OS X Mountain Lion, the Apple’s updated desktop operating system, is already a big hit. Downloaded over 3 million times in less than a week, the OS looks pretty much the same as OS X Lion, but it adds some great features. Mountain Lion is, according to Apple’s Phil Schiller, “the most successful [operating system] release ever”.
What Mountain Lion does is key for any of us who use an iPhone and/or an iPad; it gives Mac desktops and laptops the same tools already been available to us on mobile devices.In other words, it integrates the Apple-experience. iMessage, Notifications, Notes and Reminders, all key iOS tools, are now part of the desktop/laptop experience. Voice recognition and Twitter are as well and, as we reported last week, the voice recognition works incredibly well.
BUT, and this is a huge BUT, the power of OS X Mountain Lion may not be immediately apparent when you first launch a computer running it. No, as is so often the case with Apple, the new features are so tightly integrated already that “they just work”. That’s a double edged sword. You see, if you boot up a computer running Mountain Lion, it won’t look too different from OS X Lion. Sure, there’s a new icon in the upper right corner.
That’s the new Notifications system.
I also have another new icon up top.
That’s for Airplay. You may not have that icon. Why? Because it needs to be activated. And that is the point of this post. If you aren’t looking for the new features you aren’t going to see them and you certainly can’t use them.
So what to do? Read the Manual… or in this case, check out Apple’s own rundown of all the new features by clicking here. It only takes a few minutes, and it will be time well spent.
Trust us.