Review: Apple’s Mountain Lion (OSX, version 10.8)

February 27, 2012 0 Comments

It’s barely been a year since Apple has introduced us to a new edition of their operating system. While OS X Lion met some harsh criticism upon its release, users still ranked it higher than its predecessor, OS X Snow Leopard. Lion still averages an impressive 4 stars in the app store when compared to Snow Leopard’s embarrassing 3.5 stars. When we recently heard about Apple introducing a new cat to its OS X lineup, we began to wonder what users like you would rate it.

Would it have the features that make a difference to you? Would it be easy to upgrade to, easy to use? Would it be worth the wait?

In setting out to answer these questions, we dug through commentary from all of the big names in tech…and even went so far as to consult Apple’s website to learn more about OS X Mountain Lion.

Features:

Entrepreneurs are always on the look-out for the newest tools that will help them move their venture forward. Apple claims to have packed 100+ new features into OS X Mountain Lion; here’s a run-down of the ones we think will be most useful for entrepreneurs.

Notification Center:

If you have an iPhone or iPad, chances are you’re already familiar with Apple’s Notification Center. The gray-background, slide-down feature organizes all of your notifications into a single, clickable list, along with other important info such as current stock trends and even the weather. Now, you can also have the feature on your Mac. Gone are the days of flipping between several pages, apps, or even writing down important tasks or notes. Notification Center will seamlessly pull information from places like your inbox, messenger, and even Twitter, and display them neatly on the side of your screen.

Share Sheets:

Sharing has become an integral part of how we interact with our devices. Think of how many times you’ve sent an email, made a post, tweet, status update, or other broadcast of something that you’ve seen online. Now, think of how much time you’ve wasted with copying the link to that awesome page, and either embedding it in text or pasting somewhere else. Apple’s new feature, ‘Share Sheets’ will anchor a small box to the left of the address bar in Safari browser that will allow you to share whatever page you’re looking at with ease. You’ll have so much extra time, you might just want to take on a second or third venture!

AirPlay Mirroring:

One of the most difficult parts of a presentation can be setting up the technology, and getting the projector to display what you see on your screen. Admit it, you don’t know how a projector works, you simply plug it in and hit a few buttons and hope for the best. Well, thanks to Apple’s new ‘AirPlay Mirroring’ feature, it’s easy to synchronize your screen with any TV connected to an Apple TV. A simple, ‘one-button’ set-up is all it takes to save you from looking like a n00b at your next big presentation.

Navigation/ Ease of Use:

If you’re one of the many (myself included) who endured the switch from Snow Leopard to Lion, you’ll have no trouble adopting Mountain Lion. Unlike the previous switch, Mountain Lion doesn’t appear to have many foundational changes. In other words, your keys will still represent the same letters/ shortcuts, and we anticipate scrolling to stay the same (yes, we paid very close attention to the sneak-peek video).

Should I Believe the Hype?

In spite of what will probably be a low price for the upgrade (Lion upgrades were just $29.99), this writer says “no,” and here’s why:

While Apple’s new edition of OS X is presented as a breakthrough in technology, it seems as though the Mountain Lion is…er…more bark than bite. For starters, we downloaded and tested ‘Messages’, and were not particularly impressed. Apple claims that with this feature, the user can “start a conversation on (their) Mac, and pick it back up on (their) iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.” Our team found that conversations do not efficiently pick up where they left off, meaning that phrases from past conversations might be missing, or not available at all. Of course, it can be difficult to follow the conversation if the context simply isn’t there. Also, the feature asks the user to add other users via their iTunes account. Conversations between a mobile device and a Mac calls for two separate threads.

If you’ve already read my post “10 Things I Hate About Twitter (In 140 Characters or Less),” you’d understand why I think Apple went a little overboard with their Twitter integration as a part of their newest update. Twitter is built into the system, similar to the same way in which it is build into Apple’s mobile devices: iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. One is left to wonder why Apple decided to marry its operating system with the world’s second most popular social networking site, while snubbing the hugely popular leader, Facebook. While the reasoning is not clear, Facebook fans need not worry. Facebook can easily climb aboard by building their own integration – a move we think they’ll take.