Gadgetory

hey guys it's eli with the verge i'm here at the developer preview of mac OS 10 10 8 mountain lion don't let the name fool you unlike snow leopard 2 leopard mountain lion is actually a pretty big upgrade over lion with some pretty major features let's go through them when you first log into a mountain lion machine you're going to be prompted for your Apple ID and to enable iCloud this will pull down your app store information your iTunes information it'll set up facetime it'll set up iCloud ipod will immediately begin pulling down your contacts your calendars all your other information so you're getting the ipod experience right from first set up with my own line the first major new feature in mountain lion is messages it's actually the ichat app but it's been renamed to messages and in addition to supporting google talk yahoo and AOL Instant Messenger it now supports apple's proprietary I message service so you can see the interface has been totally redone it looks a lot like the iPad app and it actually just works so if I say hello to Ross here it's going to pop up there you can see it showed up on the iPad it showed up on the phone Ross can say something back to me he has no idea that i sent him this from a computer hey what's up i can pick up the phone i can say nothing it's pretty awesome conversation that we're having right now so i said nothing showed up on the computer it showed up on the ipad i can go over here after Ross responds with some cutting remark about what do i want i want you to die messages is also integrated with facetime so if i want to go ahead and call William I can just go ahead and call them directly for messages it's going to open the facetime app let's just start ringing come over here have you answered William is a panda bear pretty good man pretty good lastly messages also supports the classic services google talk AOL instant messenger yahoo i can just go over here I've got the window this is pretty familiar window you can see paul's pretty cool dude i can open up a regular sort of IM window talk to paul than usual way but all my messages will still be logged in the new UI another major feature of mountain lion is Notification Center it's built exactly like the iOS notification Center when you get any message and other apps so if i get an iMessage right here you can see the notification pop down from the top of the screen it's in the top right and i can either click on the new notification light this lights up blue when you get a notification or i can use a new gesture which is a two-finger swipe from the right to the left of the trackpad so i just swipe with two fingers and reveal Notification Center I can see here the two messages of William sent me if I click on one instantly pops me back into messages you can get all kinds of notifications their mail messages FaceTime there's also an API so developers can send their own notifications just like iOS ical is now calendar you can see it still has the same kind of gross texture at the top is the line calendar but the interface has been slightly changed calendars are now in a permanent window on the left here instead of being that kind of pop over the disappeared reminders looks just like the app on the iPad if you've seen that you're me very familiar with this it's so bare bones it doesn't have a preference I like right now but it definitely works and it syncs with iCloud so you can get all your reminders and audio devices next up is notes notes has been pulled out of mail and made into its own app in mountain lion it looks just like the app on the iPhone just like the app on the iPad you can actually pop open a note and set it aside you can set this to be always on top so if I open up another app here it'll be on top of Safari even though Safari is open and I can close it and it's still in the main list here you can sync notes across different accounts whether the bi cloud Gmail Yahoo you'll also find share buttons throughout mountain lion just like in iOS so here i am in safari and to the left of the address bar you can see there's a share button hit Twitter it brings up the tweet sheet i can type this is cool just like a can in iOS I can hit add location there's location services no zone in New York if I so inclined I could hit Send and tweet it out oddly there's no Facebook or YouTube support globally with the share button but certain apps support it so if i look in quicktime for example quicktime will let you send a video to facebook and send a video to youtube but that's only in quicktime at the moment mountain lion also includes Game Center which is not fully enabled in the preview build that we have but Apple demoted to us it's exactly a game center on the iPad it lets you find games once you find your friends lets you play against opponents it also lets you do multiplayer against iOS devices Apple showed us a demo of real racing on the iPad playing against Real Racing on the back mount line also includes airplay mirroring which lets you send your Mac's display to an Apple TV its output at 720p and it intelligently scales so you have to think about what resolution your computer's at you get stereo audio and you can mirror games you can mirror shows and videos from the itunes store you can mirror pretty much anything that shows up on your mac screen mountain lion el sol includes a major new security feature called gatekeeper which protects max against malware out of the box mountain lion will only run apps for the Mac App Store and apps that have been signed by the developer developers can get security certificates from Apple the new addition to the $99 Mac Developer Program Apple is insistent they're not trying to curate the web or lock down what developers can do they just want apps to be trusted by users if you want you can still set your Mac to run apps from anywhere and even when you have your Mac lockdown you can right-click on an unsigned app and run it individually there's also a whole host of other little tweaks and changes throughout mountain lion there's no more software update all software update is handled through the mac app store when you go and click on software update in the Apple menu pops right up into the update in the mac app store when there are new software updates you get an update directly Notification Center Safari now has a unified address bar in search field just like chrome there are a bunch of view features for Chinese users China is Apple's fastest-growing market and they're making a big push to cater to Chinese users there are new input methods there are new accounts and the share button supports a bunch of popular Chinese services like YouTube mac OS 10 10 dot 8 mountain lion is available for developers today if you're part of the developer program you can go get a beta right now for consumers it will be out in summer 2012 Apple hasn't said how much it'll cost but it'll be a paid update in the mac app store once released