August 21st, 2012 by Chao Li 
Just upgraded to Apple OS X Mountain Lion? Apple’s new desktop OS includes a variety of new and exciting features that help you share content and updates more easily while staying up-to-date. Check out out these Mountain Lion tips to get the most out of your upgrade. From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here
Not only do people need protection from malware, they need protection from themselves. That’s where Gatekeeper comes in, a new feature of OS X Mountain Lion. By default, Gatekeeper lets you download apps from the Mac App Store or from developers who have a Developer ID. However, Apple recognizes that people who are power users will want more control. Here’s how to use and fine tune Gatekeeper.
Users will find Gatekeeper settings in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General.
If you try to open an app that Gatekeeper has blocked, you’ll see a warning message (shown below).
The benefit of Gatekeeper is that it prevents people from blindly installing apps or accidentally downloading and installing something from a misleading link.
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Mountain Lion’s AirPlay Mirroring feature lets you wirelessly share your entire Mac’s desktop on an HDTV, using an Apple TV (second generation or later). Just as with iOS devices, you can use AirPlay to share photos and videos, or even stream games to your TV. AirPlay can also come in handy for giving presentations in a classroom or conference room.
AirPlay Mirroring is designed to work on the following Macs: iMac (Mid 2011 or newer), Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer), MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer), and the MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer). Here’s how to get started.
AirPlay Mirroring is almost automatic. If an Apple TV is found on your Mac’s network, you’ll see an AirPlay Mirroring menu item in your Mac’s menu bar.
Bonus Tip: To use AirPlay Mirroring on older Macs, take a look at a $9.99 app, AirParrot, which adds similar functionality for both Macs and PCs.
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With Windows 8 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Microsoft and Apple are both trying to bring features and concepts from their mobile operating systems to their desktop OSs.
But that's where the similarities end.
At its heart, Mac OS X is still an operating system designed for desktops and laptops. Sure, Apple brought over a number of features from the iPad, but OS X is still based on windows, menus, folders, and the like. With Windows 8, Microsoft has bigger aspirations: Windows 8 will run on your desktop and your laptop as well as on your tablet, and it's unlike anything that has come before it.
Let's take a closer look at each one, and try to get a better feel of the direction each OS is headed.
Getting Started
The Windows 8 Start screen.
The differences between Windows 8 and Mountain Lion are evident from the moment you log in. When you launch Windows 8, you see something completely different: Instead of the familiar Start menu, taskbar, and Windows Explorer, you get the Start screen, which consists of square and rectangular icons for your apps called Live Tiles (more on that later). Scrolling left and right lets you see more of your apps. Windows Explorer is still around if you want it, but you would be forgiven for thinking that it isn't.
By default the Start screen shows every app installed on your PC, but you can choose what does--and doesn't--appear there. And you aren't restricted to apps: You can pin other items to the Start screen, including bookmarks to your favorite websites and contacts from your address book.
Windows 8 will run traditional desktop-style Windows applications too, and it will do so in a desktop environment that resembles the layout of Windows 7. You'll probably spend a lot of time in the traditional desktop environment--especially before all your apps get Metro-fied.
Launchpad in OS X.
When you first log in to Mountain Lion, you'll see the typical OS X desktop--the menu bar at the top, the OS X Dock at the bottom, a cool space-themed photo for the desktop background. Clicking the Finder icon (the blue smiling icon) in the Dock brings up a Finder window for browsing files and folders. Mountain Lion does have a rough approximation of the Start screen: Launchpad. Within Launchpad you get an iPad-like grid of icons for your programs, which makes it easier to locate and access them. Despite Launchpad's iOS roots, however, Mountain Lion by and large looks and feels like a Mac, not an iPad.
Notifications and Live TilesThe Windows 8 Start screen is more than an app launcher, thanks to Live Tiles. Though Live Tiles serve as app icons--clicking or tapping one will open that app--they also act as small informational widgets. The Bing Weather app's Live Tile, for instance, shows at-a-glance weather conditions, while the Live Tile for the game Cut The Rope shows your in-game status.
OS X has no feature that directly compares to Live Tiles, but it does include similar notification features. Dock icons can display numerical badges if an application wants your attention; for example, if you have three unread email messages, the Mail icon will display a '3' badge.
