Mountain Lion: Getting The Most Out Of Messages

If, like me, you ever wished for an easy way to send messages from your computer to a phone that wasn’t AIM, a flaky SMS workaround, or email, the announcement of iMessage coming to the Mac was something of a Jobsend. When iMessage was introduced in late 2011 along iOS 5 and brought support for text messaging without the fees or character limits to iOS, many people (myself included) immediately found themselves wishing they could use it on their Macs as well. With Mountain Lion, that wish has come true.

So what can you do with iMessage on your Mac now that it’s here? Read more

iWork Suite Updated With iCloud & Retina MacBook Pro Support

Apple has today updated the Mac versions of iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) to include support for the new display on the Retina MacBook Pro as well as integration of iCloud. Support for iCloud now allows users of the iWork apps to create documents on their iPhone, iPad or Mac and then continue working on them on any of their other devices, no matter where they are. The highlight of it all is that changes are synced across automatically and instantly. iCloud support for the Mac apps has been a long time coming, with the iOS versions updated to include support late last year, but comes today on the release of Mountain Lion which touts iCloud support as one of the key improvements.

Users of the new Retina MacBook Pro and iWork suite will also be happy with today’s update that now natively supports the new display. As Apple says, “everything you create in iWork is stunning on the new MacBook Pro with Retina display”.

For those wanting a complete overhaul of the iWork suite, well today just isn’t that day. Whilst Apple nearly always just calls it “iWork”, there are a few reminders on Apple’s own website, that these are apps that last received a major update in 2009.

You can download or purchase the latest version of iWork from the Mac App Store: Pages, Keynote, Numbers.

Mountain Lion: Notification Center Explained


Notifications have been a part of iOS from day one, and last year’s iOS 5 update improved them greatly with Notification Center and the new banner style (the one that rolls down from the top of the screen without disrupting your current activity). They are an integral part of our interactions with our iPhones and iPads — we get them from missed calls, text messages, emails, reminders, social network interactions, apps, games, and so on. But on the Mac, notifications have been more of a hack than a system-level feature: something that developers have implemented themselves, and mostly just when they felt it was absolutely necessary to do so. As a result, they haven’t been nearly as much a part of the OS X experience as they have on iOS.

The most widely-used system for notifications on OS X until now has been Growl: a third-party app that allowed developers to easily implement their own notifications. It was widely adopted by the OS X developer community, and over the years it became an essential install for many Mac users. But Growl isn’t the best solution for notifications because it is still a third party app that the user must go out of their way to install.[1] Whilst this isn’t a problem for an experienced computer user, it is for those that don’t want or need to worry about finding a download link for a third-party notification solution or keeping it up to date (though admittedly this has become less of a problem with Growl’s release on the Mac App Store). And of course Apple itself would never use Growl for notifications for their own apps, some of which could benefit most from notifications (e.g. Mail, Messages, and FaceTime).

Fortunately, in OS X Mountain Lion Apple has now implemented native notifications and Notification Center. If you’ve ever used iOS 5 you’ll instantly be familiar with how they work because Apple has effectively recreated them for the Mac, only making a few changes to suit the different platform. All of Apple’s built-in OS X applications support the new notifications (Messages, Mail, Reminders, Mac App Store, FaceTime, etc) and there is an API for developers to add support for them to their own as well.

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Apple Pulls Lion From The Mac App Store With The Release Of Mountain Lion

Apple today released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on the Mac App Store and has now also removed OS X 10.7 Lion from the Mac App Store. You can no longer go to the Lion page via its direct link, by searching or by finding it on the top grossing list as it was earlier this morning.

Apple presumably pulled Lion because users wanting to upgrade to Mountain Lion can also do so from Snow Leopard. Keeping both Lion and Mountain Lion on the Mac App Store would have presumably caused confusion for some users - particularly given Lion cost $29.99 and Mountain Lion costs just $19.99 - seemingly suggesting that Lion was the latest OS.

Update 4:05 PM: Customers who purchased Lion should still be available to download Lion from the Mac App Store when you option click the Purchased tab.

You can read the MacStories review of Mountain Lion here.

Mountain Lion: The MacStories Review

Given how important Mountain Lion — the latest version of OS X, available today — is to Apple’s ecosystem and unification strategy, its announcement was rather unusual. For the past decade, Apple has been relying on media events and developer conferences to serve as the stage for official introductions to major new versions of its desktop operating system. At WWDC 2002, Steve Jobs famously kicked off the event by giving a eulogy for Mac OS 9 as part of the transition to OS X; in 2009, Snow Leopard — the last version of OS X before Apple’s rebranding of “iPhone OS” to “iOS” — was officially unveiled at WWDC in front of over 5,200 developers; and in October 2010, Lion, the eighth major release of OS X, was formally announced and demoed at Apple’s self-hosted “Back to the Mac” media event.

