WWDC – Mountain Lion – Updates & Release Date

By Richard Mallion

So today was the start of Apple’s 2012 developer conference. As usual Apple staged a Keynote address to outline their OS  road map.
For Mac OS X we knew it was coming but now we have a date, July 2012. Mountain Lion will be released via the Mac App Store and priced at a very affordable $19.99.
The upgrade itself supports some 200 new features, but don’t they all… as we have seen with Lion, this looks to be more iOSing of Mac OS X .
First, Mountain Lion will gain all the missing iOS apps and features which includes the reminders app, the notes app, notification centre, game centre, system wide support for Twitter and Facebook, airplay mirroring, iMessage and iCloud integration.
For security and to help fight the rise in malware, Apple have added a new service called Gatekeeper.
Gatekeeper allows a user to restrict where apps come from. It has 3 modes. They can either restrict apps just to the Mac App store, restrict apps to only ones which have been signed with a valid Apple certificate or to finally allow apps from anywhere.
Power Nap is a new feature just for the latest laptops. This service basically allows OS X to perform some background tasks while the machine is asleep such as downloading mail, downloading updates and backing up.
Time machine now allows backup to multiple locations as well as to encrypted discs.
So overall Mountain Lion is shaping up nicely. And remember if you are interested in testing Mountain Lion, anyone can get hold of it as a beta by signing up as an Apple developer.