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Last Thursday, Apple caught us all a bit off guard with the announcement of OS X Mountain Lion, the next major version of OS X. Now that I’ve had a few days to sit down and take a look at it, I can confidently say that this is no small upgrade. Mountain Lion is a huge leap forward in the unification of iOS and OS X (Apple has officially dropped “Mac” from the name), bringing over many much-loved features including iMessages, Notification Center, AirPlay Mirror, and a whole host of new applications.

Follow along as we dive in and take a look at all of the great new features, updates and tweaks of your next operating system.

Mountain Lion is a huge leap forward for OS X

Notification Center

Notification Center is one of the biggest improvements in Mountain Lion

One of the most important new features in OS X Mountain Lion is Notification Center, which unifies notifications throughout the entire OS. If you’ve ever used an iOS 5 device, you should feel right at home using Notification Center. Right now only a few Apple created apps support the notifications, but from what I’ve seen, it does everything you’d expect.

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of Notification Center is the ability to have notifications pushed to you even when apps are not running. Make no mistake: this is a killer feature. Usually I have Twitter, Mail, and a Facebook Notifications app running at all times, but with Mountain Lion those can all be replaced by push notifications.

If you’d still like to use Growl notifications in Mountain Lion, check out Hiss, it integrates the user experience of Notification Center with the ubiquity of Growl Notifications.

Not only is this a huge benefit to your system’s performance, but it also goes a long way towards simplifying your OS X experience. Clicking the “dart” icon in the righthand corner of the menubar launches you into the Notification Center, which shares more than a passing resemblance to it’s iOS brethren, but Apple also went one step further by introducing a new finger gesture, a two finger swipe from the right of the touchpad.

This is the first OS X gesture to take advantage of where your fingers are on the touchpad, and it’s pretty intuitive. All things considered, Notification Center should make the switch to Mountain Lion worthwhile for almost any user, from beginners to professionals.

Notes

Notes is just about what you'd expect from an app called "Notes"

Notes has been a familiar face in the Apple world since the original iPhone, but for whatever reason Mountain Lion is the first time its been included on the Mac. Notes is essentially identical to what you’re used to on an iPhone or iPad, it has the same aesthetic, and the same basic feature-set.

In my opinion, this is a really nice stealth addition to OS X, it syncs seamlessly with all your other iCloud devices and I actually wrote a good part of this article within the app. Notes is also really lightweight, as a dedicated user of WunderKit (which takes almost 15 seconds to load), it’s nice to have an app just open an up in a split-second and get your thoughts written-out. It doesn’t do much, but thanks to the iCloud integration, I can see Notes becoming an integral part of my daily workflow.

Messages

Messages is really just a new skin on top of iChat with a little iMessage mixed in.

Messages is the most obvious addition to OS X Mountain Lion, finally allowing you to send and receive iMessages from your Mac. Sadly, right now it’s a just mess of good ideas that are poorly executed.

First off, Messages is really just a new skin on top of iChat, with some iMessage goodness mixed in. Right now, that’s not quite a winning combination. iMessages often failed to reach both my Mac and/or iOS Device, and when they did get delivered, the experience was too buggy to be useful.

In addition, FaceTime is still a separate app, which can be activated from within Messages. This really makes no sense, but that seems to be a reoccurring theme in this particular app. Messages is not doomed to fail, in fact, it has the potential to be an essential part of OS X, but in order for this to happen, Apple needs to clean up the interface and focus more on utility instead of aesthetics.

Game Center

Game Center's interface is highly stylized, much like the iOS version of the service.

Apple is really pushing their online gaming platform, Game Center, and there seems to be no exception in Mountain Lion. Once again, if you are familiar with the iOS version of the service, the OS X version shouldn’t be too surprising.

Since Game Center is only currently available among developers, I couldn’t really try it out, but if it works as advertised you’ll be able to play against friends and strangers in a platform-agnostic experience.

In plain english; if you have a game on your Mac and your friend has it on iOS, you’ll be able to compete head-to-head. This might present some gameplay issues, but thats really up to developers to fix. It’s nice that Apple has included the ability to use Game Center, and it’s certainly a good sign for the future of gaming on OS X.

Twitter and Share Sheets

In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has included their version of OS-wide sharing, aptly named “Share Sheets”. It works nearly anywhere with Twitter and Messages, and for photos and videos it supports Flickr and Vimeo, respectively.

