Review: Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple’s OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion ($19.99 download from the Mac App Store) is the most advanced operating system for Macs today. Released earlier this week, Mountain Lion brings 200 new features to the Mac desktop experience but many of these features are hidden from plain sight and most users will likely need to dig deep to find them all. What most users will realize soon as they boot into the new OS is that it is faster, more stable and more connected to the cloud and various social networks.

I downloaded and installed Mountain Lion on two Macs. A review unit MacBook Pro with Retina Display as well as my daily driver MacBook Air 11-inch.  Installation on the Retina MacBook took over six hours to fully complete. Installation on the 11-inch Air took just under two hours.

Installing Mountain Lion

The Mac App Store was having intermittent problems on the  launch day, which may have been a factor on why the install on the MacBook Pro was excruciatingly long.

It made me wish we were back in the days of DVDs where major OS install would take no longer than 45 minutes as long as you had the DVD. The second time around with the MacBook Air was way faster and smoother and what most users are likely to experience.

Once you've made the purchase, the process is simple. The Mac App Store switches to the Launchpad where the Mountain Lion icon shows the download process.

Note that while I used 'Mac OS X' in the title of this review, Apple has all but gotten rid of any 'Mac' branding on OS X.

Once the 4.05 GB app downloads, it will prompt you to start the installation process. Users who need to install Mountain Lion to various machines (i.e. a portable and a desktop Mac) should consider Macworld's How to make a bootable Mountain Lion Install Drive . This makes it possible to have Mountain Lion on a USB stick for quicker installation.

The benefits of Apple’s download software distribution model are instantaneous access without having to leave your home or office. If you have an existing iTunes account then you pay, download and install the software. If you have a fast enough Internet connection, it works great and is reasonably quick. In the event that you need to restore  or reinstall the OS it is re-downloadable through the Mac App Store and should be applicable to all the Macs tied into your iTunes account.

You don’t even need to prepare your device in any way since all your existing files simply get updated and the redundant code gets removed. Complete backups of any Mac are highly recommended for anyone who plans to upgrade to a new version of the OS.

For owners of compatible Macs that don’t run the minimum Snow Leopard version of the OS (the oldest OS that can run the Mac App Store), the solution isn’t so simple or cheap.

They must first buy and install a copy of Snow Leopard and then buy and install Mountain Lion to get the latest and greatest version of the OS provided their specs are compatible.

(To find out more about Mountain Lion and which Macs are compatible with it, read my Mountain Lion Primer.)

If your Mac doesn't meet the minimum requirements to upgrade to Mountain Lion, don't despair. Apple will still support updates and tweaks to Lion, although you won't get the new features or the performance upgrades. One of my favourite computers is my 17-inch 2006 iMac Core 2 Duo. That is my main Mac desktop and I was dissapointed that it could not run Mountain Lion (limitation is in the graphics card). I noticed that Apple still pushes out updates to my older iMac, which is good.

Initial Impressions

 

Mountain Lion is noticeably faster than Lion. Booting up, restarting and waking from sleep feels almost twice as fast and that is even on a MacBook Air with lower-end specs and only 2GB or RAM.

On the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, the speed increase is simply impressive. Boot-up time is no longer than 5 seconds and the system can remember the previous state, opening all the apps and windows that you had on before your restarted.

In terms of visual changes, the top menu bar now features a few new icons. A HDTV icon signifies that AirPlay Mirroring is possible if there are nearby AppleTVs connected to any HDTV.

AirPlay, a feature inherited from iOS, makes it easy to mirror video from any Mac to a nearby HDTV through AppleTV. This means that anyone with a Mac and AppleTV can easily connect to an HDTV and run presentations, video, and share the contents of their desktop on a larger screen.

This makes it a great feature for classrooms and boardrooms everywhere, no more fiddling with projector cables. For frequent travelers and those who run a lot of presentations, it almost makes sense to buy an AppleTV for the sole purpose of using it as a conduit for portable Macs and iPads.

