OS X MOUNTAIN LION: Here's Why Apple Would Be Nuts To Charge You For It
by Steve Kovach on Feb 27, 2012, 11:00 AM
Advertisement
 Apple surprised us the other day with its announcement that it'll release a new version of OS X for Macs called Mountain Lion this summer. Mountain Lion's beta version is only available to registered Mac developers right now, but we've been lucky enough to play around with it since its introduction. For a beta release, Mountain Lion feels incredibly stable. That makes sense, since most of the features are just new iCloud-powered apps that make it easier to keep your Mac in sync with your iPhone or iPad. So based on that, will it be worth the upgrade this summer? If you're already using Lion, the current full version of OS X, probably not. The changes are very subtle compared to the jump OS X made last year when Lion launched. The big question right now is whether or not Apple will charge Mac users to make the upgrade. We hope not. Keep reading to find out why. Messages needs a lot of work syncing with your iPhone and iPad.  Apple's new Messages app is probably the one feature in Mountain Lion we're the most excited about. Ever since Apple introduced iMessage for iPhone and iPad, we've been dying to have it on our Mac too. Well, here it is. Anyone running OS X Lion can test the beta of Messages today. We've been using it for more than a week now. In general, it works very well. But if you have iMessage activated on your iPhone and iPad, it can get really annoying. When you're logged in, each iMessage you receive will buzz on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. That can get pretty distracting, especially if you're like most people and keep your iPhone around at all times. Messages doesn't always sync up when an iMessage is read, so it's not uncommon to return to one of your devices and see several messages you've already replied to waiting for you.
Why upgrade when just about everything Mountain Lion adds is available now?  Of all the 10 major improvements Apple touted with its Mountain Lion intro, almost every single is already on the Mac right now. Notifications? Growl has been doing that for years. Reminders and Notes? Forget the Milk, Evernote, and Wunderlist have you covered. You can even achieve AirPlay mirroring with a handy app called AirParrot.
But if you completely rely on iCloud, you'll be happy with Mountain Lion.  Some people may not want to deal with separate cloud services and apps for everything. If you're already reliant on iCloud, then Mountain Lion will make it even more useful. Just log in to iCloud on your Mac and all your notes, reminders, etc. will sync up. Just be careful: You only get 5 GB of free storage with iCloud, and your iPhone and iPad backups will take up most of that space.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow SAI: Tools on Twitter and Facebook.
| 
?>){kind=spacer}
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
LinkedIn
No comments:
Post a Comment