You’ll probably notice that Facebook and Youtube are missing, among others. Apple is very picky about what services they’ll allow on their platform so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is intentional, but hopefully it’s just an oversight that will be eliminated when the OS is released.

While certainly not groundbreaking, Share Sheets should be a pleasant addition to your OS X experience, despite the fact that Apple seems to have been rather picky about which services to allow.

Airplay Mirroring

If you’ve ever used a PC with Intel’s Wireless Display technology, you probably understand how much Mac users are missing out on. Luckily, Apple’s own variation on the same idea of wirelessly extending your computer’s display onto your TV works just as well, if not better.

You’ll need an Apple TV to use AirPlay Mirroring, but at only $99 it’s not a hard purchase to justify. The ability to beam your music and video content to the TV wirelessly is just another amazing addition to Mountain Lion. Of course, since I was using a developer preview, the connection dropped occasionally, but Apple usually has these minor kinks worked out before the OS hits market, so I’m not worried. So if you’ve been holding out on an Apple TV, OS X Mountain Lion might just be enough reason to take the plunge.

Reminders

Reminders looks alot like its iOS counterpart.

Reminders is another app taken almost verbatim from iOS, and for most people, that’s a good thing. Functionally, it’s almost the same as the iOS app, allowing you to set reminders for yourself -and that’s it. You’ll lose the geo-fencing capability, but that’s probably just because your Mac doesn’t have GPS anyway, so we won’t shed to many tears over that lost feature.

In addition, you can export your reminders as Calendar events, which should be nice if you plan to take your task management full circle. Unfortunately, since Reminders is directly taken from iOS, it also includes a less-than-stellar interface which, in my opinion, looks a little childish. While some people may like it, i wish Apple would stick with classic UI elements instead of attempting to clone the physical world.

Security Settings (Gatekeeper)

Gatekeeper is perhaps the most controversial addition to OS X, as it locks down your Mac from potential security threats by preventing non-Apple approved apps from being installed. While this setting can be changed in System Preferences, it is symbolic of the shift towards an App-Store-centric universe.

If are a developer looking to make sure your app isn’t rejected by Gatekeeper, you’ll have to get a security certificate as part of the Mac Developer Program.

If you’re reading this article, you probably know a little about Macs, so Gatekeeper is probably more of an inconvenience than a feature, but from grandma’s point-of-view, it’s a lifesaver. Honestly, it’s not unrealistic to imagine that OS X 10.9 will do away with non-Apple approved apps altogether, but until that day comes, Gatekeeper is just one more setting for the true Mac geek to change when they set up their computers.

iCloud

If there is one thing I can say definitively about Apple’s strategy for the coming years, it’s that iCloud is really important. It’s everywhere now and Mountain Lion really pushes that concept.

For the first time, iCloud is beginning to dig deep into system level operations and that’s led to a far more robust user experience. When you first install the OS you are asked to set up iCloud and from that point on it is integrated into nearly every possible part of the experience; from syncing your notes to playing your music.

Although I found it to be considerably more useful than iCloud in Lion, there are still some glaring omissions. For example, “Documents in the Cloud,” isn’t really much better than it was in Lion. One notable addition is the ability to save files to iCloud directly from the “Save” dialog in some apps, but oddly enough though there’s no way browse those files you’ve uploaded. This particular feature might just need to be updated from within iWork, but I hope Apple addresses it before the OS is released; documents could use a little TLC. Otherwise iCloud in Mountain Lion is just plain useful; it works almost without fail in the background, and most users won’t even know it’s there.

Everything Else

Apple has integrated system updates with app updates through the App Store

Mountain Lion is really a huge update to OS X, and there are dozens of little tweaks you’ll likely notice. Below are the ones that stood out the most.

• Safari – The URL bar and search bar have been combined, Chrome style.
• Dashboard – For whatever reason, Apple hasn’t integrate the Dashboard into Notification Center, but they still seem interested in updating it. In Mountain Lion the interface to add and manage widgets is now similar to that of Launchpad, and the remove widgets feature has been updated for the 21st century. It looks like Apple still has a place in its heart for good ol’ Dashboard.
• Launchpad – You can now search in Launchpad. Why you’d want to do this instead of using Spotlight is really beyond me, but it’s there if you want it.
• Chinese Services – Since China is Apple’s fastest growing market, it makes sense that in OS X Mountain Lion they are integrating some popular Chinese services. Baidu now works in Safari and services like 126 and 163 are also included. I obviously didn’t test any of these, but they seem to really be Chinese extensions of Share Sheets.
• Software Update – Software Update is dead. In its place, Apple is managing system updates through the App Store. This is a pretty common sense move, and it works pretty well. It’s also a little zippier than what you’d expect from the old dedicated update app, so I’d imagine it will be a welcome change for most users.
• Mission Control – Hovering over fullscreen apps or spaces now shows you a zoom effect similar to the one in the dock. It’s not much, but at least it looks pretty.