I put AirPlay mirroring to good use during the 2012 London Olympics when none of the cable channels were showing the Mens's Basketball games. Thankfully, CTV makes various streams of these events accessible so I was able to use my AppleTV and my MacBook Pro with Retina Display to cobble together a workaround. Streaming the desired channel on the MacBook Pro and sending it to my HDTV, I was able to watch some intense and physical games between France and Spain as well as the US and Australia. The picture was very close to the 720p HD resolution of my 32-inch Samsung HDTV in the living room. I only experienced hiccups when the stream would fluctuate and pixelate but for the most part the video was great (the audio only played on the MacBook Pro's speakers for some reason). This is such a cool feature.

 

Another new icon pertains to the beefed up Notifications feature also inherited from iOS.

This places all incoming mail messages, tweets, calendar appointments and even text messages in one area of of the desktop. Users can decide if they want to see the messages as they come in or in a list form similar to iOS and its window blind on the homescreen.

Notifications, like other new features Notes, Reminders and Messages are all tied into Mountain Lion’s biggest feature, iCloud integration.

Launched last year and developed to encompass all 350 million iOS devices and now desktop and portable Macs, iCloud is Apple’s unifying, real-time ecosystem.

Anyone  doing a fresh install of Mountain Lion on a new machine will have to sign into iCloud in order to proceed. This is because a user’s iCloud email account (or .Mac or .Me before it) will make sure that a lot of the cloud backup and synching features are based in the cloud.

For iCloud to work, devices need to be connected to the Internet at all times. iCloud makes it possible for documents such as reminders, notes, calendar entries and even chat sessions via Messages to appear automatically on any device you use.

This means if you use iMessage on your iPad and then move to your MacBook Pro, you can continue your discussion without any delay. You can also save documents to the cloud and not just on a resident desktop in order to access it later on another device, which is fantastic for those of us who work across different machines all the time.

iCloud is a big component of Apple's ecosystem. While Microsoft and Google have similar cloud offerings, none are as tightly integrated to the hardware and the OS as Apple's solution. iCloud already has 150 million active users and the scope of this adoption is expected to grow as more Macs move to Mountain Lion. Most of the iCloud features are completely free and up to 5GB of storage is given to all users free of charge.

5GB of free storage is plenty for most people. But if you need extra space, you can always buy additional storage. There's affordable upgrades for those who need more like $20.00 a year for 15GB of storage, $40 for 25GB of storage and $100 for 55GB of storage.

Sharing is big

Apple has made sharing files and documents extremely easy in Mountain Lion by integrating connecitivy to Twitter, Flickr, iMessage and Facebook (coming soon) right at the OS level. Now it is simple and fast to share whatever is on your Mac. All you need to do is pick the file, hit the drop down menu and pick a service or app. If you are signed up, you can share quickly and without even opening up your browser.

While there are various Mac apps that integrate with Twitter, there's really nothing easier than sending Tweets directly from the OS.

Several apps can access this functionality. Safari  allows you to choose how to share.

The Share sheet (right) loads into the application. Users who are logged in once on the system level can send  messages, type in comments, hashtags and location and send it off. Preview, Notes, Quick Look are just some of the Mac apps that natively offer this feature.

Facebook integration will eventually allow users to share webpages and photos and easily target who is receiving this. Apple will likely introduce the much needed screening and privacy functionality that Facebook sorely lacks.

Facebook integration will also revolutionize the address book as it will have the ability to bring in Facebook friends into contacts and even add profile pictures to existing contacts that may also be on Facebook.

Existing contacts on the Mac will not be automatically added on Facebook, so this is a one way integration that some users will find useful.

The best thing about these social media tie-ins is that they are just the beginning. Apple released API's to other developers so a service like LinkedIn can easily be added on here.

This is just scratching the surface of Mountain Lion, a steal of an upgrade for $19.99. Most Macs will undoubtedly feel faster, nimbler and more refined after getting this upgrade and users will, for better or for worse, definitely feel more notified and connected.