10.8 Mountain Lion: Thoughts

Apple have announced a preview of the next major OS release for our Macintosh computers, and some time ago I did find myself wondering what name they would go with next – surely they are running out of big cats, right?

Wrong. They’ve dug Mountain Lion out of somewhere, and whilst I’m not keen on the name, that’s not really the bit were interested in. I’m going to list a few of my thoughts on the upcoming OS X, scheduled for release sometime in the late Summer. I also hope to get my hands on a copy at the earliest opportunity to give a more informed review of my thoughts.

So from first glance at the features coming in this release, it seems they are even more keen on tying iOS in to OS X – many of the features coming are from iOS, things like, Messages, Reminders, Notes, Game Center, Notification Center (bye, bye Growl!), the renaming of iCal and Address Book, to name but a few. They have also now entirely dropped the ‘Mac’ from ‘Mac OS X’ and it’s now just ‘OS X’.

One feature I am quite excited about is AirPlay. Old news you might say – but now you can display the screen of your Mac over-the-air to say, your Apple TV! That’s a great feature, both for the home and for the business. Say you have a presentation to give, you’ll no longer need to plug in cables to send your screen and audio to the big screen. This could also be a major hint at the rumoured TV from Apple (iView?)?!

Software update now takes you to the Mac App Store instead. Something I expected to be honest. We have seen for some time Apps getting updates there instead. So no real surprise here.

Tweeting from Safari is a pretty cool feature I’m looking forward to.

I hope to get hold of 10.8 soon, so that I can have a hands-on with some of these features and the many others.

item

Hi,
interesting the video on air :)
Really nice feature but certainly with some restriction.

Regards
- http://www.mactasia.co.uk/ Simon
  
  Hi item, yes, certainly.
  
  I am interested to see how they develop 10.9 Server and maybe Server Admin Tools will be completely phased out?
http://twitter.com/tony_simek Tony Simek

Simon, now that Mountain Lion Server is in the wild with the gold master, what do you think that they got rid of the webmail functionality? They used to ship with Roundcube and now it appears to be gone.
- http://www.mactasia.co.uk/ Simon
  
  Hi Tony,
  
  As far as I’m aware, Mail services are still available in Mountain Lion Server. I haven’t yet checked out the Developer Previews, but this features guide suggests its still in there: http://movies.apple.com/media/us/osx/2012/server/docs/OSXServer_Product_Overview.pdf
Ward Van Breedam

I cannot find roundcube anywhere. It looks like it was documented but they left the feature behind at the last moment -> roundcube 0.8 is in rc state so maybe in the 10.8.1 release?
I cannot find how to set vacation messages this way.
Alex

Enable WebMail
WebMail is a web-based mail user agent (MUA). It allows a web browser such as Apple’s Safari to compose, read, and forward mail like any other mail client.WebMail relies on your mail server to provide the mail service. WebMail cannot provide Mail service independent of the mail server. WebMail uses mail service of the server with OS X Server installed.WebMail uses standard mail protocols and requires your mail server to support them. These protocols are:IMAP, for retrieving incoming mailSMTP, for exchanging mail with other mail servers (sending outgoing mail and receiving incoming mail)WebMail doesn’t support retrieving incoming mail via POP. Even if your mail server has POP enabled, WebMail doesn’t use it.Enable and configure your mail server.Open the Server app.In the Server app sidebar, select MailCheck Enable WebMail.
But the “Enable Webmail” is missing in the GM release
- http://www.mactasia.co.uk/ Simon
  
  I seem to have it in mine…
- Alex
  
  The same in mine… it should be right under “limit mail to [ ] MB pr user” but it’s not..
  
  I’m guessing that theres going to be an GM1 before Final and that it’s going to com by then, else there going to get a lot of disappointed customers.
  - http://www.mactasia.co.uk/ Simon
    
    Oh! I miss understood…. yeh I can’t find webmail anywhere in the GM – very strange exclusion!
    - http://www.mactasia.co.uk/ Simon
      
      My guess is that they are letting people choose which webmail software they want to use? In the Overview doc, it says:
      
      OS X Server is extremely flexible, so you can add dynamic content for more interactive websites and applications. Web Server supports dynamic content generated by Server Side Includes, PHP, Apache modules, and CGIs. OS X Server even makes it easy to install third-party web apps such as Mailman, Roundcube, Moodle, WordPress, Druple, and others.
      - http://www.mactasia.co.uk/ Simon
        
        No sign of it in the final release out today… guess they have dropped it. Most people do use something like Mail or similar apps anyway. Maybe thats their thinking behind it?