[gsxrboy]

Surprise !

http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain...o-mountainlion

Edit - The other thing about announcing this now, is they can tie things up even nicer with the iPad3 announcement and what they will show in iOS5.1 probably at the same event.

[Robo]

Only a year after Lion! Apple wants that 10.8 -> Windows 8 number parity.

Orrrrr they want to integrate iCloud with the Mac. That too!

Hopefully we see an iCloudified update to iWork alongside 10.8! That'd be swell.

[jdcfsu]

Read two pieces on this already today.

The Verge has a great write up including a hands-on video and it does look like a very nice upgrade, especially to tie into iOS.

Gruber has a very cool story about just HOW this was unveiled to him last week. Completely different for Apple.

And I agree with Robo, I'm hoping for a nice iWork update as well.

[Yontsey]

Well.....can't be any worse then 10.7

[Robo]

The release window is "this summer," but it's sort of interesting that the promotional video seems to narrow the release window a bit further with the comparison to Lion: "This summer — less than a year later..." OS X Lion was released on July 20, so that would seem to suggest that Mountain Lion won't be coming in, say, August. Could we see a release at WWDC?

[psmith2.0]

We always analyze those timeframes.

Summer is technically in place until, what, September 21? So anything up until then is fair game. Apple will build in wiggle room.

I just read the Gruber post about how they've approached this announcement. Very cool. And reading Andy Ihnatko's Twitter feed...seems he just learned about it this morning, which I found strange. I thought he would've been one of the folks summoned to NYC last week. Maybe he was and he's just being coy? He's a much better writer/analyst than Gruber, after all. He's certainly more rational and grounded...

[Kyros]

Well... my dad's going to be pissed; this means that soon Apple won't support Snow Leopard anymore, meaning his work will force him to upgrade to Lion, but he needs Rosetta.

[Kraetos]

Notifications looks sweet.

And I'd like Gatekeeper to come to iOS.

MS seems more asleep at the wheel than ever... when Win8 was announced, iOS 4 and OS X 10.6 were current. When Win8 is released, iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 will be current.

[kieran]

The new Messages beta is awesome. Really is about damn time.

Getting messages on my Mac that are also sent to my iPhone is awesome. Can reply to iMessages straight from my compute.

[thegeriatric]

Looking forward to this, can only be an improvement on Lion (hopefully)

[Mac+]

Notes out of Mail and Reminders out of iCal (reminds me of this quote "Let Bartlet be Bartlet" - too much West Wing lately?) PLUS the renaming of apps to Calendar and Contacts. Small changes but big UX win. Happy.

(Always thought the bloat of Mail was confounding - but it was probably an ideal aping of Office to gain enterprise parity at the time.)

[jdcfsu]

Originally Posted by Mac+ Notes out of Mail and Reminders out of iCal (reminds me of this quote "Let Bartlet be Bartlet" - too much West Wing lately?) PLUS the renaming of apps to Calendar and Contacts. Small changes but big UX win. Happy. (Always thought the bloat of Mail was confounding - but it was probably an ideal aping of Office to gain enterprise parity at the time.)

Wonder if the trend will follow and iDevice syncing will be removed from iTunes and placed completely in the cloud, or via the App Store.

[Wyatt]

Originally Posted by jdcfsu Wonder if the trend will follow and iDevice syncing will be removed from iTunes and placed completely in the cloud, or via the App Store.

That one's a little harder, since Windows users still need to be able to use it, plus we need to be able to get our own non-iTunes media on our devices.

I'm more interested to see if Siri makes the jump. I think it will, but kieran pointed out on twitter that the Macs would need to have better noise cancellation on their mics. Equip new hardware properly, and Siri could really be the killer feature of 10.8.

[thegeriatric]

Originally Posted by jdcfsu Wonder if the trend will follow and iDevice syncing will be removed from iTunes and placed completely in the cloud, or via the App Store.

Yes, please make iTunes separate.

[Mugge]

Well, this is a most pleasant surprise!

The three most significant thing in 10.8 as far as I see them are:

1. iOS alignment. I am all for getting rid of cruft and legacy UI convention. Bring it on!

2. The Finder is not getting fixed, but we are getting an alternative in iCloud. This can both be seen as very promising and troubling. Promising if Apple can finally get the cloud to "just work". Troubling if this over time makes it difficult (or just less seamless) to choose a third party file synch service like Dropbox or Wuala.

