Mountain Lion - macography.net

OS X Mountain Lion adoption rate

22/09/2012

At the end of July, I posted a graph showing the popularity of OS X Mountain Lion among my readers.

Six days after the release of the new version of OS X, a little bit less than a third of users were already using it.

Just a few minutes ago I ran the same report and this is the result:

Popularity of OS X Mountain Lion among macography’s readers

Two months after the release of OS X Mountain Lion, more than half of the visitors of this blog are already using the latest version of OS X.

Of course, this is not an absolute number that indicates the overall adoption of OS X Mountain Lion across the world. It remains a good indication of it though. I’d be curious to see if other fellow bloggers get similar results.

It is not a secret that fast adoption of technologies just released to the market is an important thing for companies because it drives revenue and in turn fosters additional innovation. In the case of Apple it also helps drive additional users toward technologies such as iCloud that are strategic to the future company’s growth.

iOS 6 and OS X 10.8.2 available for download

19/09/2012

As I said this morning in a hopeful tweet, Apple today has released both iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2. As I am typing this short post, both the iPhone and iPad are downloading iOS 6 (estimated time 7 minutes) and I’m about to click on update on my MacBook Air.

It’s going to be a long evening. Talk to you later.

OS X 10.8.2 to bring battery life to Snow Leopard levels

12/09/2012

A complete set of battery life tests from OS X 10.6.8 to 10.8.2:

The big change came with 10.8.2, which is still undergoing developer testing. Using what was the latest build when the tests were run, 12C35 (a newer build, 12C43 was released September 5), we saw a tremendous increase in battery life, to the point where running time was a few minutes longer than even that of 10.6.8.

I’d love to see this.

OS X Battery Life Analysis from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion – The Mac Observer.

The iOS-ification of OS X

11/09/2012

Many long time Mac users are uncomfortable with Apple’s decision to bring many iOS features into OS X.

Henry Taylor-Gill at Mactrast.com writes:

When I upgrade to Mountain Lion, I’ll do my utmost to de-iOS-ify it, even though I know there is a limit to how much you can do. But as I said, if Apple’s next step after Mountain Lion/OS X is to simply port iOS to the Mac, then it’s the end of the road for me and the Mac.

There’s a distinctive rumble in many Apple forums about the design decisions made for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion. Like me, many users feel that the OS X apex was reached with OS X Snow Leopard.

I don’t plan to follow in Henry’s footsteps but I can feel his pain. Too much iOS in OS X is not necessarily a positive thing.

via Why iOS Should Get Out Of OS X, And Fast! (Opinion) | MacTrast.

OS X Mountain Lion delay when waking up from sleep

27/08/2012

If you’re wondering why your Mac running OS X Mountain Lion sometimes remains unresponsive at the login screen for 3–4 seconds after waking up from sleep, the answer lies in hibernation mode.

You can actually reproduce this behaviour only if your Mac has been in sleep mode for some time. In fact, OS X Mountain Lion appears to put your Mac in hibernation mode to save battery only after about 70 minutes. On the contrary, if you wake up your Mac within 70 minutes from the moment you put it to sleep you can start working on it straight away.

When a Mac is in hibernation, the current machine status is saved on the SSD/hard-drive only to be reloaded into RAM when you wake up your Mac. This process of course takes some time, and this why your Mac seems unresponsive. While the status is being loaded what you actually see on the screen is just a screenshot of the login screen. It’s not that the Mac is unresponsive, it’s just that you’re looking at a static image.

~~It looks like that by enabling Power Nap on battery helps to minimize this time provided your Mac has at least 30% of charge available~~. [Edited: I've tried this for the past week and it hasn't helped.]

I haven’t tried this out but I’ll keep you posted if this decreases the wake up time.

OS X Mountain Lion after one week

02/08/2012

I am writing this post one week after installing OS X Mountain Lion and I would like to give you my first impressions of the new Apple operating system.

The readers who have been following me for the past year will remember that when OS X Lion was released, I wrote a first post about the new operating system merely 48 hours after installing it.

You might wonder why this year I’ve waited for seven days before writing a similar article.

Well, the reason I have delayed my post is because OS X Mountain Lion represents the operating system that I have been waiting for for the past 12 months. It doesn’t make much sense, does it? Let me elaborate on what I’ve just said.

In the past week, I have tried hard to find a problem with Mountain Lion. I really struggled to find something that bothered me enough to write about, maybe a user interface glitch, some unexpected crash, some incompatibility.

Beside the fact that iCloud is not there yet, I haven’t been able to find anything wrong with Mountain Lion. I even like the name, Mountain Lion, can you believe that?

To date, this is the best release of OS X that I’ve ever seen. In my tests it’s been totally bug free and this says a lot about the amount of QA that Apple have carried out with this version.