A notification alert in Mountain Lion.New in Mountain Lion is Notification Center, a collection of notifications from various applications. You can view Notification Center from anywhere with a simple swipe gesture, or by clicking an icon in the menu bar; when you call it up, your desktop slides over to reveal a list of notifications sorted by application. Programs can also display pop-up, banner-style notifications that appear in the upper-right corner. These banners float atop everything else on screen, and disappear after a few moments.
For its part, Windows 8 has pop-up notifications to supplement Live Tiles, and they behave much as Mountain Lion's do: They too appear in the upper-right corner and slide offscreen after a few moments.
App Markets Compared
Windows Marketplace is clean and attractively designed.With Windows 8, Microsoft hops aboard the app-market bandwagon. Although it's still pretty spare, Microsoft's Windows Marketplace is generally attractive and well designed. From a functional standpoint, it's fairly similar to the Mac App Store: Apps are organized into categories, you can buy apps with one click, and you can read or post a user review for each app on the store. Although it's early, I can say that the Windows Marketplace has one distinct advantage over the Mac App Store: app trials. That's right--you can actually try an app for a limited period before you plunk down money for it. What a concept!
Although we already have a clear idea of Mountain Lion's gesture support, we still don't know all of what we'll see in Windows 8. Mountain Lion lets you use trackpad gestures to perform a number of actions; for example, you can swipe up with three fingers to see all your open applications, or swipe left or right with three fingers to change desktops or to switch to full-screen programs. If you have Apple's touch-sensitive Magic Mouse, you can use some--but not all--of these gestures.
While Windows 8 has some gestures, at the moment they're all for tablets and touchscreen-equipped PCs. Swiping from the bottom and right edges of the screen with your finger brings up Charms, small toolbars that let you adjust settings or access additional features. Swiping from the left edge of the screen lets you switch between recently used apps.
Right-clicking will bring up any hidden toolbars in your apps. This is what the IE 10 address bar looks like. (Also: Nyan Cat!)
For touchpad and mouse users, Windows 8 makes use of "hot corners" and right-clicking to bring up Charms: You position your mouse pointer in the lower right to bring up the Charms bar; place it in the lower left to return to the Start screen; mouse to the upper-left corner and then mouse down to see recently used apps; and right-click to bring up the app toolbar along the bottom of the screen.
We don't yet know what sorts of finger gestures Windows 8 will support for laptops. At this point it's all up in the air, but late last year Synaptics demonstrated a Windows 8-friendly touchpad driver that accepts various gestures.
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In a recent episode of the TV show “Fringe,” a small town full of people suddenly starts going mad, in some cases growing duplicate limbs and even two sets of teeth. There’s also lots of dead bodies. As it turns out in this sci-fi horror scenario, two universes are literally colliding, because both are trying to occupy the same space. That’s exactly what’s happening in the mobile tech world: two devices or two operating systems are trying to take the place of one. Apple is avoiding that carnage by going against the convergence grain with OS X Mountain Lion.
As we embark on the next era of mobile computing, gadgets are getting mashed together in aggressive and intriguing ways. Take the Galaxy Note from Samsung, which doubles as a phone and tablet. This combo device has some pretty compelling features, including integrated pen functionality for taking notes and marking up websites and other items for easy sharing. And thanks to the HD screen, you can comfortably view everything from books to videos.
However, the Galaxy Note is just too large for a phone. It’s literally a two-handed device, which is a pretty significant trade-off for something that’s designed to be one’s primary communicator. The Galaxy Note also suffers from a lack of pen-enabled apps. There are some available such as Skitch from Evernote, but Samsung will need to attract a lot more developers in order to make hybrids like this palatable to the masses. (A rumored Galaxy Note tablet could help.)
On the software side, Windows 8 will attempt to be the brains of both laptops and tablets, which is a big gamble. Microsoft’s OS has a fairly intuitive and engaging Metro interface that’s similar to Windows Phone, but will also have a desktop mode for running traditional programs. Even Windows 8 tablets powered by ARM processors will be able to access the desktop, as well as run the upcoming Office 15. But Windows on ARM (WOA) won’t support existing desktop apps built to run on x86/64 hardware. That means the onus is on Microsoft to ensure that its Windows Store is stacked with Metro-style apps in time for launch.
