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The 10 best features of Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion

Monday, August 27, 2012 · 11:30 am · 31 Comments

Apple’s new OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion “brings more than 200 new features to boost the way you use your Mac. Making use of iCloud, Mountain Lion claims to make it easier than ever to keep all of your media, documents and important information in one place and, as a result, available across all of your devices. It also adds deep integration with Facebook and Twitter, turning your Mac into a highly sociable machine,” Ben Harvell writes for MacFormat via TechRadar.

“The gradual merging of iOS and OS X features continues with the arrival of Messages, Reminders, Notifications and Dictation in Mountain Lion – the aim being to make switching between any of your Apple devices as seamless as possible,” Harvell writes. “But do you need these new bells and whistles or should you be content with what you’ve got? We weigh up the new features as well as the upgrade considerations in order to provide you with an answer.”

The 10 best features of Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion:
1. Social integration
2. Game Center for Mac
3. Improved Notifications
4. AirPlay
5. Messages
6. Notes and Reminders
7. Dictation on the Mac
8. Power Nap
9. Better security (Gatekeeper)
10. Safari 6

Read more in the full article here.

Categories: News

Tags: AirPlay, Dictation, Facebook, Game Center, Gatekeeper, Messages, notifications, OS X, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, Power Nap, Safari 6, Twotter

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Comment Feed

31 Comments

Snappy Pappy

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 11:42 am · Reply

And it’s much snappier now too!
Nic900

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 11:48 am · Reply

Yes….oh god yes, much faster, thank you for giving my Macs there nuts back
Nic900

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 11:50 am · Reply

Sorry, “their nuts back”😊
JBTipton

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 12:01 pm · Reply

None of these bullshit “features” are worth the thousands of $ it would cost me to replace my Rosetta dependent apps and I’d like to continue using Save As without having to fight my operating system.
- Truth
  
  Monday, August 27, 2012 - 12:48 pm · Reply
  
  Great, then don’t upgrade, stop whining while you are at it.
  
  In other news time doesn’t stand still, even for people with antique apps..
  - Ubermac
    
    Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:03 pm · Reply
    
    All Heil to Apple screwing over the professionals that are relying on Macs to make a living, to chase after grandma.
    - h2a
      
      Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:28 pm · Reply
      
      My Mac is not any less powerful than it always has been. It just happens to have some nice consumer features now.
    - Cubert
      
      Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:47 pm · Reply
      
      Examples besides “save as”?
      - the joker
        
        Monday, August 27, 2012 - 2:59 pm · Reply
        
        Fujifilm’s Hyper Utility RAW software for their professional digital SLR’s is Rosetta only. I can’t give up that software so I am stuck on Snow Leopard for at least 2-3 more years.
        
        Really sucks.
        
        Tod
        
        Monday, August 27, 2012 - 4:29 pm · Reply
        
        You’re not missing anything unless you’re a gamer, generation X or Y socialite, or like software that apparently had no quality assurance provisions in place.
        
        coffeelover
        
        Monday, August 27, 2012 - 8:38 pm · Reply
        
        question , what about using Aperture or that Adobe product for raw processing ?
  - Add my "so what" to the ...
    
    Monday, August 27, 2012 - 2:38 pm · Reply
    
    … list. I’m confident that ML is in several (many?) ways better than M and SL, but “better security” – doesn’t EVERY Mac have “better security”? – is the only one I’d bother upgrading for. So … maybe I won’t?
    Not whining. Just stating the facts. Accepting the “penalty”. That “Save As” feature out-weighs all that froth listed above.
- DJ
  
  Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:24 pm · Reply
  
  Second the ‘save as’ and all the other little things that the crazed Apple software people have left out or disimproved.
- GmanMac
  
  Monday, August 27, 2012 - 3:47 pm · Reply
  
  Notifications & reminders work great. Time to dump those old Rosetta apps and join the 21st century.
  - Rick
    
    Monday, August 27, 2012 - 4:02 pm · Reply
    
    Notifications and reminders do NOT work great. How about a stupid notification that can only be blindly snoozed with no options for customized delays? If I want my notification to come back in one hour or two hours, instead of popping up constantly like a barking chihuahua, ML doesn’t offer that. It’s worse than before in this regard.
  - qka
    
    Monday, August 27, 2012 - 8:57 pm · Reply
    
    You seem to have missed how those Rosetta apps worked great for 10% of the 21st Century.
    