Animations are smooth, the responsiveness is better, and in a week I haven’t experienced a single beach ball, just nothing. How about the heat or the battery life? All fine, everything is better.

OS X Mountain Lion is a perfectly tuned and polished version of OS X Lion.

In contrast, this is what I wrote a year ago about Lion:

I sort of wanted this post to be different than it has turned out to be. I hoped to write about the cool new features of the last Apple OS but I am somehow reluctant to do so.

I’m confused. I’m confused in the same way when your favourite wine maker changes the wine you’ve learnt to appreciate over the years. It’s equally good – even better – but not quite the same. I’ve got the same feeling when you know that you were already happy with what you had before.

I’ve used Lion for 48 hours and twice already I’ve been tempted to take my Carbon Copy Cloner backup with Snow Leopard on it and restore it as the main OS.

To make matters worse, two weeks later I complained that Growl, Dropbox, ,Flip4Mac, Flash Player and 1Password still had compatibility issues and ended my post with this sentence:

All in all Lion is good. If you want to see Apple’s future, install it. Despite that, if you are happy with Snow Leopard and if your life is not tied to Apple ecosystem you can skip it for now.

The problem with software compatibility was a serious issue but that alone doesn’t explain why I felt like downgrading to Snow Leopard.

It’s true that the jump from Snow Leopard to OS X Lion was big but it’s also true that Apple is now doing things differently.

You’ll remember that when John Gruber flew down to New York to meet with Phil Schiller to be briefed about OS X Mountain Lion, the Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at Apple said:

We’re starting to do some things differently.

I think that this phrase also referred to the fact that developers would have the chance to use the new operating system earlier than the previous operating systems, hence increase the chance to update their applications in time for the GM version of Mountain Lion.

In fact, I haven’t had a single problem with any of the applications that I normally use.

This, coupled with the fact that I haven’t found a single bug in Mountain Lion makes me a happy user.

Last year OS X Lion left me with a sour taste in my mouth. This year, with Mountain Lion everything tastes better, finally.

iCloud documents and subfolder organization

31/07/2012

With the release of OS X Mountain Lion, iCloud has gone from being a technology preview functionality in OS X Lion to a fully fledged function of the new operating system.

The question that I have been asking myself since OS X Mountain Lion was announced in February 2012 is whether I could benefit from documents in iCloud.

Documents stored on iCloud are now standard in many OS X applications, which means that we should be able to work seamlessly on the same files from different devices.

Over the weekend I read a post on the iA Writer blog about the flat organizational file system that iCloud forces us to use. I invite you to read it because it gives you a new way to look at how people manage their documents and how iCloud might solve a certain number of problems.

The author, Oliver Reichenstein, makes a compelling case against the folder/subfolder structure that all of us have been using for years:

Folders tend to grow deeper and deeper. As soon as we have more than a handful of notions, or (beware!) more than one hierarchical level of notions, it gets hard for most brains to build a mental model of that information architecture.

This is absolutely true. Throughout the years, I’ve created some very complex folder structures only to make my life difficult when I want to move a document in one of the folders. My typical problem is whether I should move say a pension statement to the folder General Papers or the one called 2011/Investments or something else. I could give you dozens of examples like this.

When it comes to create a folder structure, my doubts always revolve around whether I should file all my bills in a single massive Bills directory or split them by year, or even better by year and type of bill (2012/Gas Bills, 2011/Internet, …)? As you can see there are so many different ways to achieve the same result.

Oliver also writes:

The more experience you have dealing with notional systems, the more you know that there is no perfect information architecture, but only better or worse compromises. And making compromises is tiring.

The truth is, the more you tweak the folder structure, the more you end up working. It’s an endless game. You can achieve the same level of efficiency – or chaos, depending from the point of view – by organizing your folders in so many different ways.

As usual when it comes to making choices the more options you have, the less effective your decision is.

The author goes on to admit of seeing the light when Apple introduced default folders is OS X such as Music, Documents, Photos etc. These directories helped him to make a drastic decision which was to dump all files in Documents without following any type of subfolder structure. The combined efficiency of search and sort (like iTunes so to speak) turned out to be the best choice for him.

With the introduction of iCloud and app sandboxing, it’s as if Apple has decided to step in and solve the document filing problem once and for all. Gone are the complex folder structures more than one level deep. iCloud in fact allows you only one level of subfolders:

Using iCloud documents, the author states that:

I don’t need to type file extensions into Spotlight any more. In general, documents belong to an app. While there are often several apps that can use the same document, we usually have a preferred app for each document type.

I don’t need to drag documents into the app. I can navigate from app to app, and handle the documents right there.

I don’t need to put files away. The OS does it all for me, and my documents are always at hand in the app that they belong to.

