our Lion review again if you'd like deep technical information about what that means, but the short version is that a wide range of Apple's products from 2007 and 2008 are being dropped regardless of whether they include a Core 2 Duo processor. The list of supported Macs includes: iMac (mid 2007 or later) MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later) MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later) Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later) Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later) Xserve (Early 2009) The cutoff happens in different places for different products, but here are some rules of thumb: if your Mac uses the ATI Radeon X1600 graphics chip or the Intel GMA 950/X3100 integrated graphics chips, you're out of luck. If you've got a white iMac or one of the very first Mac Pros, you're out of luck. There are a few easy ways to check whether your Mac can run the 64-bit kernel, and Apple outlines all of them in this support document. Edited February 16, 2012 by Arthur
Arthur Posted February 17, 2012 Author Posted February 17, 2012 AirPlay Mirroring demo http://youtu.be/SAEH1H-4Siw?hd=1
Arthur Posted February 17, 2012 Author Posted February 17, 2012 If you want to pretend your Mac has Mountain Lion, OS X Daily have posted a link to a copy of the new desktop wallpaper from the Developer Preview. http://i.imgur.com/ly5wo.jpg
mac_shinobi Posted February 17, 2012 Posted February 17, 2012 Must be missing something here but the way I have my mac mini setup, I am not really seeing the benefit aside from maybe the game store ( possibly ) depending on what games they plan to release. 2011 Mac Mini hooked up to HD TV via HDMI cable so air play / mirroring etc is a moot point, reminders I set on my iPhone 4 anyway so that is a bit useless , I don't really use the Calendar tool or iCal. Are there any other improvements ?
Arthur Posted February 17, 2012 Author Posted February 17, 2012 reminders I set on my iPhone 4 anyway so that is a bit useless You would be able to set reminders while working on your Mac mini and have them automatically sync to your iPhone via iCloud? Are there any other improvements? From what I have read, 10.8 feels much snappier than 10.7 (I think this is partly due to the OS and every single app being 64-bit now). That alone would be worth £20.99 for me since extra speed is always welcome, particularly if it means you don't have to upgrade any hardware. I suppose you could compare it to going from Vista to 7 in a way. Apple have also made things more consistent and fixed many small annoyances/bugs (and probably introduced new ones )... The recurring theme: Apple is fighting against cruft — inconsistencies and oddities that have accumulated over the years, which made sense at one point but no longer — like managing to-dos in iCal (because CalDAV was being used to sync them to a server) or notes in Mail (because IMAP was the syncing back-end). The changes and additions in Mountain Lion are in a consistent vein: making things simpler and more obvious, closer to how things should be rather than simply how they always have been. (Source) When you are shutting down (or restarting) the "Reopen windows... check box remembers your last choice (Source) Like you, I don't tend to use many of Apple's built-in apps - using Sparrow instead of Mail, Alfred instead of Spotlight, Chrome instead of Safari, Dropbox / AeroFS instead of iCloud, Adium instead of iChat, etc. - but for those that do, I reckon Mountain Lion will be a nice improvement over Lion, especially if they have more than one iDevice. Mountain Lion also appears to have less issues when working with Active Directory / Open Directory, but this doesn't really matter to the average home user (unless they setup a Mac server at home). I can see where you are coming from though. 10.8 is a bit like a service pack which you have to pay for. Obviously you can stick with 10.7, but once Apple release 10.9 in 2013, no doubt they will drop support for 10.7 too and you will eventually find that third-party developers stop supporting Lion too.
Arthur Posted February 19, 2012 Author Posted February 19, 2012 If you have access to the developer preview and want to run 10.8 in VMware Fusion 4, the following link describes how to get it working... www.robservatory.com/?p=809
mellowip1983 Posted February 20, 2012 Posted February 20, 2012 does anyone see any major advantages apart from improved AD/OD with 10.8 that will benefit a school environment? just thinking is it worth making a case for including upgrade fund in this years budget. Or are they building hidden features for new mac hardware in the middle of the year? touch screen iMac maybe?