The new OS X Mountain Lion coming this summer takes a stand against extreme convergence by borrowing some of the best iPad features without trying to be one. Yes, you’ll find iOS-style apps like Notes and Reminders, but there’s only one interface in Mountain Lion and one desktop. And not all of the iPad-like features are integrated in the same way. Take Notification Center. Instead of dropping down from the top of the screen, it slides out from the right side so as not get confused with two-finger scrolling. Plus, Apple added an additional innovation in Mail called VIP that lets you decide whose email alerts flash on the screen to cut down on the clutter.
I’m not saying that going the 2-in-1 route will always fail — after all, smartphones combined the PDA with the cellphone — but it’s dangerous when you don’t respect that certain devices are built for different things. In the case of the Galaxy Note, it’s trying to be your phone and your tablet while literally stretching the definition of the former too far. And with Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to have it both ways by marrying tablet computing with desktop computing. It remains to be seen whether consumers want this combination.
This week, NPD released a study on tablet usage, and it showed that only 10 percent of tablet owners have decided that they don’t need a PC notebook. More than a quarter of nontablet owners said they were likely to buy a notebook in the next year, compared to 18 percent for a tablet. As analyst Stephen Baker summarized, most people “continue to hedge their bets on their device preference by planning to maintain an array of products to afford them maximum flexibility.”
And that’s exactly what Apple is doing with its product lineup. The MacBook Air will continue to sit alongside the iPad and the iPhone, with iCloud keeping users’ data in sync across all of these devices. Do I wish the iPad were more like a laptop? Sure, a Smart Cover that doubled as keyboard would be nice. But that’s just a borrowed feature, not a whole new type of device. Until there comes a time when consumers have to make little or no compromises, people will continue to want their notebooks and tablets, and smartphones and tablets to stay separate.
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With Mac OS X Lion, iCloud was integrated but largely invisible. You could do things like sync iWork documents and view any photos taken with an iOS device in iPhoto ’11. But now iCloud is more visible and deeply woven into the Mountain Lion. And with more than 100 million iCloud accounts out there, this service has a lot of potential to tempt iPhone and iPad owners into picking up a Mac.
For example, when you use Mountain Lion for the first time, you can automatically set up multiple apps just by logging in with your Apple ID. These apps include Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Messages, FaceTime, Notes, Reminders, Game Center, Mac App Store, Documents & Data and Bookmarks.
Note that iCloud doesn’t automatically set up accounts you’ve already established on iOS devices, such as Exchange or Gmail. You’ll need to manually add them under Mail, Contacts & Calendars in System Preferences.
To make documents easier to manage and sync between devices, Mountain Lion includes a new feature called Documents in the Cloud. When you launch an app like Pages, you’ll see a Document Library view that lets you toggle between what’s stored in iCloud and what’s on your Mac. When you select a document, you’ll see that the Share button at the bottom of the box lights up, making it easy to send off that file via email, Messages or AirDrop.
In addition, you can instantly create folders by dragging and dropping one file on top of another, just like creating app folders on iOS. It was a cinch to make and name a folder using the TextEdit app on our 13-inch MacBook Air.
Documents in the Cloud will be coming to iWork apps shortly. When you make a change on a presentation using your Mac, for example, it will automatically show up on your iPad seconds later.
iCloud isn’t limited to Apple’s own apps, either. The developer API enables developers to create document apps for OS X and iOS that can talk with each other.
However, Apple noted that the application would need to be available in the Mac App Store. We’re not sure we’d be willing to give up Dropbox for Documents in the Cloud because of its cross-platform capabilities, but if you’re comfortable with an all-Apple setup it should do the trick.
Bye, bye, iChat. Messages has now taken over in MacOS X Mountain Lion, combining iMessage with instant messaging (AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber). Messages will be available for Lion as a separate beta download starting Feb.16.
The coolest part of Messages is that you can send a message to anyone who owns an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5. I found it convenient to send off a quick message to my wife’s iPhone from my MacBook while on the bus without having to pull out my own iPhone. When she replied, the message automatically showed up both on my laptop and iPhone (it buzzed in my pocket).
Another neat feature is that you can drag and drop photos and videos right into the Messages window and send it off as a multimedia message. Just keep in mind that you can’t send messages to people who don’t use iMessage. That means your Android-toting friends are off-limits.