Which is entirely true. I also totally agree with Oliver’s conclusion:

The iCloud Document Library folders, restricted to one level, guide us to use a simple hierarchical system that mirrors our mental model. This makes them easy to understand, gives us peace of mind that the files are in the right place, and relieves us from our OCD compulsion to over-organize.

iA Writer achieves this very easily. As far as I know it’s the first text editor that allows you to manage iCloud folders on both OS X and iOS (Byword in contrast manages folders only in OS X. Their support was not that helpful when I contacted them on whether the iOS version will have the same features. The answer was a generic yes but without much more information).

I would really like to embrace Apple’s vision of document organization but I have two problems with it:

I don’t want to link my documents to a particular application.
None of Apple standard applications allow me to share files between iOS and OS X.

In fact, both Preview.app and TextEdit.app in OS X Mountain Lion make use of iCloud documents. They even go beyond that by displaying the iCloud storage as the default location the first time you launch them.

I find it funny that there isn’t an equivalent app in iOS that allows me to read a text file created in TextEdit and saved in iCloud.

How about if you want to have a single iCloud location for your PDF files? Apple doesn’t give you any solution to achieve that. Preview.app doesn’t have an equivalent in iOS. Actually, iOS uses iBooks as a repository for PDF files. Guess what though? Because of sandboxing the two apps cannot share the same iCloud pool of documents. This is inconsistency at the highest level.

If you want to share PDF files seamlessly between iOS and OS X you can buy PDFPen for iOS and OS X that let you store all your PDF on iCloud. My question is why I need to use 3rd party software when both iOS and OS X are able to manage PDF files quite well?

As you can see from these examples, iCloud has been marketed as one of the big features of OS X Mountain Lion but the truth is that it still remains a work in progress. I hope that iOS 6, due to be released sometime this autumn, will improve things but I am not that optimistic.

Apple has embarked in a long journey with iCloud. One day it will likely supersede Finder. For the time being though, I cannot see how users can fully embrace the new technology without making huge compromises that ultimately affect their productivity.

After using OS X Mountain Lion for five days I can tell that one day I might extensively use iCloud documents. For now that functionality remains a grey area for me. An area that I’d like to explore but that Apple doesn’t give me the tools to leverage it. Until that moment I think that Dropbox will remain the solution for my needs.

One third of my readers are already on OS X Mountain Lion

30/07/2012

MacRumors reports that Apple sold 3 million copies of OS X Mountain Lion in four days. That is an astounding number and according to Apple it makes the most successful OS X release ever.

Just a few minutes ago I checked what OS X version visitors of macography.net use. This is the result:

In six days almost a third of my readers have already upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion. This is really amazing.

Moneydance 2011 adds compatibility with OS X Mountain Lion

29/07/2012

Moneydance 2011 for Mac has been updated with the developer digital signature required by OS X Mountain Lion.

You can download the updated version from this link.

The file you need to download is Moneydance.zip with timestamp 27th July 2012.

Other users and myself had initially some problems but it looks like that this latest build works fine.

The developer digital signing of applications is required if you have set the security setting on OS X Mountain Lion to this:

You can still force an application to launch even if it’s not signed by a developer by:

Changing the security settings to Allow applications downloaded from anywhere.
Opening the application by using the contextual menu (CTRL + click on the app and choose Open).

Under-promise and over-deliver

26/07/2012

I’m happy to report that the redeem code that Apple support sent me this morning works fine.

I came home from work just ten minutes ago and as I am writing this post, the MacBook Air is diligently downloading OS X Mountain Lion. The App Store indicator says 30 minutes remaining.

From what I read on MacRumors forums and from the comments I’ve been receiving there are still many people without redeem code. Believe me, I feel your pain.

In my case the issue has been solved in 14h 15m from the moment I opened the support case to the moment I received the new code in my inbox. It is a typical case of under promise and over deliver given that the customer care agent said to reply to her email only in 5–7 days.

If you haven’t done so, I strongly advise you to open a support ticket. You can find the link directly in the App Store or go to this page.

An update on the Mountain Lion up-to-date program

26/07/2012

Just blogging this from my iPhone while sitting in a taxi and stuck in traffic.

I’ve received a new email from Apple containing a new redeem code for the Mountain Lion up-to-date program.

I’ll be able to try this code only tonight when I get home. In the meantime, for all Apple users experiencing the same problem, I’ll give you the timeline of this odissey (not really, it’s kinda fun even though yesterday I was a bit annoyed):

July 25 at 2pm GMT: Submitted the form for the OS X Mountain Lion up-to-date program.
July 25 at 3pm GMT: Received the PDF file containing the redeem code to download OS X Mountain Lion.
July 25 at 6pm GMT: Tried to use the code only to see an error message saying that it was already used.
July 25 at 6.30pm GMT: Opened a support ticket with Apple.
July 25 at 7.30pm GMT: Received a response from an Apple representative saying that my request for a new redeem code was being processed and to contact them again in 5–7 days if I didn’t get a new code by then (see my previous post.
July 26 at 9.15am GMT: Received a new PDF file containing the new redeem code.