Final Thoughts

Mountain Lion is a really impressive update to OS X. The sheer number of new apps and features is almost unbelievable for what Apple considers an incremental update. I’m excited, but I’m also more than a bit worried. Is this the end of OS X as we know it?

While I love many of the new features, the similarities to iOS are pretty outstanding. So one has to wonder, is Apple determined to unify their operating systems, at the expense of their power users? Sadly, that seems to be the way things are headed. Hopefully, though, that’s in a distant future; for now we can enjoy the massive improvements Mountain Lion brings to the operating system formally known as “Mac” OS X. Come this summer, Mountain Lion will be a must have update.

With OS X Mountain Lion, there’s a new sheriff in town: Gatekeeper. This utility gives you the power to decide which apps are acceptable to install on your system and which should be blocked due to being from a questionable source.

Does the arrival of Gatekeeper mean that Apple is inching closer towards full control over your apps? Or will this utility actually give you more control in the long run? Read on to find out.

Trouble Ahead?

When Apple announced the Mac App Store, many felt that they were pushing OS X toward a model similar to the iOS ecosystem, in other words, that Mac applications would someday be restricted only to the Mac App Store. One could certainly make the argument that this would be better in many ways for end users. For instance, if applications only came from the Mac App Store, and had to pass through the scrutiny of the app reviewers, then the end user could be assured a high degree of probability that the downloaded application is not malware.

But this model would also not be without problems. We are used to installing any third party application we please. Many called foul on the Mac App Store and warned to stay away from it. Well, at least with Mountain Lion, Apple has not taken that route. But Apple also did not sit still on this issue.

Gatekeeper: What It Is Not

• Gatekeeper is not a way to restrict third party applications on the Macintosh.
• Gatekeeper is not some heavy handed and draconian system for making unreasonable demands on developers.
• Gatekeeper does not (by default) restrict the user from downloading and installing applications from sources other than the Mac App Store.
• Gatekeeper does not mean the end of the third party eco system as we know it

A Logical Step

The Macintosh community enjoys a fairly risk-free experience. The reason for this, I think, is twofold.

1. OS X is a very robust and secure Operation System. To do any real damage, an application must ask for admin access.
2. OS X toils in relative obscurity by comparison to it’s largest, malware infested competitor (don’t flame me, I’m just stating fact. I don’t buy into the security via obscurity myth, but I do think OS X is less of a target than Windows).

However, this is not to say OS X is immune. While there are no known viruses in the wild for OS X, there are a few trojans. Some time back, Apple implemented a blacklisting system in OS X to warn users if they try to execute known malware. The list is updated remotely as these sorts of things come up. But it’s far from robust. Gatekeeper is just another stone in the security foundation, and another step toward robustness.

As I move forward, understand that I am not a developer and do not have access to the Mountain Lion Developer Preview. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it because I would be under NDA. So this information all comes from Apple’s website, or from other sources around the internet. But I think it’s important to spell all this out.

Default Settings

Gatekeeper, by default will allow two types of applications. Those that come from the Mac App Store (obviously), and those from identified developers.

So what is this identified developer stuff? The short of it is this: a developer signs up for the Developer ID program and Apple gives them a unique ID to sign their apps with. This digital signature serves a couple of purposes. First of all, it assures that the application has not been tampered with since the original developer compiled it. If it has been tampered with, the signature won’t match and OS X will tell you the app has not been signed by a registered developer. And secondly, someone making malware or trojans for OS X is not going to rush out and get one of these developer IDs.

One assumes also that, much like the safe downloads list, Apple has a way of letting OS X know if a registered developer did decide to go rogue and start distributing malware and thus revoke the signature.

Even in this default setting, Apple has stated on Mountain Lion’s security page that you can control click on an application to access controls for over-riding Gatekeeper’s settings.

Other Settings

Image From Apple.com

If you are feeling overzealous about the security of OS X, you can change Gatekeeper’s preferences to allow only apps from the Mac App Store. And yes, I think the presence alone of this settings is an indication that Apple has not entirely ruled out moving in that direction at some point in the future.

