Apple’s new OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion costs just $19.99. “That’s great,” John Gruber writes for Daring Fireball. “It encourages users to get on board with the latest and greatest, and I expect the result of this pricing (and the ease of doing so through the App Store) will result in a record-breaking (which is to say, faster than Lion) adoption rate.”
“But what exactly do users get for their twenty bucks? In short: a nicer, more polished version of Lion. There’s definitely new stuff: iCloud document storage (more on that in a bit), Messages (which is more than just a renamed version of iChat — it supports iMessage), Notification Center (which I really like on the Mac; it’s perhaps the feature I’ve missed the most over the last few months testing the Mountain Lion betas when going back to my main machine running Lion),” Gruber writes. “More back-to-the-Mac stuff from iOS, like standalone apps for Notes and Reminders, and convenient system-wide ‘share sheets’ for sending content via email or messages and to websites like Flickr, Twitter, Vimeo, and, soon Facebook. (Facebook integration is not included in OS X 10.8; Apple says it will come in a software update “this fall”.) AirPlay Mirroring is a gem of a feature — a shining example of Apple’s ‘all our stuff works together seamlessly’ philosophy. The new voice dictation feature is accurate, simple, and convenient — a huge accessibility win for anyone who has trouble typing.”
Gruber writes, “But Mountain Lion isn’t billed as a blockbuster release, and it isn’t priced like one. It’s just nicer. And it’s the little things, the attention to detail, that show it best.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Ars Technica reviews OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: Improves upon OS X Lion’s foundation – July 25, 2012
PC Magazine reviews OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: The world’s best desktop and laptop OS; Editors’ Choice – July 25, 2012
TIME Magazine reviews OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: Much bang for the buck – July 25, 2012
CNET reviews OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: ‘A worthy upgrade, very affordable’ – July 25, 2012
World’s most advanced operating system: OS X Mountain Lion now available via Apple’s Mac App Store – July 25, 2012
Removing the RSS feature from Safari 6 makes no sense. Send feedback to Apple – http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html
Sure it does, open the app store app and type rss into the search field..
LOTS of options, no need for Apple to care, most people don’t even know what rss is.
Apple likely looked at usage statistics, saw it was barely used and put those people onto another project.
Just because RSS is irrelevant to you doesn’t mean RSS access is meaningless. Did you take a poll on RSS usability before posting your enlightened comments, or are you just blowing this out the other end and see if it will stick?
IMO encouraging users to leave Safari to access RSS makes no sense at all.
he didn’t need a poll… Apple obviously did one and found out not enough users to support the feature… Apple is all about supporting features used by a majority of users …..
the RSS thing really pisses me off. I have all my Journals and PUBMED searches all perfectly set up to search for new papers in my fields of interest. Theres no good way to export them (and get them to work easily). 🙁
I totally agree – Safari 5.x had the best implementation of RSS feeds I have seen. Simple and straightforward. It is a feature that should absolutely be linked to a browser. It is basically a way to see if there are any new articles on a webpage without going to that webpage every hour. The best part is that it would show you if there were any new articles right in the bookmark bar. Apple’s solution to use an external RSS reader is really lame. Apple has gotten into a bad habit lately of taking away very useful features and offering no replacement.
Exactly. RSS in Safari is how I get my MDN updates.
Attention to detail? After spending most of the last decade working to ensure that the interface and appearance are consistent between all its apps, Apple has nuked that idea and made every app look different. While it might make sense on a tablet to have a notes app look like a notebook or a calendar look like a tear-off calendar, it makes no sense on a desktop. Apple has long maintained that Desktops and Tablets/smartphones are different creatures, but this move toward skeuomorphism shows that representation to be incorrect; instead, it’s apparent that Apple is moving toward a unified architecture.
we get it, you read jizzmodo’s review
Nope. I work in design, and skeuomorphism actually comes up a lot, plus MacStories has been making a LOT of noise on the topic lately. It really is a love/hate relationship with some people. (For me, the reel-to-reel tape player in the Podcasts app was a head-meets-wall moment).
Ooooo! A new word for the day. Skeuomorphism. Luv it. Gonna have to throw that into casual conversation today just to get some delightfully confused looks. Skwee!