I’ll try this new code only tonight once I get home and report the results.

Good luck to everyone who’s having problems with the up-to-date program.

Apple botches Mountain Lion up-to-date program

25/07/2012

Apple definitely botched the Mountain Lion up-do-date program. This is the email I’ve just received from iTunes Customer Support:

Hello macography.net,

My name if xyz and I’m sorry to hear that on redeeming the initial upgrade code you received, you were unable to proceed because an error indicated the code had already been used. I know you must be looking forward to having this resolved, and I will be happy to assist you.

I looked into this for you and if your claim is accepted, a valid replacement code will be sent to you by email. There will be no need to submit a new claim. I apologize for any inconvenience in this regard.

Please let me know if you do not receive a replacement code within 5-7 business days, as I’ll be happy to look into things further for you.

I hope this information is helpful, and thank you for your interest in OS X Mountain Lion. Please let me know how everything works out. I’d like to be sure that this has been resolved this for you. Take care and have a nice day!

Sincerely,

xyz
iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you.

The up-to-date program was announced months ago and you would think that a company like Apple had tested the process.

Straight after the Mountain Lion up-to-date program went live at about 2pm GMT I submitted my request for a free upgrade. About an hour later I received the two emails containing respectively a password protected PDF file containing the redeem code and the password.

As soon as I got home from the office at around 6pm GMT I used that code to redeem my free copy of Mountain Lion only to see the error message I posted earlier on.

Anyway, the delay is not a big problem. I mean, I’m just a hobbyist and in any case I would not have the resources to write extensive reviews like the ones you see on the internet this evening.

I could easily click the buy button on the App Store instead of waiting for the redeem code but just for principle I am not going to do it. I’m already spending quite a lot on Apple products these days. This time I’ll wait till they sort this mess out and give me a working code.

Just a thought on this big launches though. Apple already screwed up the launch of the original iPhone in 2007 and MobileMe in 2008. Every single major operating system upgrade seems to bring to light either a lack of preparation or simply a carelessness for these big events.

Surely I prefer that Apple puts its resources in designing good products but why not pay attention to these details too?

This code has already been used. Each code may only be used once

25/07/2012

Today Apple has released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and I really wanted to title this post as simple as *Apple releases OS X Mountain Lion”.

It’s certainly a great day for all Apple users apart for those who are taking advantage of the Mountain Lion up-to-date program that are unable to download the new operating system. I’m one of those.

It looks like that a fair number of users are receiving a “This code has already been used. Each code may only be used once” error message when they try to redeem the free Mountain Lion download.

I’ll report later if Apple send me another code or if I need to contact support.

To all the readers that have managed to install Mountain Lion, enjoy it!

What I really look forward to in OS X Mountain Lion

22/07/2012

The most recent rumours suggest that OS X Mountain Lion is going to be released this Wednesday 25th July. Last month at WWDC 2012, Apple announced that they would release it in July and Tuesdays are usually a favourite Apple’s day for releasing new products.

This year’s operating system debut seems to be not as exciting as the release of OS X Lion but nonetheless Apple users and myself alike are looking forward to it.

There are four things that really excite me about the new operating system:

Exposé
Notes.app
Documents in iCloud
OS X Mountain Lion being the OS that Lion never was

For the way I use my Apple devices, these four things alone justify the effort to install OS X Mountain Lion on day one.

Exposé (sort of)

Exposé was introduced in 2003 in Mac OS Panther and since then it’s been one of the functions I use most on my Mac.

With the introduction of OS X Lion, Apple changed things around with the introduction of Mission Control. Marketed as Exposé on steroids, the feature has actually complicated the simple task of displaying all windows open on the desktop. Its purpose is to also show windows open in different desktops than the user is working in, change desktops and move windows across different screens. This is in principle a great idea but the implementation has left many users lukewarm about it.

With Mission Control, the screen is in fact cluttered with too much information. This added visual complexity doesn’t help when you want to locate with a glimpse the window you’re looking for. Too much information is not the only reason though, Mission Control also groups together windows belonging to the same application. The result is that quite often important information is hidden behind the foreground windows.

Thankfully, Apple has recognized this problem and in Mountain Lion we will be able to return to something very close to the old Exposé.

Despite not having used the Mountain Lion developer preview I can already see how this is going to improve my productivity.

