OS X Mountain Lion

OS X Mountain Lion (version 10.8) is the ninth and next major release of OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mountain Lion was announced on February 16, 2012 and is scheduled for release in late summer 2012. It will gain additional features from iOS, some of which were previously introduced to the Mac in OS X Lion.
In contrast to prior versions, Apple consistently refers to OS X Mountain Lion as "OS X" rather than "Mac OS X".

OS X Mountain Lion was officially announced by Apple Inc. on their website on 16 February 2012 as a successor to Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion". It is still in development and it is available for download as a developer preview version exclusively to Apple Developers with a paid membership.

System Requirements

As of Developer Preview 1, Mountain Lion supports most of the same hardware as Lion:

• x86-64 CPU (Macs with an Intel Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7, or Xeon processor)
• An EFI64-based system, such as:
  • iMac (Late 2007 or newer)
  • Mac Mini (Early 2009 or newer)
  • Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
  • MacBook (Late 2008 or newer)
  • Xserve (Early 2009 or newer)
  • MacBook Pro (Mid 2007 or newer)
  • MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
• At least 8 GB of free hard drive space
• OS X Mountain Lion no longer supports ATI's Mobility Radeon X1600 or Radeon X1900, Intel's GMA 950 or GMA X3100, or NVIDIA's GeForce 7300 graphics processors.
• OS X Mountain Lion now supports AMD's Radeon HD 6000 series of graphics adapters.

New and Changed Features

Deeper integration of iCloud, which includes new Open and Save dialog boxes across built-in applications, iWork and third-party applications via an API. Applications that make use of this API support a new user interface to view and manage documents in the cloud that are specific to the application being used.

Safari has a new omnibar, which is a combination of the address bar and the search field. In addition, the omnibar contains a "Reader" button, which shows the user just the text of the article without advertisements and distraction. When the user is on a website with no article, the button is disabled.

Automatic synchronization of documents in iWork with iCloud

Messages – a multi-protocol instant messaging and texting client (replacing iChat); supports the iMessage service. Also available on Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" as a beta version.

Reminders – a to-do list application, also on iOS, separated from Calendar

Notes – previously in iOS and separated from Mail into its own application, with support for desktop notes added, replacing Stickies

Share Sheets – a "Share" button and dialog box in Safari and other applications

Game Center – borrowed from iOS

AirPlay Mirroring – remote broadcast of OS X desktop to Apple TV via AirPlay

Gatekeeper – an anti-malware feature based on digital signatures and the Mac App Store

Twitter integration

Notification Center – A desktop version similar to the one introduced in iOS 5. Application pop-ups are now concentrated on the corner of the screen, and the Center itself is pulled from the right side of the screen.

More Chinese features – has additional features for users in China, including support for Baidu as an option for Safari search engine, QQ, 163.com and 126.com services for Mail, Contacts and Calendar, Youku, Tudou and Sina Weibo are integrated into share sheets.

Time Machine is able to do rotating backups on more than one storage medium.

Renamed Applications

iCal is renamed "Calendar"

Address Book is renamed "Contacts"

iChat has been enhanced and renamed "Messages"(see above)

Dropped Features

RSS support in Mail and Safari has been removed

Software Update – has been unified into the Mac App Store

X11.app – users are directed to the open source XQuartz project instead^.