Mountain Lion: Share Sheets

This is where Apple has an opportunity to really fix some weaknesses with iOS as well, and OS X could be the place to experiment with it.

Share sheets are just like they are on iOS. Apple even uses a similar button.

Click the button and you get options for sharing whatever it is you are looking at. In Safari? Why not tweet that page to your Twitter account? Useful, and something I use in iOS almost every day.

However, Apple could take this to the next level by allowing 3rd party developers the opportunity to add their own applications to the share sheets. Are they going to? I have no idea, but I hope that Apple takes a cue from Windows Phone 7 (what a TERRIBLE name) and adds the ability for programs to proclaim what they are useful for (I think they are called “contracts” in WP7).

There is room for improvement, of sure.

Mountain Lion: Notification Center

It’s like taking the Notification Center from iOS and putting it in OS X.

Well … actually, that is what it is.

It will be interesting if Apple can somehow sync notifications between OS X and iOS if they are from the same/similar applications. That would be cool if problematic.

Also, what is going to happen to Growl? Is Apple going to give some decent APIs to work with so that things like development testing tools can hook into it? A lot of unanswered questions.

Mountain Lion: iCloud

iCloud was a major component of OS X Lion, and it is going to be a bigger part of Mountain Lion.

Two features are being touted so far.

  • Easier setup by tying directly into your iCloud account to pull down more settings than before. No idea what is exactly going to be pulled down yet.
  • Documents in the Cloud is getting expanded, which will hopefully take care of the huge glaring hole in iCloud.

I’ve heard rumblings of tab-syncing in Safari and who knows what else is going to be coming. Of course, the new Reminders, Notes, and Messages apps tie in as well, which will expand its use on the Mac.

iCloud is touted as the central strategy for Apple for the next decade and Mountain Lion seems to be enforcing that idea.

Mountain Lion: Game Center

Apple is bringing Game Center to OS X.

I really don’t care.

Mountain Lion: Gatekeeper

The most controversial feature of Mountain Lion has to be Gatekeeper.

Gatekeeper allows Apple and the owner the ability to limit what software can be installed on a given Mac. There a three different levels of security.

  1. First is how it is now: you can install everything and anything in your machine.
  2. Second is that you can install only programs that are on the App Store or programs that have been signed digitally by Apple (more on this later).
  3. Last is that you can only install software from the App Store.

Now, if you are the paranoid type, you’d probably expect that Apple would set #3 as the default setting for Mountain Lion. I’d probably have agreed with you because it would bring OS X in-line with iOS.

However, Apple has not done it that way. Instead, they are using #2 as the default setting and enabling code-signing through their developer program to add security to the platform while still allowing developers to sell their applications outside of the App Store.

That’s good. No, that’s great.

However, it does mean that instead of fielding questions about whether the program they are installing is safe, I will be fielding questions about why they can’t install an application they had on Lion or prior.

I’ll try and consider it a learning experience.

Personally, I think it is the correct balance to strike for security and flexibility. Even better because it was completely unexpected.