Climbing the Mountain

297 days ago in Articles, Contributors, Reviews by Wardy Miller | No Comments

That’s right, Mountain Lion dropped today. I have been running it for some time now, but with NDA, I couldn’t talk about it. It is the “iOS-ification” (yes, I invented that word). But that’s what it is. Apple is taking the stuff that works well in iOS and incorporating it into OSX. If you don’t currently have an iCloud account I STRONGLY suggest you get one. (They are free). OSX is using the cloud more extensively. The experience will be appreciated much more if you have an iOS device. This new shift on Apples part is where Steve’s vision in the 90’s was. The “Digital Hub”. Initially he that it would be the Mac, with all of your stuff plugging into it, like your iPod, digital cameras, video cameras and so on… and it was until now. Now the center of your Apple universe has become the iCloud. Now iCloud keeps notes, reminders, contacts, and iWork documents available on ALL of your Apple devices.
Now if you were Mobile me member you had some of these features before, but they never worked as well as they do now. (The service is better and now it’s free). If you have been around Macs for some time you will notice that the Mountain Lion release is similar to the Snow Leopard release. Leopard when it was released was pretty good, but with Snow Leopard Apple fine-tuned the OS, that is part of what happened with Lion to Mountain Lion. Mountain Lion handles resources better than Lion did. (fine tuning) On top of that Apple added tighter integration with iCloud, plus some pretty cool features.

Some of the features are “eye-candy”, but the performance boost is noticeable. (I’m only going to mention a few here. My next post will have more how-tos in it.)

One of the most touted enhancements is Notification Center. Reminiscent of iOS’s notification, you can configure how you are alerted. (Any users of Growl will be used to how the OS notifies you of what is going on. For example, when you receive a new email, calendar event, and even twitter it will show up in Notification Center. iMessage is also new in Mountain Lion. iMessage allows you to “text” between Macs and iOS devices (without incurring texting charges as it is handled through Apples infrastructure).

Bottom Line: If you are on the fence with Mountain Lion, my advice is, spend the $20.00 and you won’t be disappointed.

Remember: Making Unix user friendly is easier than debugging Windows.