Although Facetime continues to be a separate app in Mountain Lion, Messages integrates with the service. That means you can jump on a video call just by pressing the video camera icon in the top right corner of the screen.
The Messages app present your latest conversation in the right window and other conversations in the left pane, making it easy to pick up a chat where you left off.
One of the most asked-for features in iOS has landed on Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Notification Center delivers banner-style alerts for incoming messages, calendar entries, reminders, Mac App Store updates, Twitter updates and even Game Center invitations to games. The banners disappear after five seconds, but at any time you can two-finger swipe left from the right side of your touchpad to see all of you notifications in one place. You can also launch this view by clicking the little circle in the top right corner of the screen, which turns blue when you have new alerts.
Although you can’t dismiss individual notifications within the Center, you can click the X next to the name of an app (like calendar) to clear all notifications from that app. Clicking on a notification will open the application. We’re glad that Notification Center works on the Launch Pad screen and in any full-screen app but wish it also opened in the Mission Control view.
So you don’t get overloaded with alerts, OS X Mountain Lion lets you choose which apps deliver notifications and whether they’re presented as banners or slightly larger alerts. But the best way to minimize noise on your desktop is to choose some email VIPs. This new feature allows you to select VIPs in the Mail app just by clicking the star next to a person’s name within a message. From there you’ll have the option to have only email notifications show up from the people you deem most important.
We’re glad to hear that Apple is letting developers leverage its Notifications API, because otherwise our alerts from Tweetdeck and other third-party apps would get downright dizzying. We hope to see a lot of compatible programs at launch.
The new Reminders and Notes apps ported from the iPad for OS X Mountain almost feel like oversize widgets. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because we suspect that users will appreciate the simplicity of these apps. Their true utility comes in the seamless synchronization between iOS devices and the Mac.
Just as with the iPad version, Reminders lets you create to-do lists and assign due dates as well as the priority level. Just hover over the “i” icon on the right side of the screen to see your options. If you have multiple to-do’s, the search field at the top left part of the screen will come in handy.
Although iCloud is supposed to push these reminders to your iPhone and iPad, the syncing was sporadic in our early testing. On a few occasions when we added a Reminder on our iPhone 4S or iPad 2 it automatically showed up on our MacBook Air, but other times they simply wouldn’t sync. (Closing the app on our iOS device sometimes helped.)
We had better luck with the Notes app, with most of our notes syncing within a minute. We expect sync times to improve as Mountain Lion gets closer to launch.
Plus, Notes on OS X Mountain Lion is more robust than the iPad version. For example, you’re supposed to be able to drag a photo or attachment to your note, as well as format notes with fonts and bulleted items (good for recipes). At a later date Notes will also support Web links, perhaps giving users fewer reasons to use a service like Evernote. Dragging photos into our Notes didn’t work when we tried it, but we assume it’s a bug Apple needs to fix.
As with the iPad version, you can share notes via email, but you can also add them to outgoing messages by using the built-in share button. If you want to treat that note like a Sticky, just double click it so that it stays on your desktop.
Macs are getting more social with Mountain Lion’s Share Sheets. This feature makes it easy to share items directly from the app you’re using, whether it’s a website in Safari, Notes, iPhoto or Preview. Once you press the Share button, you’ll see an interface that lets you enter a message to the recipient.
The method of sharing varies based on the application, but Email, Message and Twitter are available in most cases. Flickr and Vimeo are also on board. Here’s a quick breakdown of the available services for specific apps:
Safari: Email, Message, TwitterPreview: Email, Message, Twitter, AirDrop, FlickrPhoto Booth: Email, Message, Twitter, AirDrop, FlickrNotes: Email, MessageQuickTime: Email, Message, and AirDrop, in addition to existing QuickTime video-sharing servicesQuick Look: Email, Message, AirDrop, Twitter, Vimeo, FlickrDocument Library: Email, Message, AirDropiPhoto: Message and Twitter, in addition to existing iPhoto photo-sharing services.With Twitter you’ll see a thumbnail image of the page you’re sharing along with a Tweet box for adding your message. Twitter functionality in Mountain Lion goes even deeper. You should see Twitter profile pictures in the contacts app, and soon you’ll be able to tweet links to apps in the Mac App Store and receive Twitter notifications.
