Apple today announced that it has released the first developer preview of the company's next-generation operating system, named OS X Mountain Lion. The release will bring over 100 new features, including a number of those familiar to iOS users such as Messages, Notes, Reminders, Game Center, Notification Center, Twitter integration, and AirPlay Mirroring. The first developer preview is available to registered developers today, with a public launch through the Mac App Store scheduled for late this summer.
“The Mac is on a roll, growing faster than the PC for 23 straight quarters, and with Mountain Lion things get even better,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The developer preview of Mountain Lion comes just seven months after the incredibly successful release of Lion and sets a rapid pace of development for the world’s most advanced personal computer operating system.”
OS X Mountain Lion included deeper integration with iCloud to automatically configure services like Mail, FaceTime, and Find My Mac, while iCloud Documents handles automatic push syncing of documents across devices. Security is also a focus in the upcoming release, with a new feature called Gatekeeper helping users to specify from which sources apps may be installed on their computers.
Finally, Apple is continuing its emphasis on expanding into China with substantial improvements for Chinese users included enhanced Chinese input methods and the addition of Baidu as a search engine option. Integration with Chinese email and video hosting sites as well as the Sina weibo microblogging service is also included.
Advance previews of OS X Mountain Lion are available from a number of sources:
According to Wikipedia: "The cougar (Puma concolor), also known as puma, mountain lion, mountain cat, catamount or panther, depending on the region, is a mammal of the family Felidae, native to the Americas. This large, solitary cat has the greatest range of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere,[3] extending from Yukon in Canada to the southern Andes of South America. An adaptable, generalist species, the cougar is found in every major American habitat type. It is the second heaviest cat in the Western Hemisphere, after the jaguar. Although large, the cougar is most closely related to smaller felines and is closer genetically to the domestic cat than to true lions."
Anyone guess what default setting for Gatekeeper will be, hmm could it be the App store only ???
Gruber's take:
My favorite Mountain Lion feature, though, is one that hardly even has a visible interface. Apple is calling it Gatekeeper. Its a system whereby developers can sign up for free-of-charge Apple developer IDs which they can then use to cryptographically sign their applications. If an app is found to be malware, Apple can revoke that developers certificate, rendering the app (along with any others from the same developer) inert on any Mac where its been installed. In effect, it offers all the security benefits of the App Store, except for the process of approving apps by Apple. Users have three choices which type of apps can run on Mountain Lion:
Only those from the App Store Only those from the App Store or which are signed by a developer ID Any app, whether signed or unsigned The default for this setting is, I say, exactly right: the one in the middle, disallowing only unsigned apps. This default setting benefits users by increasing practical security, and also benefits developers, preserving the freedom to ship whatever software they want for the Mac, with no approval process.
Call me nuts, but thats one feature I hope will someday go in the other direction from OS X to iOS.
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Apple today announced that it has released the first developer preview of the company's next-generation operating system, named OS X Mountain Lion. The release will bring over 100 new features, including a number of those familiar to iOS users such as Messages, Notes, Reminders, Game Center, Notification Center, Twitter integration, and AirPlay Mirroring. The first developer preview is available to registered developers today, with a public launch through the Mac App Store scheduled for late this summer.
Top Rated Comments
OSX 10.1 is known as "Puma."
OSX 10.8 will be known as "Mountain Lion."
According to Wikipedia:
"The cougar (Puma concolor), also known as puma, mountain lion, mountain cat, catamount or panther, depending on the region, is a mammal of the family Felidae, native to the Americas. This large, solitary cat has the greatest range of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere,[3] extending from Yukon in Canada to the southern Andes of South America. An adaptable, generalist species, the cougar is found in every major American habitat type. It is the second heaviest cat in the Western Hemisphere, after the jaguar. Although large, the cougar is most closely related to smaller felines and is closer genetically to the domestic cat than to true lions."
Gruber's take: