Cult of Mac

As you probably know already, Mountain Lion was released this morning, and we at Cult of Mac have been digging through the beta versions for months. There are some subtle and hidden things in Mountain Lion you may not notice, like the fact that Apple has actually included a stealthy “do not disturb” setting for Notification Center. You can mute all notifications from bugging you for a day at a time by flipping a switch that sneakily sits at the very top of the Notification Center window.

Mountain Lion includes over 200 new features. Some of them are dramatic and hard to miss while others are minor conveniences that don’t stand out immediately. Many of those big and small new features and improvements have a lot of appeal for business users.

Here’s a list of the many new features in Mountain Lion that can help professionals in almost any industry work smarter, more efficiently, and more effectively.

The year is 2012, and the March of the Big Cats continues. Apple is about to release Mountain Lion, the latest iteration of (Mac) OS X, and citizens of the Appleverse are eager to explore what this new feline has to offer. How far we’ve come in just over a decade.

Back in 2001 Apple introduced their new, long awaited replacement to the Classic Macintosh System Software: Mac OS X. As Mountain Lion goes on the prowl, Cult of Mac reviews the Evolution of OS X and once again presents our look back at Apple’s Big Cats over the years – from Cheetah and Puma through to Apple’s current Felidae offerings.

The Podcasts app, released by Apple last month, is a thing of potential beauty. I’ve already returned to a state of podcast listening due to the app, which lets me find and focus solely on the podcast content I need, without all the kludgy hassle of syncing and downloading.

Notice I said “potential” beauty. The app is really not ready for prime time, with freezes, crashes and a dearth of sync between, for example, an iPhone and an iPad. That’s set to change later today, according to “sources” mentioned at AllThingsD, with an update to the Podcasts app that should fix these issues, at least.

GarageBand is awesome, we know. But when it comes time to get a little more professional, professionals (and their pro-sumer brethren) choose Logic Pro, now owned by Apple.

If you’ve been using GarageBand on your iPad, of course, you might wonder how to get these files into Logic Pro, so you can add all the professional polish that such a Digital Audio Workstation provides, using the files you perhaps created on the road with your iPad. Or even the ones you created downstairs on your iPad – it’s cool. Because Logic Pro is not available on the iPad, but GarageBand is.

By now you’ve probably had enough time to download OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and install it on your Mac. What are your first thoughts and impressions? Are new features like Notification Center, Facebook integration, and iMessage worth the wait? Or is Mountain Lion just a bunch of hype?

We want to hear what you think about Apple’s newest OS now that you’re playing with it, so hurry over and tell us what you think.

CLICK HERE TO TELL US YOUR THOUGHTS ON MOUNTAIN LION IN OUR FORUMS

Mountain Lions are magnificent beasts. Sure, they’re not as huge as a real lion, or as exotic as tigers with their fancy stripes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not as cool. In fact, Mountain Lions are vicious killing machines and cuddly at the same time. Plus, they jump like really high. We love these big cute cats, so to celebrate the launch of OS X Mountain Lion, here are 15 reasons why mountain lions are awesome:

Excited for Mountain Lion but haven’t been able to get your hands on it quite yet? No problem, we put together a video of 30 of Mountain Lion’s new features and crammed them all into just two minutes for your viewing pleasure.

You can catch the video after the break. What feature are you most excited about?

With the release of OS X Mountain Lion today, Apple also released Safari 6.0 for Mac. As noted by some, the Windows version of Safari didn’t see the update, and in fact, disappeared from Apple’s site altogether.

While a direct download is still available, speculation has arisen that perhaps Safari for Windows had been completely discontinued.

Time Machine, Apple’s amazingly simple backup solution, debuted in Mac OS X 10 Leopard and changed the way a lot of us kept our Macs backed up. No longer were we tied to complex software like Retrospect, or easily forgotten manual backup systems. Time Machine made backing up our Macs easy and automatic. Even more importantly, it just worked.

Flash forward to today’s release of Mountain Lion, and Apple has quietly added a feature many of us have been wishing for, whether we knew it or not – multi-disk backups. One of the best practices in data backup plans is to create more than one backup, and then take one of them off site (if at a business, say) for safekeeping. At home, having more than one cheap, capacious hard drive to backup to is added peace of mind, considering how often those cheap, capacious drives can fail.

Apple only sells OS X Mountain Lion as a digital download in the Mac App Store. The installer weighs in at a hefty 4.05GB, but the good news is that you can install your copy of Mountain Lion on all of your Macs for no extra charge. Technically, the Mountain Lion installer can be used on an infinite number of Macs once you have it; you just need to make a bootable disk or drive.

See, the Mountain Lion installer is set to self-destruct once it’s used. When your Mac reboots running Mountain Lion, the installer will be gone and you’ll have to re-download it if you want to use it again. Another reason to create a bootable copy of Mountain Lion is if you want to do a clean install. Apple’s installer will keep your files and personal setup intact while installing Mountain Lion, but a bootable disk will allow you to erase your Mac and start completely anew.

