It has been just over a year since Apple release OSX Lion, and there's a new big cat about to join the line-up; OSX Mountain Lion.
If Snow Leopard was 'the world's most advanced operating system, finely tuned' then Mountain Lion might be labeled, 'the world's most advanced operating system; more iOS and iCloud-like'. The focus in Mountain Lion is to bring the desktop experience closer to the iOS experience. As an example, Notes will now become a separate all from Mail, which also gets a much needed upgrade and tighter iCloud implementation. Apple is also bring iMessage over to OSX, giving users the ability to send text messages from desktop clients.
Mountain Lion is also more social than previous versions and promises native integration with Facebook and Twitter, again, following iOS that made Twitter integration seamless in iOS 5. The addition of Facebook is most welcome because users will not have to crack Safari, or their browser of choice, open to interact with Facebook.
All in all, Apple is promising over 200 news features in Mountain Lion; many are slight tweaks and enhancements, and others, like Power Nap, as just plain cool. Power Nap allows clients running Mountain Lion to update their system software as their Mac sleeps - a truly nice feature designed to save users hours of time waiting for software updates to download and install. During the machines low-power state and idle time 'sleeping' all of this will be taken care of automatically.
Mountain Lion will be available from the AppStore for $19.99, a ten dollar savings over the upgrade prices of Snow Leopard and Lion.
For a
comprehensive application compatibility list, head on over to RoaringApps.com to verify your apps.
About Tim Staney
Tim Staney has more than ten years (since 1997) of web development experience building enterprise-grade web applications for Fortune 500, small business and not-for-profit enterprises across the United States and Canada over a wide-range of industries. Tim specializes in information architecture, content management with a keen focus on user experience, and social media integration.
Tim Staney is a resident of St. Petersburg, Florida and active member of his community.
Staney regularly presents to professional and community groups, speaking on social media, social marketing, web content management and web strategy.
Tim Staney is a member of the American Marketing Association and <uwebd />, University Web Developers as well as the St. Peter's Episcopal Cathedral Communications Task Force. Tim is the Web Content Manager at St. Petersburg College working for the Marketing and Public Information department managing content in the college's Ektron content management system. Tim also teaches courses like Social Marketing for Small Buisness and Designing Effective Websites for St. Petersburg College's Learn to Earn program.
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