3. Gatekeeper. I think this one is a good idea. Not for me, but for people like my mom who will never learn how to tell a good app from a bad one. This feature effectively strengthens the weakest link in the security chain for such users and I suspect that it will go a very long way to keep malware off OS X in the future. Oh, and I don't believe that Apple would ever have the nerve to force experienced users like myself to submit to this. That would be the day I began to fondle penguins.

Oh, and btw, Gruber is now an official Apple PR outlet. But I don't think he minds it a bit. (oops, pscates beat me to that one)

[thegeriatric]

Safari has a unified URL and Search bar!!!!!...................Nurse I'm wet again................NURSE.

[Mugge]

Originally Posted by thegeriatric Safari has a unified URL and Search bar!!!!!...................Nurse I'm wet again................NURSE.

Argh! That's the single most annoying thing about Chrome.

[thegeriatric]

Originally Posted by Mugge Argh! That's the single most annoying thing about Chrome.

Thanks to chucker I use SafariOmnibar at the moment. Good news as far as i am concerned. ( and i suspect, several others?)

[Mugge]

I just really hate it when someone tries to finnish my sentences for me.

[chucker]

Leave Finland out of this.

[PB PM]

Looks cool, but kind of seems like a cash grab. No reports of under the hood improvements, so far my feeling is meh.

[Bryson]

Originally Posted by Mugge I just really hate it when someone tries to finnish my sentences for me.

Sain todella vihaan sitä kun joku yrittää suomea minun lauseita minulle.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by PB PM Looks cool, but kind of seems like a cash grab.

Has a price tag (or whether it will even cost anything at all — iOS updates used to cost money for non-iPhone users, too) even been announced?

Originally Posted by PB PM No reports of under the hood improvements, so far my feeling is meh.

They're out there.

• "I also quite like what’s happening in Objective-C, and in text rendering in transparent layers."
• "New LLVM = ❤"

It's probably a bit early.

[PB PM]

Not the kind of under the hood I was thinking of. I'm not a software developer, so I don't care about that stuff. I'm talking about making the system use RAM more efficiently and things like that.

[turbulentfurball]

Damnit. I was hoping for 10.8 Cougar.

[PB PM]

Originally Posted by chucker Has a price tag (or whether it will even cost anything at all — iOS updates used to cost money for non-iPhone users, too) even been announced?

Thats kind of what worries me actually. We might start seeing things like, if you don't have Mac made in the last two years you might be out of luck with recent OS updates.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by PB PM Thats kind of what worries me actually. We might start seeing things like, if you don't have Mac made in the last two years you might be out of luck with recent OS updates.

I suppose that's possible.

For smartphones, their update support policy is well beyond anything any competitor offers. For desktops, OTOH, OS X fares poorly compared to, say, Windows.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by PB PM Not the kind of under the hood I was thinking of. I'm not a software developer, so I don't care about that stuff. I'm talking about making the system use RAM more efficiently and things like that.

Kernel-level ASLR?

I mean… you're not going to see the kinds of optimizations we've had during the 10.0 through 10.4 days. There just isn't that much to eek out any more.

[Mugge]

Originally Posted by PB PM Thats kind of what worries me actually. We might start seeing things like, if you don't have Mac made in the last two years you might be out of luck with recent OS updates.

Is there any basis for this claim?

The last Macs to become obsolete were the Core Duo ones from 2006 with Lion in 2011. It's not an impressive life span, but it's nowhere near two years.

[Kraetos]

Originally Posted by Mugge Argh! That's the single most annoying thing about Chrome.

Originally Posted by thegeriatric Thanks to chucker I use SafariOmnibar at the moment. Good news as far as i am concerned. ( and i suspect, several others?)

I'm neutral. I always Google everything (URLs are so 90's) so this is basically the difference between L + Tab and just doing L. But I don't understand Omnibar haters, either. You realize that as soon as you type a . it reverts to a URL bar, right?

But most people don't use URLs and if they do, they know exactly one: google.com. So the fact that Safari now basically only Google's is a good thing.

I just wish that Safari would add DuckDuckGo as a search provider. I use exactly one Google product, and I'm not that attached to it.