The good news is that creating a bootable disk or USB drive of Mountain Lion is pretty simple.

Apple has now begun reissuing OS X Mountain Lion redemption codes to customers eligible for its free up-to-date program. These codes replace those issued to customers earlier today, which had already been redeemed, according to the Mac App Store.

SpellTower, the award-winning word game for iOS, is part of the first wave Mountain Lion-ready games in the Mac App Store today, with Retina graphics and support for Game Center leaderboards and achievements shared with iOS, a Mountain Lion only feature.

SpellTower is a word finding game – click your way through letters set up in a grid, creating words from adjacent letters. The visuals, the sound, and the simple pleasure of finding longer and better words all shine through, making it a joy to play. But how does a game designed for the touchscreen of your iPhone or iPad work on the Mac?

Many Mountain Lion apps will function normally under Mountain Lion, but many won’t. Of particuar concern are the various utilities that help keep Mac systems secure, scan for viruses and malware, integrate with enterprise systems in businesses and schools, and dianose and repair problems.

These tools often require much deeper integration with OS X than other apps. That means that developers need to ensure they function as intended and don’t damage any documents, files, OS X system components, or other apps. That can sometimes delay releases of key utilities.

Here’s a list of Mac utilities and enterprise tools that have confirmed Mountain Lion Compatibility

Apple has updated Xcode this morning to introduce compatibility with OS X Mountain Lion, which was released earlier today, and iOS 5.1. The update also brings support for the new MacBook Pro’s high-resolution Retina display.

Now that Apple has released OS X Mountain Lion into the wild, millions of Mac users have a shiny new operating system to play with. If you haven’t been closely following our Mountain Lion coverage over the past several months, you may not know some of the marquee features Apple has added in its latest Mac OS.

But you’re in luck! Whether you just need a Mountain Lion refresher or you’re getting a glimpse of it for the first time, we’ve got 10 killer features for you to check out first.

Despite releasing OS X Mountain Lion and a whole host of app compatibility updates this morning, Apple has finished delivering new software. The Cupertino company just rolled out iTunes U version 1.2, which adds note-taking, and new search and sharing features.

With every new major release of OS X, there are, unfortunately, a lot of people who end up having problems. The big news this morning is that many new Mac owners who are eligible for a free Mountain Lion update can’t redeem their codes for the update, but these poor sods aren’t likely to be the only ones with problems, as millions of Macs across the world do their darnedest to trip up the attack of Apple’s latest cat.

Tech support issues can be annoying, and it can help to bellyache and gripe with other people. So if you’re having issues with installing or even downloading Mountain Lion, why not jump into our open thread and tell us what’s going on. Maybe we or one of our many great Cult of Mac forums users can help! At the very least, we can commisserate, and that’s always nice too.

CLICK HERE TO TALK ABOUT MOUNTAIN LION TECH ISSUES IN OUR FORUMS

It’s not exactly hard to make a website these days, but Webr makes it just about as easy as could be. It’s a free iPhone app which lets you create and publish a website in just a couple of minutes, and it’s pretty impressive.

Several readers have contacted Cult of Mac to report that Apple is issuing them used redemption codes for OS X Mountain Lion through the free up-to-date program. The Cupertino company’s customer support line has acknowledged the issue, and promises a fix is coming later today.

Apple’s latest jungle cat is called Mountain Lion, and the new version of OS X is available as a $20 purchase in the Mac App Store. If you’ve updated to a new version of OS X before, you know that getting everything in order isn’t always as easy as Apple makes it out to be. In this how-to guide, Cult of Mac will show you how to get your Mac ready to install OS X Mountain Lion the right way.

In addition to Mountain Lion, Apple today launched the latest generation of its OS X Server platform known as Mountain Lion Server. The release includes several new features that will appeal to small business and larger enterprises alike.

Like Mountain Lion, Mountain Lion Server is available from the Mac App Store. The  $19.99 price tag is a huge bargain given Mountain Lion Server’s feature set.

The release functions as an add-on to Mountain Lion in the same way that Lion did last summer. That means that you will need have Mountain Lion installed before you can purchase and download Mountain Lion Server.

If you’ve decided to wait for OS X Mountain Lion until all of your apps are compatible, don’t think Apple has forgotten all about you already. The Cupertino company has just released Safari 6 for OS X Lion, which introduces a number of new features, including the smart search field, an offline Reading List, and more.

Following the release of OS X Mountain Lion this morning, it seems Apple is also pushing out updates to its applications to ensure they’re compatible, and to take advantage of new features. One of the apps on that list is iPhoto, which now has new sharing options in version 9.3.2.

If you rushed off to the Mac App Store to download OS X Mountain Lion as soon as it was released this morning, then I hope you like it. Because once you’ve handed over your cash, there’s no going back. Apple has now pulled OS X Lion from the Mac App Store, and once you’ve purchased Mountain Lion, it will be removed from your “Purchased” list.