At the end of this month, Apple will be releasing Mountain Lion – which will be known technically as OS X 10.8. The last time Apple released two similarly names OS’s was when Leopard (10.5) was upgraded to Snow Leopard (10.6). That was seen as an incremental update rather than a full-blown upgrade. For that reason Apple price it under $30, which at the time made it 10 times less expensive than a premium edition of Windows 7.
This time around Apple are doing the same with Lion. But I suspect that this “incremental” update is going to pack a slightly larger punch than Snow Leopard did. There has been a lot of talk about unifying iOS and OS X. Some think that the two will merge and Apple will release a hybrid iPad / MacBook Air type contraption. Although I can’t speak to that, I think bringing the iPhone / iPad experience to the Mac can’t be a bad thing.
Apple have highlighted a few standout features, such as Notifications, Facebook integration, better iCloud integration and Dictation. These along with others will make up hundreds of improvements that Apple will be throwing into Mountain Lion. But do you need to upgrade?
We’ve also dealt with this issue a few times before on Macstarter. The upgrade crowd is divided firmly into 3 camps. Firstly you have the “won’t ever upgrade” crowd. There’s nothing wrong with this at all, but sticking to an old OS means that you can lose out on great features. Secondly you have the “upgrade when I have to” crowd, who upgrade only when circumstances dictate they have to. The third group is the upgrade immediately crowd, the cutting edge lot. I must say I am in the third group all the way! Not only do I enjoy being first to upgrade, but also enjoy that feeling of having something shiny to play with.
So what will you need to think of before your upgrade to Mountain Lion? Well, first, make sure your computer is going to be compatible. Check out this page to see if you have a compatible Mac or not. Of course it’s heart breaking to have a machine that isn’t going to be able to upgrade to a new OS but I’ll promise you it’s not as heartbreaking as having a computer that’s been upgraded and slows down to a crawl every time you open a finder window.
Once you know your computer is compatible, make sure you’ve got a good set of backups. And then make double sure.
Finally, grab a copy of Mountain Lion when it hits the Mac App Store near the end of July. I’ll be willing to bet money that Mountain Lion will follow the same lead as Lion, in that you’ll be able to simply upgrade your Lion installation or you’ll be able to creat an installer USB stick and do a clean install. One things for sure, when Mountain Lion lands on the App Store, we’ll have full coverage here on Macstarter.
