“We knew OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion’s arrival was imminent after Apple announced at WWDC 2012 that we’d see it in July, and sure enough, Apple just posted the final version of its revamped operating system for the Mac — the so-called ‘gold master’ — to developers on July 9,” Matt Peckham reports for TIME Magazine. “I’ve been running a copy since then, in fact.”

“When can you snag your own copy for $19.99 (in fact $10 cheaper than OS X Lion sold for a year ago)? Apple has until the end of July to make good on its WWDC promise,” Peckham reports. “If we assume the company’s aiming for a Wednesday release again, we’ll most likely see it on either July 18 — a week from today — or by the following Wednesday, July 25.”

“Apple claims Mountain Lion will ship with some 200 new features, most of them incremental, but a few alter the playing field enough to warrant special mention,” Peckham reports. “Here’s a rundown of the 10 most significant ones.”

Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion’s 10 Most Important New Features:
• AirPlay Mirroring
• Notification Center
• Messages
• Power Nap
• Game Center
• Gatekeeper
• Safari 6.0
• Dictation
• Reminders, Notes and Twitter
• iCloud

Read more in the full article here.

Related articles:
Apple seeds OS X Mountain Lion Golden Master to developers (with video) – July 9, 2012
Apple’s Mac App Store will restrict OS X Mountain Lion downloads to unsupported Macs – July 9, 2012
Mountain Lion release date: Thursday, July 19, 2012, says source – June 18, 2012