But as Phil Schiller told Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, with Mountain Lion Apple has started “to do some things differently”. On February 16th, 2012, Apple fans and industry watchers checking their Thursday morning news witnessed Apple’s most surprising OS X announcement to date: instead of being unveiled to the press at a media event, Mountain Lion roared into existence as dozens of blog posts were published simultaneously by selected journalists, who had been given “product briefings” and demo copies a week in advance. With Mountain Lion, Apple decided to let the OS speak for itself, saving a proper introduction for WWDC 2012 where a near-final version of the OS was demoed (alongside some new features) and released to developers.

The way Apple handled Mountain Lion’s announcement may have felt unusual at the time, but in hindsight, it made perfect sense given the nature of the upgrade and the way Apple has encouraged letting its mobile and desktop operating systems coexist and benefit from each other.

Mountain Lion Review: PDF Version

Support MacStories and get a beautiful, DRM-free PDF copy of all our Mountain Lion coverage, including this review and exclusive Tips & Tricks.

Buy "MacStories Features: OS X Mountain Lion"

Buy “MacStories Features: OS X Mountain Lion”

More details here.

Cover image by ehtesham/Shutterstock.com

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Announcing Our First eBook

MacStories is pleased to announce their first eBook, MacStories Features: OS X Mountain Lion, for $6.99. With a detailed review of Mountain Lion, numerous sections covering its new apps and features in depth, and 30% of its proceeds going to the American Cancer Society, MacStories Features: OS X Mountain Lion is a great way to learn about Mountain Lion, support MacStories, and fight cancer all at once.

Contents

We’ve put a lot of effort into this book: it contains exclusive guides for preparing your Mac for Mountain Lion, walks you through every aspect of the install process, and contains great tips and tricks you won’t find anywhere else. Every inch of its over 120 pages is custom-designed and optimized for Retina displays, presenting its content in a beautiful, easy-to-read format.

You can download MacStories Features: OS X Mountain Lion here.

Buy Now

Buy Now

Cover image by ehtesham/Shutterstock.com

Apple Confirms OS X Mountain Lion Coming Tomorrow

In the Q3 2012 press release, Apple has confirmed that OS X Mountain Lion is launching tomorrow, July 25th. The OS will be available on the Mac App Store at $19.99.

OS X Mountain Lion is a major upgrade to Apple’s desktop operating system which includes over 200 new features that further ties OS X into iCloud and brings many important iOS applications to the Mac. Major new OS X features include apps such as Notes and Reminders, Messages, Game Center, the Notification Center that works similarly to iOS, Gatekeeper — ensuring that users stay safe when they download and install applications, Dictation, and Power Nap for compatible Macs.

Apple Q3 2012 Results: $35 Billion Revenue, 26 Million iPhones, 17 Million iPads, 4 Million Macs Sold

Apple has just posted their Q3 2012 financial results for the quarter ending on July 24, 2012. The company posted revenue of $35 billion, with 17 million iPads, 26 million iPhones and 4 million Macs sold. iPhone represented a 28 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter, while iPad reported a 84 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 6.8 million iPods, a 10 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The company posted quarterly net profit of $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per diluted share.  International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

For Q2 2012, Apple posted revenue of $39.2 billion, with 11.8 million iPads, 35.1 million iPhones and 4 million Macs sold. Apple’s iPad represented a 151 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter, while iPhone reported a 88 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. 7.7 million iPods sold, a 15 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The company posted quarterly net profit of $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per diluted share. In the year-ago-quarter, Q3 2011, Apple posted revenue of $28.57 billion, with 9.25 million iPads, 20.34 million iPhones and 3.95 million Macs sold.

Expectations

On July 24th, Philip Elmer-Dewitt published a forecast chart tracking predictions from 63 analysts, half working for banks or brokerage firms, and half independent whom follow Apple for fun or personal profit. Professional analysts expected $10.33 per share and revenue of $37 billion, while independent analysts expected $12.31 per share and revenue of $41.5 billion.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, quoted from Apple’s Financial Results for Q3 2012:

 Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter, we expect revenue of about $34 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $7.65.

Apple will provide a live audio feed of its Q3 2012 conference call at 2:00 PM PST, and we’ll update this story with conference highlights. The full press release is embedded after the break.

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Mac and iOS Developer Acrylic Joins Facebook→

Mac and iOS Developer Acrylic Joins Facebook

In other acquisition news, renowned Mac and iOS developer Acrylic has announced they will be joining the design team at Facebook:

I’m happy to announce today that we’ve packed up our small Vancouver studio and will be making the move to San Francisco in the coming weeks to join the design team at Facebook.

Our products and services have not been acquired by Facebook, and while there are no plans for further development on them, Wallet and Pulp will continue to remain available for download and purchase in their current form. We’ll certainly be the first to let you know of any updates or changes here in the future.

Well-known among the Apple community for their Pulp and Wallet apps for iOS and OS X, it’s unclear whether the apps will also keep receiving updates for bug fixes or not. This isn’t the first acquisition of a former Mac developer by Facebook: notably, the company acquired Sofa last year, which then went on to create the Facebook Camera app.

You can check out our review of the latest version of Pulp here.

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