Notes.app

Throughout the years, I’ve used countless note taking applications. The requirements I have in a note taking software are very simple:

Having my notes synced across my Apple devices.
Ease of use.
Information must be easy to find.

Quite a few note taking apps use Dropbox as the sync engine of choice. Solutions that rely on this synchronization are generally good when it comes to text editors but in my experience only ok when it comes to note taking apps. The point is, text editors and notes applications are two different things when it comes to data synchronization.

In my experience, Dropbox sync is almost perfect when the sync operations are simple as in a text editor. In this case what you usually do is edit the file, save it, close the app, maybe wait some time and open the same file on another device.

On the other hand, note taking apps usually update the same file multiple times and from different devices increasing the probability of sync conflicts. In many of my tests, Note taking apps that sync through Dropbox have problems dealing with multiple changes. In fact, more than once I’ve seen notes being duplicated, or being stored as a version or two behind in one of the devices I regularly use.

I have the feeling that Dropbox is not the problem here, it’s more related to the integration implementation in the single apps instead. In all truth the problem is not that bad but it bugs me just enough to have the feeling that the sync through this method is not reliable.

Another solution that I used for more than a year relies on Simplenote sync service. This sync engine, which is optimized for text files, is nearly flawless. In my tests the service was so good that I even paid to become a premium subscriber.

The problem with Notational Velocity is that notes are not searchable from iOS Spotlight. You can search them by opening the SimpleNote app but not outside of it.

I have found this little detail annoying. This, combined with the fact that I tend to prefer applications included with either OS X or iOS, have convinced me to make the transition to Notes.app.

So far, I’ve found Notes.app in iOS very usable. I just could not get over the fact that in OS X, notes have always been part of Mail.app as if they were an afterthought in the design process.

Thinking about it, maybe notes were indeed an afterthought when OS X was developed. Back then, people would jot down a note on a piece of paper. In the early ’90s smartphones didn’t exist and personal digital assistants (PDA) were not that common outside the techies/executives type of customers. With the proliferation of smartphones, users have started writing their notes on their devices so that they could carry them all the time. This fact alone has increased the importance of having a robust notes application.

Finally with OS X Mountain Lion notes will be part of a dedicated application able to manage formatted text, images, sounds and attachments. As a bonus, Apple Notes will be integrated with iCloud and this is something that I just love.

Documents in iCloud

I am really looking forward to moving most of my working documents to iCloud. Its speed, reliability and a desire to find an integrated cloud system for all my Apple devices will push me more and more toward this solution.

You might ask if I plan to ditch Dropbox altogether for iCloud after having written that Dropbox has almost replaced my home folder. My answer is not quite. Dropbox has been part of my workflow for a long time and before moving my documents to a different bucket I want to make sure that iCloud fits my way of working.

Despite having to think different due to the abstraction of the filesystem, iCloud is very promising . The fact that all documents will be searchable from Spotlight even if they are not physically organized through Finder folders is an interesting characteristic of iCloud. I expect that a similar functionality be introduced in iOS 6 when it’s introduced this fall.

If that happens, iCloud will already be better than Dropbox, which in iOS doesn’t allow you to find your documents directly from Spotlight.

OS X Mountain Lion being the OS that Lion never was

With this headline I’m trying to provoke my readers, I am not denying it. Who has been following this blog for the past year knows that I’ve never really managed to fall in love with OS X Lion.

In my opinion, this version of OS X has never been as polished as either Tiger or Snow Leopard. What I have perceived is that many solutions such as Mission Control, Launchpad, Auto Save and Versions were rushed to release and lacked a coherent vision within the overall architecture of the operating system. Mind you, these functionalities work as designed but they break many established workflows within the IT industry and Mac OS alike.

Proof of that is the fact that Apple has partly backtracked from many decisions. I am referring to Exposé, the Save As function and the automatic re-opening of files on an application restart and others. For example, the three functions I have just mentioned will be improved in Mountain Lion with the addition of new settings.

Furthermore, Mountain Lion’s beta testers seem to agree that this version of OS X feels lighter than Lion. This is exactly how users defined Snow Leopard when it was released in 2009. In light of this preliminary feedback, Mountain Lion seems to be the lighter, optimized and streamlined version of Lion.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that Lion is what Vista has been for Microsoft but as a long time Apple user I can safely say that it hasn’t been one of the finest operating systems launched by Apple. There has been too much controversy and discussions, even a year after launch day, on how the new features help increase productivity.

In all truth most of my negative perception about Lion was due to my aging MacBook Pro 15″. Since I bought the new mid-2012 MacBook Air I just don’t perceive Lion as that resource hog that it used to be with the old computer. In spite of this, I still have mixed feelings about OS X Lion.

