The Mountain Lion is Here
Apple stealthily announced OS X Mountain Lion to the world this morning. I’ve been reading reactions and reviews all day, and the best post is definitely by John Gruber:
There many new features, I’m told, but today they’re going to focus on telling me about ten of them. This is just like an Apple event, I keep thinking. Just like with Lion, Mountain Lion is evolving in the direction of the iPad. But, just as with Lion last year, it’s about sharing ideas and concepts with iOS, not sharing the exact same interaction design or code. The words “Windows” and “Microsoft” are never mentioned, but the insinuation is clear: Apple sees a fundamental difference between software for the keyboard-and-mouse-pointer Mac and that for the touchscreen iPad. Mountain Lion is not a step towards a single OS that powers both the Mac and iPad, but rather another in a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes.
MG Siegler, Jason Snell, and The Verge also provided great coverage. We’ve been cranking out posts like crazy at Cult of Mac all day, and I wrote a little piece about Apple’s approach to iOS and OS X moving forward. My coworker Buster wrote a great review of the new Messages for Mac as well.
It’s been an interesting day.