Arthur Posted February 21, 2012 Author Posted February 21, 2012 does anyone see any major advantages apart from improved AD/OD with 10.8 that will benefit a school environment? The only other thing I can see as being useful is AirPlay Mirroring, which could be used by students (particularly those doing media studies or art) to show their work on a projector. This requires an AppleTV however. If you have any plans to buy new Mac's later this year, it might also be beneficial (for the sake of consistency, management and deployment) to upgrade your older Mac's to 10.8 so that they are all running the same OS, since you almost certainly won't be able to downgrade the new Mac's to 10.7 or 10.6. Or are they building hidden features for new Mac hardware in the middle of the year? There probably are more features which haven't been announced yet. Not a lot has been said about Mountain Lion Server either... I won't dive too far into Mountain Lion Server, since this is just supposed to be a quick first look at a very early version of the product. However, for users of the product (and/or readers of our huge Lion Server review) there's one important change that comes in with 10.8 - Lion introduced a new program, Server.app, which took over some (but not all) of the functionality provided by the legacy Server Admin Tools. The tools are still provided as a separate download to close the functionality gap left by Server.app. In Mountain Lion Server, more functionality of the Server Admin Tools appears to have been integrated into Server.app - NetBoot, the System Image Utility, DNS, and a few other services can now be managed in Server.app. There are still a few services that appear to be missing (DHCP, NAT, and a few others appear to be absent) - it's too early to say whether these services will be included in Server.app when Mountain Lion is launched, whether the company will offer a new version of the Server Admin Tools, or whether those services will be removed from OS X Server altogether. (Source) touch screen iMac maybe? Doubtful, given Steve Jobs' previous comments on touch screen iMac's and MacBook's... "We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn’t work, it's ergonomically terrible. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence pads." I think the Gorilla arm issue is why they created the Magic Trackpad. Apple does have a patent for a touch screen iMac, but that doesn't mean to say they will actually make one.
localzuk Posted February 21, 2012 Posted February 21, 2012 Great, this'll be even more fun when we upgrade our iMac suite. Currently running 10.5...
sidewinder Posted February 21, 2012 Posted February 21, 2012 Both my iMac and MacBook are now too old for this Tempted to upgrade my MacBook but then what's the point? I'm not really losing anything by still running 10.6 considering I just use it for internet, itunes and iphoto
ste1988 Posted February 21, 2012 Posted February 21, 2012 Will be more interesting when they annouce features of the server edition, client wise it seems nice to bring those tools in from iOS, but from an education point of view, just more things to remove and lock down. I hope the server edition fills the wholes left by lion server.
Arthur Posted February 22, 2012 Author Posted February 22, 2012 does anyone see any major advantages apart from improved AD/OD with 10.8 that will benefit a school environment? Found this article today... What schools need to know about OS X Mountain Lion « The Apple Blog
Arthur Posted May 15, 2012 Author Posted May 15, 2012 Just in time for the summer hol's. Stars aligning for June Ivy Bridge Mac launch alongside Mountain Lion « Ars Technica
Arthur Posted June 12, 2012 Author Posted June 12, 2012 It's official! Mountain Lion and Mountain Lion Server will be released next month. They will cost $19.99 each (~£15.49 inc. VAT) and you can upgrade directly from Snow Leopard too. Pricing & Availability OS X Mountain Lion will be available in July from the Mac App Store for $19.99 (US). Mountain Lion requires Lion or Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6.8 or later), 2GB of memory and 8GB of available space. For a complete list of system requirements and compatible systems, please visit: apple.com/osx/specs/. OS X Server requires Mountain Lion and will be available in July from the Mac App Store for $19.99 (US). The OS X Mountain Lion Up-to-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge via the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 11, 2012. (Source)
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