Written by Benny Ling | 26 July 2012
Posted in Apple

Now that the excitement over Mountain Lion has calmed down somewhat, we can talk about Apple's Q3 2012 results, which were released on Tuesday. Apple posted record numbers yet again, with US $35 billion in revenue, 26 million iPhones, 17 million iPads, and 4 million Macs sold. All those big numbers mean $11.6 billion in profit, a not-insubstantial number for the Cupertino-based company. There's more analysis and a few notes from the Q&A session that followed the main conference call over at MacStories.

Safari 6.0 was released alongside Mountain Lion yesterday, and the latest version of the inbuilt OS X browser brings a unified location bar that Chrome users would be more than familar with, along with iCloud integration, a few new gestures for switching tabs. But there's more: share sheets have also been included in the latest Safari, and offline articles has been brought to the Reading List. The Next Web says it's faster than ever, thanks to improved JavaScript performance and the latest version of WebKit.

Carbon Copy Cloner has long been the staple of OS X users wanting to create a bootable clone of their current install, and now Mike Bombich has decided to make the software paid-for, instead of the donationware it previously was. If you've already donated previously you get a free licence, but otherwise Carbon Copy Cloner is US $29.95 until August 12, and $39.95 after that. A free 30-day trial is available.

It's only fitting for Apple to pull Lion from the Mac App Store after they released its successor, and they've now done so. Farewell, Lion, you served us well.

Written by Benny Ling | 25 July 2012
Posted in Apple

Apple has released the next big version of their operating system to the pulic, and there's lots of little refinements and a few new features in Mountain Lion to get excited about. It's available for download right now from the Mac App Store provided you're running either Snow Leopard for $24.99, and the installation process works much the same as Lion before it: you download a 4.4GB installer file, which then installs Mountain Lion on your Mac after rebooting. Pretty simple stuff.

Now, to the reviews. While you're waiting for your new OS X install to dowload or install, you can read a few reviews. There's John Siracusa's massive, 26,000 word review over at Ars Technica, or even John Gruber's review (one of his longer pieces in a while) at Daring Fireball. I haven't made my way through any of the reviews just yet, but I can already have an educated guess at what they're going to say: Mountain Lion is the best operating system for the Mac thus far.

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Written by Benny Ling | 24 July 2012
Posted in Apple

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will release updates to products in September. These updates will include a 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display, as well as a new iMac that (probably) won't come with a Retina display. The analyst's predictions are in line with two previous rumours, says AppleInsider, as his predictions coincide with leaked benchmarks of an as-yet-unreleased model of 13" MacBook Pro.

Mail always seems to be one of the apps that gets changed quite often with every big OS X release, and Mountain Lion is no exception. While Mail in Moutain Lion doesn't quite see the UI overhaul that came with Lion, Mail 6.0 sees the introduction of VIPs, for which rules can be customised and messages prioritised. There's also the ability to search within emails, as well as a share sheet and new iCloud features.

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Written by Benny Ling | 23 July 2012
Posted in Apple

AppleInsider has a great series you should definitely be reading on a few of the apps and features included as a part of Mountain Lion, and their latest installment talks about how Calendar and the new Reminders app now offer a smart search feature and location-based alerts. Apple started adding location-based features to Macs and OS X before Mountain Lion, and it's great to see them continue that trend with OS X apps.

Of course, if you've just bought a new Mac from Apple or any authorised reseller on or after June 11, you're eligible for a free copy of Mountain Lion when it's released thanks to Apple's Up-to-Date program for OS X. As the Apple website states, once Mountain Lion becomes available to the public you'll have 30 days to request your free copy of the latest big cat.

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