Unfortunately, Share Sheets doesn’t work with Facebook, which is a pretty big omission in our book. The lack of Facebook integration isn’t a surprise given that it’s not available in iOS, either. However, because Mountain Lion invites more sharing, right now it feels like a missed opportunity.
The more popular Macs become, the larger a target they could become for malware, and Apple hopes to head off that threat with Gatekeeper. This new feature in Mountain Lion essentially creates a whitelist of apps based on whether they’re available in the App Store or–if you’re making your app available on the web–signed with a Developer ID. (Apple says it’s a simple process to obtain an ID, which costs $99 per year.)
Mountain Lion ships with three options under Security & Privacy that users can choose for dealing with downloaded applications. The default mode in the developer preview is “Anywhere” because there aren’t any applications yet that have been digitally signed with a Mac Developer ID. But when Mountain Lion launches for consumers this summer the default selection will change to “Mac App Store and identified developers.” Those looking for maximum security can select “Mac App Store” for downloading apps only from Apple’s storefront. At this level you’ll benefit from Apple’s own review process as well as the fact that Mac App Store apps have user reviews.
When we attempted to open an unidentified app after installing it from the Web with the Mac App Store and identified developers setting turned on, a message popped up saying that the program “is not from an identified developer. You should move it to the Trash.” Apple will be changing the language of this dialog. If you choose to you can manually override Gatekeeper by pressing Ctrl and clicking on the name of the app within Finder.
Overall, we like that Apple is giving users more choice when it comes to deciding how stringent they want their systems to be in downloading software. It will be up to developers to ensure that they get a Developer ID so that their apps aren’t mistakenly labeled as malware.
Imagine you’re just surfing the Web and all of a sudden you get an invite from a buddy who wants to challenge you in a game from his iPad. Game Center for OS X Lion makes this scenario possible. Just as with the iOS version, this gaming social network helps you discover new diversions and friends to enjoy them with, as well as see how you stack up against the competition.
Since Game Center already has a huge user base of 100 million registered users and counting and because Games is the most popular category in the Mac App Store, we see a lot of potential for Mountain Lion to help make the Mac chip away at Windows’ lead in PC gaming.
Game Center wasn’t available on our preview build of OS X Mountain Lion, but we did have a chance to see it in action and it seems to work well.
Apple is definitely playing catch-up when it comes to streaming content from your laptop to a TV. Intel has been doing this with its WiDi technology for a couple of years. However, AirPlay is easier to use and promises smoother performance. Provided you have an Apple TV, you can stream whatever is on your desktop — a presentation, a photo gallery, an iMovie or even a game — directly to your big screen. It works just like the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S.
The developer build of Mountain Lion we tested didn’t have AirPlay, but Apple did give us a demo of the feature working on another MacBook Air. Once you’re connected to the same network as your Apple TV, your Mac should just recognize it and present a menu option toward the top of the screen to connect.
During our hands-on preview, we streamed a racing game from across the room with little to no lag. However, video output is limited to only 720p, compared with1080p for WiDi and competing technologies such as the WHDI found on laptops like the Alienware M17x and M18x.
Nevertheless, should Apple roll out a full-fledged iTV as expected, AirPlay Mirroring on Lion could be one more reason to choose a Mac over a Windows PC.
Given that Mac sales continue to grow while the rest of the PC industry is totally flat, it’s easy to understand why Apple is taking a more conservative approach with Mac OS X Mountain Lion than Microsoft’s bolder Windows 8. The software is less of a “major release” but more of an update that builds on the success of the original Lion by adding more iPad features to the mix. The raised profile of iCloud in Mountain Lion serves as a bridge between tablet and desktop computing. It’s a smart approach, and it works.
While we encountered a few app freezes and would like to see Reminders and Notes syncing between Macs and iOS devices speed up, we can say that OS X 10.8 feels more mature and feature-complete. We especially like Notification Center for seeing your alerts at a glance. The biggest drawback right now is the lack of Facebook integration for sharing. And given the seemingly frosty relationship between Apple and the leading social network, there’s no guarantee that this feature will become available.
The one thing Apple needs to be wary of moving forward is tacking so much of the iPad onto the Mac that users feel as though they’re using two different operating systems. Right now, though, the balance feels just about right.
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