New UNIX commands and tools in Mountain Lion

One of the users at Ask Different recently posted an article on the Ask Different Blog. It is a very cool post about all the new UNIX commands in the latest release of OS X. In the article, he details six new commands included with Mountain Lion. Enjoy the article here.

Mountain Lion released today!

OS 10.8, the eight major release of Apple's desktop operating system has been released! The new cat, dubbed Mountain Lion sports over 200 new features. Some of the major features include iCloud tab syncing, documents in the cloud, Notification Center, and iMessage for the Mac, and Siri-like dictation. See all the new features on Apple's website. We've been hearing a lot about Mountain Lion for the past six months, as Mountain Lion has been in beta for developers. But now it is finally being released to the masses! Get it on the Mac App Store today for only $19.99!

Mountain Lion to be released tomorrow!!

Mountain Lion is officially slated for release tomorrow. Apple confirmed the July 25th rumors today at its third-fiscal-quarter earnings release this afternoon. You can hear the webcast of the earnings call on Apple's website.

Rumors say that OS X Mountain Lion will release on July 25th

There are many rumors about the release date of OS X Mountain Lion (No, I really do mean many, many, many, rumors). In case you didn't catch on, every single word in that sentence was a separate link to an article about the release date of OS X Mountain Lion. All of these articles suggest that the release date is set for next July 25th, next Wednesday. There are a couple reasons why this rumor is plausible. First of all, the Gold Master version was released to developers last Monday, the 9th. If you don't know, the Gold Master version is the final build that is released to customers. This points to an imminent release date. Also, it has been reported that Apple retail stores are going to be updating their display models on July 24th, the day before the reported release date. However, the content of the updates hasn't been confirmed. Yet another report from a third party support company that Apple has imposed a vacation blackout from the 22nd through the 29th, again suggesting a release sometime within that timespan.
I am really looking forward to this release, as it is somewhat significant. I probably won't upgrade right away, as with the Lion update, but I hope to upgrade soon after the release.

Mountain Lion

New Apple releases always interest me. Today, Apple announced OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), and made a preview release available to developers.
Major features of the eighth release of OS X include:

• Tighter integration with iCloud.
• iMessage. Now you can send messages for free from your desktop to any Apple device that supports iMessage.
• Twitter is also more integrated with the OS, as Apple is bringing over features from iOS 5.
• Sharing. Mountain Lion will make it easy to share photos and other media with a click of the button, whether it is over Airdrop, Flickr, or Twitter.
• Notification Center. This one intrigued me. Apple is going to bring the notification center from iOS 5 to the desktop. Apparently a two-fingered swipe on the right side of the trackpad will bring up the Notification Center. It will be interesting to see how often I will actually use it.
• Reminders and Notes. These two popular iOS apps are also being added to the desktop OS. Thanks to iCloud, they'll also be synced across all your devices.
• Game Center. Another popular iOS app brought to the desktop.
• Gatekeeper. This one also was an interesting features. Gatekeeper is a way for Apple to lock down security on your Mac. It basically has three levels of security. You can set your Mac to be completely locked down, which means only applications from the Mac App Store can be installed. You can go up to the second level, which allows install software that isn't from the Mac App Store, but is signed by Apple. A very interesting feature that is pushing people towards the Mac App Store. Luckily, for geeks like me, you can still install any software you want, if you choose.
• Airplay Mirroring for Mac. This one's been a long time coming. Since the release of iOS 5, you can mirror your iPad 2 or iPhone 4S on an Apple TV. Now it is being brought to the Mac. This is really big, because it cuts the cord for hooking up your Mac to a TV. Now there is no cord, it just works.

I think that this is going to be a very interesting release and am looking forward to seeing what happens with it. I find it intriguing that this release cycle will be very short, maybe as short as 12 months. Snow Leopard was released in August 2009. Lion was released in July 2011.  That's a 23 month release cycle. Going back further, Leopard to Snow Leopard was 19 months, Tiger to Leopard was 19 months...you get the point. 

Do you have any thoughts about Mountain Lion? Please let me know by leaving a comment.