As I said, I am really excited about the new release. We all hope that Apple’s data centers will not cave in due to the high traffic caused by users downloading en-masse the new operating system.

Let’s hear from you now. Are you going to upgrade to Mountain Lion? If so, what features are you most excited about?

Inside Mountain Lion iCloud documents

20/07/2012

Before Apple releases OS X Mountain Lion I invite you to read AppleInsider’s excellent article about documents in iCloud.

How to get your Mac ready for OS X Mountain Lion

10/07/2012

With OS X Mountain Lion just around the corner it’s time to prepare our Macs for the upgrade.

Whether you are upgrading from Snow Leopard or Lion it’s good practice to follow some steps to avoid problems during the installation.

It’s also a good idea to be prepared in case things should go horribly wrong during the installation:

Run Software Update and install the latest software available from Apple.
Run Repair Permissions. This function is part of Disk Utility, which you can find in the Utilities folder of your Mac. Repairing permissions set the correct read/write/execute permissions to all files on your hard drive so that OS X installer doesn’t encounter exceptions.
Download Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your internal hard drive to an external one.
Test the cloned drive. In order to do that connect the USB drive, restart your Mac and before the Apple startup chime is triggered press the Option key to choose from which drive to boot from. Choose the USB one.

If your Mac doesn’t have some pre-existing and hard to find OS corruptions, these steps should guarantee a hassle-free upgrade.

OS X Mountain Lion goes GM

10/07/2012

Last night OS X Mountain Lion – the new version of the Mac operating system – was been made GM (Golden Master) and distributed to the developers.

In software development this is the last step before releasing the product to the public. At this point I would not be surprised if we saw OS X Mountain Lion on the App Store as early as in two weeks time.

My prediction comes from the fact that Apple has also requested developers to start submitting apps for Mountain Lion. Usually the submission and approval process takes about two weeks.

It is with anticipation and a bit of fear that I wait for the new version of OS X.

Anticipation thanks to the new features that will be part of the new operating system such as docs in the cloud, Power Nap and separate Notes.app.

Fear because OS X Lion release was far from being perfect. Some of my old posts contain feelings of frustration and and an initial refusal to work with the new OS. After a few days using Lion, I clearly remember erasing my hard-drive and restoring Snow Leopard.

In 20+ years using Apple products, I can safely say that OS X Lion was one of the buggiest dot zero versions ever released by Apple. I really hope that Apple has learnt the lesson and it is going to release a robust OS from day one.

Exposé back in Mountain Lion

08/05/2012

A reader in the popular MacRumors Forums has posted a screenshot of the new Mission Control settings in Mountain Lion which suggests that the old style Exposé as we know it from Snow Leopard should be available in the new version of OS X due to be released this summer.

The new setting Group window by application will allow the users to disable what is regarded as one of the most controversial features of OS X Lion.

With the introduction of Mission Control in OS X Lion, many users felt that grouping windows by application instead of evenly spreading them all over the available screen space just increases visual clutter. That in turns makes the switch from one window to another slower than before. The main criticism is that windows hidden behind the one in the foreground are less visible making it more difficult to click on the window you want to activate.

The controversial design decision has pushed many users to turn to Apple’s official forums and feedback forms to voice their disappointment.

It’s great to know that Apple is partially reversing a decision it made last summer and listen to its customers.

On a filesystem-less OS X

20/04/2012

Andy Ihnatko in June 2011 after OS X Lion demo:

I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple minimizes MacOS’ whole file system in some near release. Not 10.7, of course. But it’s becoming more and more clear that most of the accepted rules for desktop operating systems are now…well, off the desktop. Even such quaint 1980?s concepts as “windows where you drill through directories filled with files.”

I think that OS X Mountain Lion will get closer to this concept more than ever.

1Password 3.8.19 compatible with Mountain Lion

20/04/2012

If you like to read a nice technical article on how developers are prepping their software for OS X Mountain Lion check the latest post of the Agile Bits blog.

The new update of 1Password – a password management software – will be compatible with Gatekeeper. This is a new protection to be introduced in Mountain Lion that will ensure that only software distributed by Apple accredited developers can be installed on your Mac.

Gatekeeper will come in the form of a new setting on your Mac that can have three different values:

Allow only software coming from the Apple app store.
Allow also the installation of software distributed by an Apple certified developer.
Allow all software.

To the best of my knowledge the Flashback fiasco would not have happened with OS X Mountain Lion and the Gatekeeper set to the first two settings. The Trojan wouldn’t have passed the check.

The problem with iCloud documents in the cloud

26/03/2012

iCloud documents in the cloud will make its big debut in OS X Mountain Lion. Right now it can only be enabled at application level if the developer has decided to take advantage of the available APIs.

In Mountain Lion, iCloud documents in the cloud will be part of the operating system and all application that are included with it will be able to take use it.

From the screenshots that I have seen and the information I have read, iCloud documents in the cloud will be app centric. That is, each application installed on your Mac will have its separated iCloud space where to store the documents created with that software.

This approach has its advantages but I see a ton of disadvantages. The main one is the impossibility to organize your files by project.

Say I have a project that I am working on called MyBigProject. I would normally create a folder with that name and in it I would include mindmaps, text files with some notes, screenshots, Word or Excel documents, videos and maybe some other binary files as well.

All files inside that folder would automatically mean that they belong to that project. That’s the meaning of folder after all: A container where files related to each other in some logical way can be kept together.

To the best of my knowledge with iCloud we will not have this kind of flexibility. Each application will keep its own files separated from other applications.

iCloud will not resemble iDisk or the more famous Dropbox. iCloud will be a filesystem-less storage space where the complexities of the filesystem are hidden to the user. Think of your iPhone or your iPad.

The last thing I want is to have an iCloud container for pdf files, another for images, another one for Word files etc.

Unless Mountain Lion will include a powerful tagging system it’ll be hard to keep track of a project as a single entity that contains information coming from different sources.

Can you help me understand? Am I missing something obvious in all this?

Is the MacBook Pro more future-proof than other models?

25/03/2012

In my quest to find out what Mac I should buy next I have been considering things like portability and performance. I have not taken into account costs because I like to keep my laptops for three-four years so the total cost of the machine naturally spreads over time.

Lately I’ve been thinking about future-proofing my next purchase. As an exercise I went back to the day I purchased my MacBook Pro 15″ and checked what other laptops Apple was selling back then.

To go back in time I used the fantastic Web Archive that allows you to see the content of many well known websites on a specific day.

I purchased my MacBook Pro on 08/02/2008 and according to the Web Archive of that day, the Apple site was like this.

Three Mac laptops were on the market in February 2008:

White MacBook

13.3″ glossy display
Intel Core 2 Duo
2.0GHz or 2.2GHz
Up to 4GB memory

MacBook Air

13.3″ glossy display
Intel Core 2 Duo processor
1.6GHz or 1.8GHz
2GB memory

MacBook Pro

15“ or 17” matte or glossy display
Intel Core 2 Duo
2.2GHz, 2.4GHz or 2.6GHz
Up to 4GB memory

I have checked the system requirements for OS X Mountain Lion and two out of those three laptops will not be compatible anymore.

Of the three Mac laptops available when I bought my MacBook Pro, only the Pro model is still supported with Mountain Lion:

Model	Supported in Lion?	Supported in Mountain Lion?
White MacBook	Y	N
MacBook Air	Y	N
MacBook Pro	Y	Y

It’s true that I am an exception. People generally change laptops more frequently than 3–4 years but I find changing laptops an unnecessary hassle if the machine allows you to be productive.

On my current laptop I still manage to run virtual machines with Windows 2008 Server without too many problems. The reasons I am going to replace it are:

I get the infamous beach balls of death a little bit too often.
After four years the Mac looks a bit beat up.
I generally like to keep up to date with Apple technology.

Anyway, I think that the table shows an interesting fact that somehow I believed to be true without any research. A MacBook Pro seem to retain a longer supportability over time compared to the other models not to mention the possibility to upgrade the RAM or other components.

Even so, four years is considered by Apple a very long time. My model for example cannot use AirDrop in OS X Lion and as described in other posts my Mac struggles quite a lot with Lion on it. I can’t imagine what it could be like with Mountain Lion.

I’ll finish this post quoting a [forum’s reader](once you rock a 2.2 pound MBA–11 around town I can guarantee that you will not be interested in a MBP. And if you buy a MBP you will spend 3 years wondering if you should have bought a MBA. Now that’s future-proofing) commenting on future-proofing your Mac purchase:

Once you rock a 2.2 pound MBA–11 around town I can guarantee that you will not be interested in a MBP. And if you buy a MBP you will spend 3 years wondering if you should have bought a MBA. Now that’s future-proofing.

If you’re interested in this topic you can also read How long will my Mac last for? for an in-depth analysis.

New evidence of MacBooks with Retina display on the way

22/03/2012

Here we go again. My next purchase is going to be exciting:

Signs in Mountain Lion point to “retina” display MacBooks sooner than later:

A new clue found within in the latest developer release of OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) suggests that 2012 may bring us the “summer of retina display Macs.” A source with access to the latest Mountain Lion preview alerted Ars that double-sized graphics have popped up in some unexpected places, once again suggesting that Apple may be close to releasing MacBooks with high pixel-density screens.

(Via Ars Technica)

Will OS X Mountain Lion be free?

20/02/2012

One thing caught my attention last week after the announcement of OS X Mountain Lion. It is the one year release cycle set for all new versions of OS X, just like iOS. A new operating system every year.

Beside reducing the release cycle to 12 months, iOS also introduced in the world of IT the idea of free OS updates. Neither Microsoft, nor Apple have ever released a major OS upgrade for free. This changed with the introduction of iOS.

I wonder if this way of operating is going to come to OS X. A few factors could point to this:

1. Apple is at its core a hardware company. It makes money selling Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods etc. They don’t make money selling operating systems.
2. Apple makes money by retaining their customers. It gives us first class hardware and a whole range of services such as iTunes and now iCloud. For the most part these services were not created as a source of revenue but as a way to keep users inside Apple walled garden.
3. Users might not be willing to pay every year for a new version of OS X.
4. It is in Apple’s interest to have a fast adoption of the new operating system. High adoption of an OS means less costs for developers, less support costs for Apple and generally a better user experience for customers.
5. It would be a kick in Microsoft’s face when it releases Windows 8.

If you check at the OS X prices you will see that they have been kept artificially low for the past two releases:

Version	Name	Price (US $)
10.0	Cheetah	129.00
10.1	Puma	129.95
10.2	Jaguar	129.00
10.3	Panther	129.00
10.4	Tiger	129.00
10.5	Leopard	129.00
10.6	Snow Leopard	29.00
10.7	Lion	29.99

I don’t like to bet but if you ask me for my opinion I would say that OS X Mountain Lion could either be positioned at an even lower price, something like $ 14.99 or $ 9.99 or even totally free. Time will tell.

Another batch of 3rd party apps killed by a new OS X version

19/02/2012

Gizmodo put forward the case that Mountain Lion is going to kill quite a few 3rd party apps. It mentions Adium & AIM, Dropbox, SMS, and Growl.

The same happened when Lion was introduced. Apple is not afraid of analyzing what’s out there, improve it and include it as a new feature.

To that list I would also add Simplenote and Wunderlist. The only advantage of these two apps is that they are multi platform, making them naturally more flexible than the corresponding Apple solutions.

But for users that only work with Apple hardware, Notes and Reminders are more than capable of doing the job. I’ve mentioned Simplenote and Wunderlist because I currently use them. The new Notes and Reminders looks like very usable with the advantage of having a unified UI with the iOS version.

From what I’ve seen in the OS X Mountain Lion videos, I might ditch them in favor of a single Apple solution.

OS X Mountain Lion

16/02/2012

Oh boy, this is big and unexpected. After a long day spent polishing slides for the next customer visit, having the usual calls with some business partner agitated for some new issue, I found the time to catch up with my RSS feeds.

Apple today has previewed Mountain Lion, the next version of OS X. From what I’ve seen on the Apple website the new OS X is going to make our lives easier. I am not saying better, because that depends on us, just easier.

First of all the name. Mountain Lion. The moment I heard it I thought that it was awesome in a cool sort of way and to me it already projects greatness.

Next, are the features shown. They make so much sense as a natural evolution of OS X. There’s no new interface to learn, just a natural simplification to unify even more the user experience between a Mac and an iOS device.

The subtle, yet profound, iOS-ification of OS X is so well structured in its ridiculous beauty that few users outside the Apple world will knowingly grasp it. But of course the users’ subconscious will happily embrace it and sales of Apple devices will prove that.

I love the way Apple has paid attention to fix inconsistencies and oddities as Daring Fireball said in his superb post.

Just the other day Tim Cook talked about the halo effect created by the iPad on the Mac, the iPhone on the iPad and so on. OS X Mountain Lion will multiply that effect significantly.

The timing of the announcement has been totally unexpected. For so long it seemed that Apple was more focused on iOS rather than OS X. Lion itself is not receiving the plaudits it should now receive after the release of the third maintenance update. With this announcement Apple has definitely signaled that it is not done with the Mac at all and that we will see many new developments coming from Cupertino in this area of Apple business.

From the technological point of view I am stunned by the plans to start a one-year roll out schedule for OS X. That is an ambitious yet fascinating plan. Releasing every 12 months a new major version of an operating system is not easy. Obviously Apple management knows that is achievable based on their own metrics.

The iCloud integration is great as well. I am now starting to fully grasp the uniqueness of iCloud. Since the beginning I saw the potential but could not see how it could drive a close integration between Apple devices and more importantly improve the user experience. The minimalistic, almost invisible presence of iCloud is now the soul that permeates all Apple devices allowing them to share data effortlessly. No other company, no other operating system has in place such a cloud system that allows them to offer such a fine user experience.

Now I am really excited about Mountain Lion and can’t wait to install it on my next Mac. When will Apple release the new laptops?