It gives me a little bit of pause. On the other hand, it’s not unreasonable to include this as a preference. I’m not sure who would use it, but it makes sense for the radio button to be there.

And of course, the third setting allows you to make OS X behave in the manner it always has — allow all applications regardless of source.

Developers

As I said, I am not a developer. However, I think that this is mostly a good thing for good developers. Developers who are doing good work, who are trusted and make great applications should get good standing and recognition in the OS.

By Apple giving devs a certificate they are essentially saying to the user, “We trust this developer, this is our stamp of approval.” Good developers should appreciate this. It protects the user, recognizes good developers, and doesn’t force anyone to compromise. And I would think that everyone is happy, developers certainly, that Apple has not moved to an App Store only model. There are quite a few great apps out there that Apple simply won’t allow in the Mac App Store.

Dissent

Even Gatekeeper’s gentle approach will not be without it’s detractors. I am only going to link to one example here.

Dustin Curtis, user interface designer, thinks Apple may be a bit draconian here. He does not like the dialog that comes up when you try to run an unsigned app (of which, right now, there are plenty of course). In the instance of trying to run Adium the dialog says:

“Adium” has not been signed by a recognized distributor and may damage your computer. You should move it to the Trash.

“Adium” is on the disk image “Adium_1.4.4.dmg”. Safari downloaded this disk image today at 11:06 AM from adium.im.”

Dustin says of this:

This is a fearmongering dialog. The vast majority of apps people download will not damage their computer, and mere mortals have no idea what “signed by a recognized distributor” means. The word “signed” in relation to security certificates is a very technical term and no one ever calls developers “distributors.” Also, saying “You should move it to the Trash” is weirdly strong wording.

Yes, perhaps it is. On the other hand, if it’s not worded strongly enough, users may not pay that much attention to the warning, and this defeats the purpose of Gatekeeper.

An Additional Resource

I just finished listening to episode 55 of John Siracusa’s excellent podcast Hypercritical. There is lots of talk about Mountain Lion in general, and John does discuss Gatekeeper. If you are interested in Gatekeeper (and Mountain Lion for that matter), then I highly recommend this episode: Hypercritical #55: Region of Pain

What Do You Think of Gatekeeper?

Personally, I think Gatekeeper is absolutely a good thing. It has not taken anything away from us and it will help to bolster security of OS X. And for those of us who know what we are doing and know our way around OS X, we can still certainly install any application we would like to. I don’t see any downsides at all, and plenty of upsides.

What do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts on Gatekeeper, whether you’re a user or developer. Do you think it’s ultimately a good thing or is this a bad direction for OS X?

Just yesterday, the immensely popular iOS physics and puzzle game “Cut the Rope” arrived on Mac App Store. ZeptoLab, the developer of the game, hopes to attract many avid Mac and iOS gamers alike to this platform with the support of up to a 2560 x 1440 resolution, meaning that it will look great even on your largest display — that is, providing that you do not have an older Mac with a very outdated graphics card.

Now, you’re probably wondering how on earth you can control the game since Macs don’t really have a touchscreen like iOS devices do. Well, it’s actually quite simple really: you use a trackpad. This may sound scary if you own an iMac with a Magic Mouse, and it is, because the game wasn’t really designed to be played with a regular mouse. Read on for more details on this release and our first impressions.

First Impressions

The first level of Cut the Rope

The game is pretty good so far and the graphics look great, though they can be rough in some areas. As for the gameplay, the developers have made it even easier if you have a trackpad. All you have to do is put two fingers on it as if you were to scroll around like you do everywhere else in the OS and it will automatically enable the cutting tool. You can also click the “Options” button on the main menu and then change the way the cutting tool works to either “Click to cut” or “Drag to cut”. Other than that, the levels are self-explanitory and look beautiful.

By default, Cut the Rope for Mac does not display in fullscreen mode, which can be a bit of an annoyance for some. I’ve found it nice to have the game in a window so that I can switch from it to another app if I wish to. However, if you do not prefer windowed mode, then you can you can enable fullscreen simply by pressing CMD + F. It’d be nice if there were a way to enable this in settings so that you don’t have to manually switch to it after starting the game. In addition, there’s no fullscreen button like many other Mac apps have, which is strange since this would be a very easy way to switch the game to fullscreen and also keeps apps in it every time you start them. This will probably be added in a future update.

I think Cut the Rope for Mac does well in the graphics area, but it’s a bit jagged in areas, as I said before. I’m sure the developers will polish things up eventually. As for performance, it runs very well on my 13-inch MacBook Pro from last year — the latest model. I’ve tried running four tabs in Safari, the Mac App Store, and playing Cut the Rope all at once and performance is perfectly fine — I can’t even hear the fan spinning, yet.

Other Information

The second level of Cut the Rope with a highlighted rope; if I were to click it, it would be cut

There’s not much else in this iteration of Cut the Rope. It includes all the basic features and levels that the iOS version does. Here’s a small rundown of what’s in the game:

• 250 levels, 10 level boxes
• Innovative gameplay mechanics
• Realistic physics
• Cute character
• Outstanding graphics
• Achievements and leaderboards
• Constant free updates with new levels

I’m sure all of us deal with a fair share of documents. In the past couple of years, a lot of innovation has helped us move our document creation, storage, backup and sharing to the cloud. And in particular, there has never been a better time to collaborate extensively on a document with your peers. That’s all fine and dandy. But what about the documents we have on our hard disks?

Rummaging through folders in Finder and searching for them using Spotlight are by far the best options in front of us. I found Dossier when searching for a better way to organize all my documents. This wonderful app helps you organize all the information as you would like and easily share with others. Come, let us take it for a spin.

Getting Started

Welcome To Dossier

Dossier lets you intelligently organize information based on rules that you define – track recent changes, specific keywords in your text, and more. Post installation, you can either add your existing documents to Dossier or create a new document from the app itself. I was a bit curious with the option to create a document with Dossier and decided to proceed with that option.

User Interface

Creating a Dossier Document

Actually, it is a root folder that is created in the app, when you go with the document creation option. The user interface isn’t mind blowing, but even at first glance, the app looks intuitive and simple to use.

Major organizational parts of the interface are flexible and Dossier allows you to view your information however you’d like – choose between vertical or horizontal panes, independently hide or show parts of the interface, or use the simplified editor window to focus on editing.

Multiple Dossier Windows

You can have multiple windows of the app running at the same time by clicking on Add a new viewer window. Not many apps come with this awesome feature, but it might be very helpful if you are trying to stay on top of multiple documents or folders at the same time.

Creating and Managing Documents

Creating a Real Document

Dossier comes with a notepad editor. It’s a WYSIWYG editor and comes with the oft used features like text alignment, lists, bullets, formatting options and the like. It should be more than enough to whip up a quick document on the go without having to install or open a separate document editor.

Using the WYSIWYG Editor

What good is a document organizer if it doesn’t support folders? With Dossier you can create as many folders as you want to cut the clutter. The app supports nested folders as well. Meaning, you can create subfolders within a parent folder and there is no limit to that as well.

The explorer pane to the left does a very good job keeping the folder structure intact. However, if you are using a MacBook and the trackpad, you might want to deselect the current folder choice to create new parent folders. Else, you might end up creating a bunch of sub folders.

Folder Structure

For those having a bunch of folders and don’t have the time to find a document by clicking on each and every folder, the Unified Entries option will be of immense help. When you click on Unified Entries, the app will list all the documents stored, irrespective of the folder structure.

Importing Documents

I tried importing a bunch of document formats – doc, rtf, txt etc. and Dossier added them to the respective folders in a few seconds. Once imported, you can move the documents around by dragging and dropping them into folders of your choice.

Unfortunately, the app didn’t understand the document properties well. All imported documents showed that they were created today (but they weren’t). This is a big deal because, you won’t be able to use the calendar feature to the max. Ideally, each document should carry the date of creation and you should be able to access them by choosing a date in the calendar. But, when you create documents from within the app, this feature works perfectly fine.

Dossier is excels at search too. Documents are auto suggested as you start typing in the search box and I found the search results to be very accurate. On a similar note, documents created and stored inside Dossier are accessible to search from Spotlight too.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Dossier does an impressive job organizing data. Did I mention that Dossier come with a solid encryption system? So, you can lock away your data with a flexible encryption system that allows you to encrypt individual entries or folders. Now you can rest easy when carrying important personal or business documents on your MacBook.

At $24.99, Dossier isn’t exactly very cheap and the user interface isn’t very attractive. That being said, if you are someone who handles a large volume of documents, definitely go for Dossier as it will do most of the heavy lifting for you.