This time around, Apple's giving itself and developers what is likely to be a shorter timeframe to work out bugs and integrate new features. Apple broke with that tradition with Lion, instead showing it off about 9 months before it would hit the market. That said, the release represents an unusual departure for Apple, which in years past has used its annual developer conference as a place to unveil its major Mac OS releases. In Mountain Lion, iCloud is that glue, taking some of those iOS apps gone OS X and made them work with one another. In Apple's vision, that role's been taken over by iCloud, and the software that taps into it. To carry the "hook up" comparison further, it's another step in Apple's strategy to tie users into its ecosystem, creating differences where they're needed, but also blending in similarities that make everything feel more unified.įor years the unification came in the form of iTunes, but as restated by Apple CEO Tim Cook in a talk earlier this week, the company believes that computers are not longer at the center of people's digital lives. Mountain Lion is very clearly the result of a longer term commitment.ĭoes that mean we've finally reached a point where OS X (as Apple calls it now, not "Mac OS X") and iOS are on the cusp of becoming one in the same? No. When taking the wraps off Lion (Mountain Lion's predecessor) in 2010, Steve Jobs said the software was what the company imagined would happen if the iPad and the MacBook "hooked up." Of course, the idea of convergence between the two platforms is nothing new. It's also a direct response to recently-added features on those devices that-for better or worse-make the Mac a less essential piece of the puzzle. Like Lion before it, Apple has imbued the new software with many of the top-billed features from the iPhone and iPad, all with the intent of making its computers more useful and approachable to the millions that have snatched up an iOS device in recent years. The software is being released as a preview to Apple developers today, with a commercial release to follow sometime this summer through the company's Mac App Store. Its name is Mountain Lion, and it's the next major release of Mac OS X.
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