    In many, smaller fields, app developers do software development as a sideline to their real work. They don’t have the inclination, time, or other resources to produce updates for every OS change.
wefinish

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 12:16 pm · Reply

Safari has been unstable for me. It quits three or four times a day. The old version ..never.
- Cubert
  
  Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:49 pm · Reply
  
  Me too. Looking forward to that 6.0.1 update.
- qka
  
  Monday, August 27, 2012 - 8:59 pm · Reply
  
  Safari has been unstable since Safari 5 came out. The separate “Safari Web Content” process is rubbish.
Ballmer's left nut

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 12:23 pm · Reply

Is Apple reviving the ‘toy’ in toy computer with this software downgrade?
Jean Poole

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 12:27 pm · Reply

The first 4 are pants, (ask a Limey).
Ezzyme

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 12:30 pm · Reply

I could use “snappier” on my aging Macs, but I didn’t see a feature that even tempts me. Snow Leopard forever!
- DJ
  
  Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:27 pm · Reply
  
  Hate to say but I agree entirely.
  
  Lion/ML slower and far less functional.
  
  Have to keep one Mac on Snow Leopard just to keep the workflow optimal.
h2a

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 12:56 pm · Reply

Yeah. Game Center is definitely the number 2 feature in Mountain Lion. If by “number 2″ you mean poop.
Ubermac

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:05 pm · Reply

I just love how ML quits my app after closing the last window.

I FEEL RIGHT A HOME LIKE WINDOWS!

Never mind it takes forever to open the apps like Photoshop.
- h2a
  
  Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:27 pm · Reply
  
  ML doesn’t quit apps after closing the last window any differently than other version of OS X. Tested with Mail, Safari, Skype, Logic, iTunes, Calendar, Messages.
  
  There are a few apps that close when you click the red button — Contacts and iPhoto being two of them. iPhoto has always been this way. I don’t spend enough time in contacts to know whether or not it’s always been this way.
Ballonknot

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 1:17 pm · Reply

Sorry, but since they took both RSS feeds and Smapback out of Safari, it kinda sucks.
RC Copeland

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 2:11 pm · Reply

It’s interesting how Apple uses the name “GateKeeper” for their new security in 10.8. That was the name of the Rogue software in the movie “The Net” Most of the movie used Macs and the final scene was shot at Mac World Expo -RC
I love Apple

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 2:52 pm · Reply

I like best the new RENAME and MOVE features in Pages and Numbers. No idea if there is any other software supporting this new feature, but as a daily user of both programs this is a real great idea to do this from right inside the app. By the way, today I showed an Excel fanboy the capabilities of Numbers, he was really frustrated about Excel. He still uses Windows, so he has a long way to go to convince his boss.
Mike

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 5:15 pm · Reply

These are his top features? Talk about UNDERWHELMING. I am a productivity user and I am sticking with 10.6.8 since there is almost nothing here that improves productivity whatsoever, and a lot of annoying crap that very negatively impacts it.

1. Social integration – NOT desirable to productive computer users, especially those with clients who don’t really want you blabbing about what you’re doing every second of the day, and certainly not desired by employers who expect his people to get work done. Represents undesired OS bloat that should be offered as separate applications, not OS integration.

2. Game Center for Mac: see #1

3. Improved Notifications – meh. mostly distractions that could be better handled without work interruption

4. AirPlay – nice concept. no need to use it on a work machine.

5. Messages – see #1

6. Notes and Reminders – small improvement for some people, i guess.

7. Dictation on the Mac – now we’re getting somewhere.

8. Power Nap – not a good idea in my opinion. Watch for the flood of complaints of people demanding better battery life.

9. Better security (Gatekeeper) – how much better? Seems like just another way to remind people not to fall for social engineering crap, which of course people will still do anyway. Didn’t MS already do this with Vista?

10. Safari 6 – long overdue update. Not sure it was worth the wait. Firefox seems to be better for us.
MM

Monday, August 27, 2012 - 5:49 pm · Reply

That list is a total yawn. Now that Lion’s fairly stable, I’ll stick to the Lion. Lion was a good upgrade – full disk encryption, iCloud sync for Calendar and Address Book. That’s really about it for me. Nothing in Mountain Lion interests me, and that so called top 10 list just confirms I should just stick with Lion, particularly since my old iMac can’t use ML anyway, so I prefer to keep my MBA and MBP on the same OS as the iMac.