Mountain Lion: Is It Any Good?

Well, it’s here, the long awaited operating system: OS X Mountain Lion (The word Mac is officially dropped from OS X). Even though it’s here, I don’t think it’s any good. However, Mountain Lion is needed to ever upgrade again, say the next operating system next year. That means if you want to ever get a new operating system, you need to get Mountain Lion. Anyways, here’s what’s new:

As more and more people are enjoying the iPad and iPhone, Apple decided to put their popular IOS features into the Mac. From IOS, there is Game Centre, Notification Centre, Notes, iMessages, Reminders, and enhanced iCloud. Personally, I don’t really use any of these features, so it makes no difference to me. Plus, Growl is a perfect substitution for Notification Centre, and I also have Anxiety as an alternative to Reminders. Even though Apple thinks making the Mac as similar as the iPad and iPhone, with Launchpad and the new Mail app from Lion, and now all these new apps, is good, I don’t really care for it very much.

Other than the IOS features, there is security updates, and other little details. For example, Power Nap can update mail, apps, and so on when the laptop is closed. The littler things include new autosave functions, sharing options, airplay mirroring, accessibility enhancements, etc..

I don’t believe Mountain Lion is worth getting, but again, isn’t it better to get Mountain Lion, use it, then upgrade, instead of getting Mountain Lion then an actually significant upgrade next year or the year after?

Anyways, putting the debate over getting Mountain Lion aside, what I really want to know is what Apple will name their operating system after Mountain Lion. It seems that Apple was running out of options: Pumas, Cougars, and other cats are also Mountain Lions. You could say Mac OS X 10.3 was Mountain Lion, even though OS X 10.8 is actually named Mountain Lion. I really can’t think of any other cat that’s better than Mountain Lion. Maybe OS X 10.9 would not be a cat. I wonder…

EDIT: Apologies, the images that are linked seem to no longer exist, please ignore them for the moment.

Associations

Just something I came to realize.

Why do we suddenly associate computers and operating systems with their inventors and CEOs, while we have no idea who’s the CEO of the car we drive? Or the coffee we drink? Or the pens we write with (not that we use them very often…)?

My opinion is that technology advances really fast, you have to watch the CEO to see what’s going to happen next. You can’t just use it and care nothing about it. Most things in life is just there. There is no point in caring about who is behind all this because it is not going to change, it is not going to get better, it is not going to have similar product that will change your life (hint hint, nudge nudge). Also, it is new and people like new things that are cool for some reason.

However, the newspaper disagrees, it says it is because we are all cyborgs, we adapted to technology so much that we can not live without it, our most private moments are on it, and our most public ones. It is a communication tool, a way to pass time by talking and surfing about weird stuff (like me). But it also said that the Mac was special, it has a more human touch, it really was attractive.

We don’t think about it, yet it is true.

So what do you think?