Mountain Lion is coming, and I for one welcome our new iOSified overlords (/simpsonsreference).
Later this month (probably Wednesday the 25th) Apple will unveil it's latest and greatest OS, OSX 10.8, know to the world as Mountain Lion. Now an OS update is always a big thing so read on to learn what it means to you. Can you upgrade? Should you upgrade? How do you upgrade? and will it be the "Lion debacle" all over again? Well read on and lets see…
Can you upgrade?
Like Lion before it, Mountain Lion is not for every Mac. Indeed Apple continues to draw up the drawbridge behind older Macs. Lion required that your Mac possessed an INtel Core2Duo processor of any kind, Mountain Lion is slightly more picky. It too requires a Core2Duo, but because it off loads so much of the OS load onto your Macs graphics processor, some of the lamer, older GPU's are simply not up to the task. There are several lists of qualifying Macs online. Here's one, but put simply, if you have a first generation MacBook, an early Mac Mini Core2Duo, an original Air, an early XServe or even a 2006 model MacPro then you can't come to the party.
Should you upgrade?
Yes. Yes you should. But with some caveats. If you are running the previous version of OSX, Lion, then jump on board. Mountain Lion is being described as to Lion what Snow Leopard was to Leopard, i.e. it fixes all the things that make Lion such a right of dog of an OS without adding too many new broken features (ooooh catty). Lets face it, Lion hasn't been Apples finest hour in OS development, so even if ML has its own fair share of bugs on release it can't really be a lot worse. You may as well crack on.
If you are running Snow Leopard then it may be worth waiting for a point release or two to see what happens. If you were the early adopter type then you would already be on Lion so, assuming you are the more conservative type, it's probably best to let the bugs shake themselves out. ML promises to be smoother and faster on Macs that can run it so you shouldn't see too much of a performance hit for running a more complex OS.
How do you upgrade?
This one is pretty easy. You'll need to be running either 10.7 (Lion) or you can upgrade straight from 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) via the Mac App Store. Simply click on the Mountain Lion app, buy it, at £13.99 it's somewhat of a bargain, and watch it download and install itself.
For more advanced users and those that wish to have a stand alone installer for Mountain Lion the procedure is the same as for Lion. Download the OS but before installing copy the installer folder from your applications folder. The installer deletes itself after upgrading so this way you'll have a copy that you can use for future installs.
So what will I get?
Lots of lovely obviously. Mountain Lion goodness includes the tern of "Save As" (thank you spirit of Steve, thank you), Messages, which integrates your sms, iPhone messages and other chatty stuff (bye bye iChat), notification centre, which lets you see whose been getting in touch, what apps have information for you and more, all in one place, Airplay mirroring, which will allow you to send your Macs display to a TV or other AirPlay device (very cool), and more. In all Apple are touting 200+ new features, which loosely translates into around 10 juicy upgrades and a whole load of little stuff you may or may not notice.
Apples Mountain Lion page is here if you want to read the whole list of new features. Myself. I'll be queuing up and ranting about how Apples update servers are taking a hammering as I try to download Mountain Lion mere moments after its official release.