Top 10 new features from Apple's next Mac OS X Mountain Lion

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On February 17, 2012

In a very un-Apple fashion the Cupertino company yesterday released the developer preview of the next version of its Desktop operating system, which will carry the name OS X Mountain Lion. As you will see from this top 10 new features Mountain Lion is heavily influenced by iOS.

Here are the top 10 features from the OS X Mountain Lion preview.

1) Login to the cloud – With Mountain Lion, iCloud gets even more love from Apple,  you can now use your Apple ID to login to your Mac. After you have logged in iCloud will automatically synchronize all your emails, documents, photos and contacts. And just the same way that iCloud works today, any changes made on the Mac are instantly reflected across all your devices – iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. This is great news for those who own several Apple devices.
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2) Messages – With Messages Apple is pretty much killing the iChat. iPhone and iPad users will already be familiar with Messages. Whats great is that you can add chat via your AIM/ Google Talk/ Yahoo! account or send unlimited message to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users using iMessage – for free! It also features attachment support, delivery reports, read receipts etc.
Messages can be downloaded as a beta version today, it can be downloaded from the following link.
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3) Reminders – An all new Reminders app that syncs to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch via iCloud. If you are anything like me you will also forget a whole bunch of important things. This new app for Mountain Lion means you can add new reminders or check up on the reminders you have from the desktop. Thanks to  iCloud support all your reminders are automatically synced to your iPhone.
Reminders_Mountain_Lion.jpg

4) Notes – A lot of us have been waiting for this update, even though Notes isn’t new per se, the changes to Notes in Mountain Lion is that its broken free from the Mail app into its own app to parallel the Notes app in iOS. Now you can make notes as an when you want and even stick them to the desktop to help you remember them a little more clearly. These notes will also be synched with your iOS Devices.
Notes_Mountain_Lion.jpg

5) Notification Center – Perhaps our favourite feature is an iOS style Notification Center. Mac OS X will be the first OS X release to have a built-in Notification Center that lets you stay on top of things. The Mac OS X Notification center is very similar to the iOS version. Working like the Notification drag down bar in iOS, users will be able to access a panel to the right of their desktop at any time to see what the latest notifications are.

Notification_Center_Mountail_Lion.jpg

6) Share Sheets – Share Sheets are heavily inspired by the share button seen across the Web. A handy way of emailing links or posting videos to Youtube, we believe you will use this feature more often than you can probably think right now. Sharing your content has never been so easy.
Share_Sheets_Mountain_Lion.jpg

7) Twitter – Twitter integration is another feature that’s straight from iOS. Operating System level support for Twitter accounts that lets you sign-in once and tweet from any application, will be very useful. In the same way Twitter is everywhere on your iPhone or iPad, Apple has added the blue bird in a similar way here.

8) Game Center – If you enjoy playing games then this is great news for you. Apple is bringing the Game Center from iOS to Mountain Lion, allowing users to find friends to play with, check out their leaderboard stats and achievements gained. What is interesting is that  it will allow you to play other Game Center users regardless of what device they are on.
Game_Center_Mountain_Lion.jpg

9) Airplay – Airplay Mirroring is as easy as on iOS. With an Apple TV hooked up to a television set, Air Play lets you mirror your Mac on a HDTV or simply stream the movie playing on your Mac to the TV.
Airplay_Mountain_Lion.jpg

10) Gatekeeper – Gatekeeper is designed make your Mac more secure. It gives you the ability to run your Mac in 3 different modes. The first one lets you download and install any app you want, just like OS X Lion. The second lets you run apps from the Mac App Store and apps with a Developer ID. The third mode restricts your Mac to only apps from the Mac App Store.

 

What feature are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments!