During today’s WWDC keynote in San Francisco, Apple announced some more new features that will be arriving with Mountain Lion. Even though the four developer previews that have been tested for a while have most of the major additions, there will be several more key features that are going to mean a lot to many users out there.
Keep reading for a deep look at all the major new things that will be coming in OS X Mountain Lion.
Dictation
Apple has added a Dictation function in OS X 10.8 that will allow you to input whole paragraphs of text into your Mac without the need to type anything. This might come in handy if you want to take a break from the keyboard or are just sitting back one day. You can talk anywhere you would usually type — just find that text field.
To bring up Dictation, all you have to do is tap the “fn” key twice. Once you hear the sound, just start speaking. You can also use any of the commands you usually would on an iPhone with Siri. It supports four languages and three different accents for the English language. Lastly, it accesses your address book so it will be able to translate a certain names correctly.
Apple’s latest desktop OS will include support for Facebook sharing using the share sheets that are all over the place in this release. In Safari, for instance, you can click the little share button in the top left corner and then click “Facebook” to share a link. Also included in this integration is a one-time sign-in that allows you to have Facebook in Notification Center. This way, you can keep up on everything that’s going on in your digital social life right from your desktop.
Sadly, Facebook integration won’t be coming to your Mac until this fall, according to Apple’s “What’s New” page for Mountain Lion.
Power Nap
You know those times when you want to leave your computer for a few minutes to get some other stuff done, but you’re scared things won’t stay backed up or anything? Apple has a solution for that and it’s called Power Nap. Instead of you having to worry that your Mac won’t keep up to date or backed up to Time Machine while sleeping, Power Nap makes sure that it’s automatically backed up and updated during sleep, consuming little power in the process. It’s silent with no lights or even slight signs of operation.
Even though it’d be great if this was on every Mac, it’s only available on those that have built-in flash storage, so make sure to remember that when thinking of the great feature.
Tab View in Safari
With the presence of iCloud tab sync in Safari 6, Apple has introduced a very nice way to view those tabs that are currently synced with iCloud. As you can see in the screenshot above, this new “Tab View” is truly beautiful, letting you swipe between open tabs. It can be accessed by pinching a webpage — or, zooming out as you might like to call it.
July Release and Pricing
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will be available next month for $19.99, which is $10 lower than last year’s Lion release. There’s no set date on exactly when Apple will be selling the new OS on the Mac App Store, but it’d be best to expect it near the middle of the month since Lion released on July 20th of last year.
And More
There are over 200 features in Apple’s 9th revision of OS X and I’ve not even begun to discuss them all here. However, you likely know about them all from our previous in-depth coverage of the OS when the developer preview was first released back in February. If you want to know everything about the new OS, you can take a look at all the new features in OS X Mountain Lion on Apple’s page that’s dedicated to the subject. Have fun learning about what your Mac will likely be running next!