If a Snow Leopard follows a Leopard, isn’t it inevitable that a Mountain Lion follow a Lion? On a Thursday morning, just days after it’s share price reached $500, Apple quietly announced it’s newest iteration of OSX called Mountain Lion (ML), to be available this summer. The launch was a surprise on two counts. One that it comes less than an year after Lion came out. Two, that it launched so quietly, without a keynote presentation pointing to a new future for OSX in which there will be yearly updates, just like iOS.
ML is all about iOS. The iPadification of OSX that started with Lion continues with ML, moving towards a unified operating system for both mobile and desktop devices. In fact, this is not unique to OSX alone. Even Windows, in it’s next iteration, is leaning towards mobile, with metro UI on Windows 8. While not as radical a UI change as Windows, ML borrows many features from iOS that make life much easier, particularly if the user’s already using the Apple ecosystem.
The first important feature in the long term would be iCloud. Presently iCloud handles mail, contacts, and calendars of users. With ML, documents are added to it. So, if a user makes changes to any document in the iWork suite, changes will appear on all other Apple devices. Encouraged by it’s iMessage app on iOS, Apple brought it to the Mac. It replaces iChat and lets users send messages, photos, HD videos even documents to other Macs or iOS 5 device. A beta version of Messages app has already been released for Lion users. It not only works with an Apple ID, but also works with AIM, Googletalk and Yahoo! Messenger credentials.
ML also promises to change user’s workflow, with a notification center borrowed from iOS. When notifications come in, be it mail, sms, calendar alert or from a third party app, they appear like a banner and disappear. Swiping to the left shows a structured list of all notifications, just like in iOS.
Needless to say, other prominent features of iOS also come to ML. Notes and Reminders, two of iOS5’s prominent features come to the desktop, as does syncing. So once you create a note or a reminder on any device, it appears on all of them. Interestingly, many sharing options come to apps like Safari and Photo booth and even from quick look of any file. For the first time, Twitter is completely baked inside the OS, so sharing gets easier.
Using the new gamecentre, users can compete with other gamers on iOS devices and Macs. Airplay mirroring, only available on iOS devices till now, comes to Mac which streams whatever is on it, on a HDTV using an Apple TV. ML also gives a lot of importance to security with Gatekeeper, which offers three security options. Under the first users can install only apps from the App store, under the second they can only download apps from those developers who have a security certificate from Apple, and under the third they can install any application. All in all it is an OS for the Post-PC world.
The author is a tech geek. Email: articles@theadarsh.net