Apple OS X Mountain Lion: The Good, the Awesome, the Could-Do-Better [REVIEW]
Adios iChat, Hola Messages! Apple's new all-in-one messaging client combines Google Talk, AIM, Jabber, and Yahoo IM support along with the ability to send iMessages to contacts on a Mac or in iOS.
See our hands-on of the Messages Beta for more details.
First introduced in iOS 5, Reminders is now on the Mac. This means users can access and modify their reminders on the iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The interface is a dead ringer for Reminders on the iPad. It syncs instantly via iCloud across devices.
Another iOS transplant: Game Center. Users can access their iOS Game Center scores and stats. Even better, future games will allow users on iOS and the Mac to play head-to-head.
Apple's note-taking app is now in OS X. The best part: notes sync automatically with iCloud, meaning they are instantly accessible on the iPhone or iPad.
In OS X Mountain Lion, users can add social accounts directly to the OS. This makes it easy to connect and share to Facebook (coming this fall), Twitter, Vimeo and Flickr.
One of our favorite features of OS X Mountain Lion: Airplay support. This makes it easy to share you screen -- and any video on it -- to a television with an Apple TV. All without wires.
There is lots of great new stuff in Safari 6, but we really love the tab view that makes it easy to flick across tabs with a trackpad or Magic Mouse.
Safari 6 for OS X Mountain Lion supports cloud tab sync with iOS 6 (currently in beta). This makes it easy for users to access the tabs open on the iPhone and iPad.
This feature is virtually identical to Chrome's tab sync, but for Safari fans, it's a great treat.
Just as users can share content from within iOS 5, they can now share images, files, and more directly from OS X Mountain Lion.
The share sheets depend on the program you are in, but you can usually send stuff to Facebook (this fall), Twitter, Messages and Mail.
Sending a tweet with a URL from Safari works the same as it does on iOS. It's an easy way to share your favorite web pages.
Users can tweet photos from compatible apps such as Preview. The image is uploaded to Twitter's official image service.
Notifications are now an official part of OS X. They can be controlled at an app level. By default, non-pressing actions will appear on screen for a few seconds before disappearing.
Swiping from the far right on the trackpad brings up the Notifications Center. This displays recent notifications by app in an easy to access way.
Users can also send tweets directly from the Notifications Center. This makes it easy to send a tweet without having to have an app or website open.
In Mail, users can now designate certain contacts as VIPs. They get their own starred folders and special notifications every time a message comes in.
OS X software update is now integrated into the Mac App Store. As a bonus, if you have Apple software that wasn't purchased in the Mac App Store (such as iLife or iWork), updates to those apps appear in the Mac App Store updates panel too.
One of the new security features in OS X Mountain Lion is Gatekeeper. By default, it only allows apps that have been signed by a developer or were purchased in the Mac App Store to run.
This is just one more step to make sure that malware or other nasty software doesn't accidentally find its way onto your Mac.
iCloud integration is coming to iWork via an update, but the platform is better integrated into OS X Mountain Lion.
In Preview.app, for instance, users can easily upload or access documents from iCloud directly from the app.
It’s that time of year when a Mac owner’s fancy turns to thoughts of felines. Yes, those who lusted after Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion in summers past can finally get their paws on a brand new kitty: Mountain Lion.
As of the second we published this story, Mountain Lion — more prosaically known as OS X 10.8 — became available in the Mac app store. So long as you already have Snow Leopard or Lion in your cat collection, Mountain Lion is yours for the bargain basement price of $19.99.
Is it worth it? It’s a fair question. Lion seemed like a bargain at $30, but many Mac owners found the beast brought more pain than pleasure. Some longstanding features had been oversimplified; others vanished altogether (RIP “Save As.”) It made a half-hearted stab at looking like its mobile sibling, iOS, without really integrating any of its offerings.
Mountain Lion delivers on nearly all of its predecessor’s promise. But it doesn’t quite live up to Apple’s pre-launch hype.
Some 60% of Mac owners skipped Lion altogether, your humble reviewer included. So first of all, kudos to Apple for letting us prodigal Snow Leopard lovers return to the fold — without forcing us to buy Lion first.
Mountain Lion is a more mature kind of cat, one that delivers on nearly all of its predecessor’s promise. If you own an iPhone, an iPad or both, you’re going to love how much more connected all your devices are. If you’re a frequent tweeter, this is pretty much Twitter OS.
It doesn’t quite live up to all of Apple’s pre-launch hype, however. The integration of iCloud isn’t as intuitive as we would like. Using Messages, which is iChat combined with iMessages on the iPhone, can be an exercise in frustration; that should be smoothed out once Apple launches iOS 6 in the fall.
