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.
Apple has updated its iWork suite (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) with Retina graphics for the new MacBook Pro and iCloud documents for OS X Mountain Lion. Documents in the Cloud allows you to access and manage synced documents across the iOS and OS X versions of the iWork apps. The functionality is baked into TextEdit and Preview in Mountain Lion, and Apple lets developers build iCloud document support into third-party apps as well.
Another Mountain Lion feature, Dictation, is also available when using the iWork suite. Like Siri on iOS, you can speak into your Mac’s mic and have your voice transcribed automatically.
The new versions of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers don’t appear to be live in the Mac App Store yet, but we’ll update this post when they are available. [Update: They’re out!] Sadly, iWork hasn’t received a major upgrade since 2009.
FileBrowser, the – uh – file browser app for iOS, has gotten a slew of new features in a recent update, one of which will make movie-downloading iPad owners very happy: Now the app can not only browse network-attached drives (like the Time Capsule), it can stream movies of any format to other apps on your iPad.
A friendly reminder for those of you downloading Mountain Lion: Facebook integration will not be added until this fall. Apple has said that Facebook in OS X “will be available in an upcoming software update to Mountain Lion.” If you’ve been following the news, you know this already, but we thought it was worth reiterating today.
While we don’t know for sure why it’s taking longer to add Facebook to the mix, our gut tells us Apple’s deal with Facebook got a little more complicated than both parties expected. Facebook in Mountain Lion is currently being tested by developers. So it’s coming, but not right out of the gate.
Renaming files in OS X is a fairly simple affair. Simply click a file name to select it, then click again (don’t double click!) to make the name editable. However, when you’re working with a file in your favorite app, a trip to the finder to rename it, or a trip to the Duplicate function may not fit within your workflow. It’s also just annoying. Why not just mess with the file directly from the file itself. Say,t he title bar? Well, in Mountain Lion, you can.
It took a good half hour, but Apple has now activated OS X Mountain Lion’s free up-to-date program following this morning’s release, allowing users with a qualifying Mac to get their hands on the latest release without paying a penny. All you need to qualify is a new Mac purchased after June 11, 2012.
Before you go ahead and upgrade to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, spare a second to check whether or not your favorite and most essential apps actually work with it. Sure, it might be nice to have notifications, a VIP inbox and direct Twitter integration, but it won’t do you much good if your text editor or to-do list app won’t even launch.
Luckily, there’s something you can do about that.
Apple has released OS X Mountain Lion for $19.99 in the Mac App Store. The OS comes with over 200 new features, including added iCloud integration, Messages, Reminders, Notes, Notification Center, Power Nap, Dictation, Sharing sheets, Twitter integration, AirPlay Mirroring, Game Center, Gatekeeper, Safari improvements, and more.
Apple revealed its ninth desktop operating system to the world on February 16, 2012, and Mountain Lion has been in developer beta since. The final GM version of the Mountain Lion beta was seeded to developers on July 9th.
Cult of Mac’s full review of Mountain Lion will be published in the next couple of hours, but for now, stay tuned to Cult of Mac for breaking coverage of Mountain Lion all day.
You can purchase and download OS X Mountain Lion now in the Mac App Store.
LiveClock, a tweak from Ryan Petrich that animates the Clock app’s icon to show the time, was once one of the first tweaks I would install after jailbreaking my iPhone. But after installing iOS 5, I had to live without it — because it just wasn’t compatible. Now, nine months after iOS 5 made its debut, it is!
Fantastical is one of our favorite Mac apps here at Cult of Mac, because it makes managing your calendar a breeze — unlike Apple’s built-in Calendar application. Today it got a massive update that introduces support for OS X Mountain Lion (coming today!), Retina graphics for the new MacBook Pro, and more. It also has 50% off its price tag for a limited time.
Back in the time of the OS X Leopards, the Finder became a whole lot more useful for anyone with photos and videos on their Macs (ie. everybody)/ We got Quick Look, which let us watch slideshows and movies right there on the desktop, and the Finder itself was good enough to use as a lightweight photo viewer.
Then Lion came along and broke one essential tool: the little slider in the bottom right of Finder windows had its functionality removed. It used to let you zoom file thumbnails defaults write Finder trackpad zoom, but in Lion the tool remained, but did nothing.
Thankfully in Mountain Lion the slider now works again. And happily for the photographers out there, the Finder has some other new tricks you’re going to love.
The US Patent Office has awarded Apple another patent tonight, this one for the Cover-Flow interface that showed up in iTunes 7.0 in 2006, and then in the Finder as a view option in 2007 with Mac OS X Leopard and the iPhone itself.
US Patent Number 8,230,360 is credited to Jeffery Ma, Gregory Dude, Rachel Clare Goldeen, Justin Henzie, and Fainer Broderson, with Apple as the assignee. This patent was filed on January 14, 2008, which is a far less amount of time than the mouse cursor one granted today as well, but still – four years?
Today, the US Patent and Trademark office awarded Apple a utility patent that covers the use of the mouse cursor that changes according to the context of the task it is engaged in. Called a “Dynamically Changing Cursor for User Interface,” patent number 8,230,366 describes the functionality of the on-screen mouse cursor when it changes to the familiar spinning beach ball, the green plus symbol when copying files, or the red number of items being moved from one disk to another.
Temple Run is an original, popular, and successful game by Imangi Studios. It was picked up by Disney to become Temple Run: Brave, a tie-in to the Pixar/Disney flick of the same name. If you haven’t already downloaded it, do so now. We’ll wait.
Pyramid Run is a horrible rip off of Temple Run. Do not download it. I’m not even going to link to it, but the similarities are clear. It’s not even a careful attempt to re-skin or remix the original. It’s a blatant cash grab, as you can see when you read the predominance of one-star reviews.
It’s bundle-o-rama here! We have the iStack Mac Bundle still going on (which is awesome), but today we have a little bundle. Something, focused, targeted…more creative.
The OndeSoft Mac Bundle brings you a clipboard manager (I can’t live without one!), audio recorder (podcasts from Skype recordings FTW!), & a screen ruler (sure pixels are dimensionless, but they still have to fit on screen).
More after the jump.
Beyond the numbers, there were some tantalizing tidbits about Apple and the company’s future plans during today’s quarterly financial call. While nothing quite lived up to Tim Cook comparing Windows 8 to someone trying to converge a toaster and a refrigerator into a single device during the last call, there were several choice comments.