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.

Popular keyboard shortcut launcher Alfred has been updated with several new features and improvements. Version 1.3 of Alfred for Mac integrates with Apple’s Quick Look in OS X to let you see previews of files inside Alfred. A neat feature called file buffer gives you quick access to app and file placeholders above Alfred’s main search window.

The developers of Alfred have also added numerous other improvements and bug fixes in this 1.3 update. We’ve got the full change log.

If you’re not careful when using Safari, you could end up with a screen full of open website windows. Safari’s default behavior when opening a new link is to do so in a new window. This drove me nuts until I figured out I could just Control-click any links and they’d appear nicely in a new tab instead of a new window.

On the occasions I forget that feature and end up with a ton of open windows, there’s always the “Merge All Windows” menu command in the Window menu. It’s a slick piece of kit, but I’d like to trigger it with a keyboard combination. Here’s how.

Getting tired of “Sent from my iPhone” as your mail signature on your iPhone? What about “Sent from my iPad?” Still bored? Yeah, me, too. I’ve changed my signature to something a bit more magical on the iPad, but I really didn’t think about adding some basic rich text formatting and some images in to really spice it up.

Lucky for me (and now you), Greg Sargent, student web engineer, has. Here’s how.

The Touchfire is a weird little gadget, a silicone skin which covers your iPad’s touchscreen keyboard with a floppy membrane that partially simulates a real, physical keyboard. Launched over a year on Kickstarter, the Touchfire finally goes on sale today. I have been testing one out for the past couple of weeks. Is it worth the $50 asking price? Well, that depends.

 Tired of typing in your email address to login to websites on your iPhone? I know I am. Heck, even typing on the iPad can get to be a pain, with every site LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and the like asking for log in credentials – most of them wanting my email address or login name. Or, heck, password. You can use the iPhone autofill email address feature to make this process seamless.

Just like changing the default “OMW” text message auto-correct, here’s another idea on making the most of your iPhone time, rather than spending it typing in your email address, password, or street address.

Do you use OmniFocus on your iPhone? Do you use Launch Center Pro? Then you need to watch the above screencast, put together by Michael Schechter of A Better Mess. It uses the latter to create shortcuts and snippets of text to enter into the former, and makes the whole thing way, way faster.

Google released its Chrome browser on the iOS platform last week, and it wasn’t long before the app shot to the top of the App Store’s charts. People clearly wanted a change of pace, and Apple’s Mobile Safari just wasn’t cutting it.

If you’re a Google Chrome for iOS fanatics out there, you’ll be pleased to hear that a couple new Cydia tweaks have surfaced to make Google Chrome the best Safari replacement around.

If a picture tells a thousand words, what does an annotated screencast tell?

How many times have you picked up a new app and just couldn’t figure something out and wished that the developers could just show you how it works? Have you ever needed to explain a multi-step process (like Facebook security settings) and just thought: “If I could just show you how to do this…”? Then you understand why screencasts are powerful tools for teaching, explaining, and helping. This, of course, is where Voila comes in…easy screencasting and now at an awesome price.

Recent keyboards for both desktop and laptop versions of Macintosh computers come with media buttons across the top of the keyboard where the F keys are. For example, my 11″ Macbook Air has F1 and F2 assigned to brightness, and F11 and F12 assigned to volume. When pressed, they increase or decrease the volume or the brightness one little tick mark at a time. But what if you want finer control?