Another odd omission: Facebook integration. That is coming as an update in the fall, though we’re not sure why — it was included in the review copy Apple gave us, and seemed to post to the social network just fine.
The Good: Installation, Speed, Sharing
Mountain Lion is a roughly 4GB upgrade; we found it a half-hour download from the Mac app store. (We hope the Apple servers are up to the challenge of providing it to thousands of users simultaneously). Installation told us it would take 30 minutes; it was done in 10.
The entire OS seems significantly speedier. We were especially impressed that you can now boot it up in less than 5 seconds on a top-of-the-line Macbook Retina, and only a few seconds more on a Macbook Air.
Bouncing icons in the dock are a thing of the past; not that the animation has been retired, but there’s barely time for it to run. Stuff just loads.
The in-app sharing sheets that let you post to Twitter, once Mountain Lion has your account info, work simply, look beautiful and may make you want to use Safari as your default browser. (We’re only shunning it for its lack of pinned tabs.)
More apps could do with Twitter integration; it seems odd that you can put your iPhoto snaps on Flickr, but can’t tweet them. Still, the feature — which we expect every app maker is going to want to integrate — is off to a roaring start.
The Awesome: Reminders, Notifications, Dictation
Ever wanted a To Do List that followed you on every screen you use? That’s Reminders, an app that showed promise on the iPhone and iPad and now appears for the first time on your Mac. Because Siri uses Reminders, you can in theory dictate a day’s worth of doings to your phone while commuting, and have them automatically waiting on your desktop before you arrive.
Siri doesn’t appear in Mountain Lion itself, but Apple has done the next best thing and included its dictation engine. Tap the Function key twice (or tap once and hold) in any app and speak-write your way to success; it will learn the nuance of your voice. It’s like having Dragon Dictate without spending a hundred bucks for it.
Notifications (for all those Reminders, appointments, Messages, and anything else any other app wants to tell you about) are nicely consolidated. They appear for a few seconds in the top right-hand corner, then corral themselves into a whole new area you can tap or swipe in from the side of the screen. You’ll find yourself checking this area often.
We were especially pleased by how well Notifications plays with others — in particular, erstwhile Apple nemesis Google. If Chrome and Messages both want to tell you about the same chat message, for example, Mountain Lion defaults to the Chrome notification.
The Could-Do-Better: iCloud, Messages
Nearly all of these neat new features, and many more besides, rely on Apple’s superb syncing service iCloud. But the company has decided that iCloud should be barely visible.
You can sync text between devices in the Notes app, and your PDFs in Preview, yet there’s no such thing as an iCloud app where you see all your cloud-based documents at a glance. It would have been useful, especially considering you only have 5 GB of free storage on the service.
I found myself turning iCloud on a surprising number of times in different apps and System Preferences panes. It required me to create a new @me.com email address, for no reason that was immediately apparent.
The process was hardly intuitive, which is strange since the OS has already asked if you want to use iCloud, during installation.
Messages should be the app that benefits most from iCloud, and in theory the app is genius. You get all of your AIM and Google Talk missives alongside your iMessages (texts from iPhones). You can send a quick message to any iPhone or iPad from your desktop. What’s not to love?
Only this: Apple has not yet integrated your phone number and Apple ID, not until iOS 6 launches in the fall. Send that text to an iPhone from your desktop, and it pops from the email address you use for your Apple ID, rather than from your phone number.
There are several unintended consequences here. Conversations get splintered, irritatingly enough, into multiple threads. You may not want to give the text recipient your Apple ID email address. Even if you do, they may not recognize it. I’ve sent a couple of Messages that got no response simply because my friends had no idea who it was from.
It would also be nice if Apple could load up your iMessage conversation history, which it has easy access to via the iPhone — and if it could keep track of both sides of a conversation no matter where else you had it, such as Google Talk. Your Messages app is going to look oddly empty for a while.
Final Thoughts
This is a tremendously feature-rich upgrade from Apple, one that breathes new life into a 12-year-old OS — and more than makes up for Lion.
Even though Facebook integration won’t be ready until the fall, and Messages won’t truly be ready for prime time until then, we see no reason why Mac owners should delay. It’s well worth the price of a few lattes. There’s a whole bunch of stuff it’s downloading for you even when your machine is asleep (a feature Apple calls Power Nap.)
Mac OS and the iOS are now joined at the hip in a dozen meaningful ways (such as Games Center, which will now lets a Mac owner play an opponent on the iPad, for example.) We can’t wait to see what their marriage produces next.
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