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30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

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Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#21

Post by irq »

petercooper wrote: post #9
cstuder wrote: post #2

Hey, Dashboard still exists. I'm wondering why I never use it anymore. It was fun to play around with and design for, but nowadays I... well, I actually forgot the shortcut to open it. Am I the only one?

I played with it for 10 minutes when it first came out and since then have either disabled or hidden it. It just seems to do stuff that most people I know leave browser tabs open for instead nowadays. The calculator is rubbish (and Cmd+Space, c, enter isn't hard), Google does better work at conversions and weather, etc..

You don't even have to launch Calculator, you can just type mathematical expressions directly into Spotlight, and it will immediately display the result.

Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#22

Post by publicfig »

cstuder wrote: post #2

Hey, Dashboard still exists. I'm wondering why I never use it anymore. It was fun to play around with and design for, but nowadays I... well, I actually forgot the shortcut to open it. Am I the only one?

I use it for iStatPro and for the sticky notes feature. Those two thins are actually pretty useful for me. The calculator is typically useless though, and I've never found anything else that can't be solved quicker by just typing it into an address bar to put on there.

Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#23

Post by ryannielsen »

cstuder wrote: post #2

Hey, Dashboard still exists. I'm wondering why I never use it anymore. It was fun to play around with and design for, but nowadays I... well, I actually forgot the shortcut to open it. Am I the only one?

I believe it's telling that Apple's latest keyboards no longer include a Dashboard key; in its place is a Launchpad key. While I actually do use Dashboard on a regular basis (gotta check my stocks!), I don't think it's long for this world.

Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#24

Post by jameswyse »

ericHosick wrote: post #11

Most features don't seem to be core OS features except maybe this one: "You can use Airplay as a sound output device". Which, I am looking forward to.

I tried this feature and couldn't get it to work. I have a (last-gen) airport express and also a mac htpc running airfoil speakers.

I can play to both through iTunes or Airfoil but no audio comes through when using the airplay audio out device. Hopefully this will be addressed soon.

Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#26

Post by lloeki »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #14
iusable wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been using it on a fully loaded macbook air. Completely anecdotal but I think my boot times are faster. But my encryption seems slower. Safari is wayyy more stable and faster. Messages is integrated better and love Notifications! Launchpad is way smoother imho.

Is Mission Control any faster in switching spaces? It's incredibly annoying to wait 2-3 seconds to switch spaces, every, time. Especially since it was configurable in Snow Leopard.

On Lion machines, using the keyboard shortcuts (ctrl/cmd+1/2/3/4), switching spaces is well under a second (my guess would be 500~750ms). From MC (which takes again less than a second to enter), entering a space is more in the 750~1000ms range but still, I don't know where you get that 2~3s figure.

This may help, although I found too fast an animation makes me dizzy after a while.

    defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.15; killall Dock

Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#27

Post by losvedir »

Wow, none of those really jumped out at me as killer features. That said, I was happy with my upgrade to Snow Leopard, I think it was, when most of the new features were behind the scenes speed/stability/security fixes.

Also, off topic, but is the narrator John C. Reilly!?

Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#28

Post by ryannielsen »

jlarocco wrote: post #6

The "features" in that video are a joke. Does anybody know if there are under the hood improvements in this version that would make upgrading worth the money?

"Under the hood"? Not really. There are a few nifty new APIs – SceneKit, NSXPCConnection, NSUserNotification, the sharing stuff – and the 64-bit kernel (with kernel ASLR) is now the default. Regarding user-visible features, I think there are a couple nice ones:

- AirPlay mirroring is slick, especially in meeting situations

- Document auto-save and versioning are a lot less annoying and more useful

- Improved sharing support can be quite useful in many situations

- Calendar and Contacts suck less

- Gatekeeper is, I honestly believe, a solid step forward in improving system integrity and security

- iCloud sucks less and is better integrated into some system apps

- You are now notified of both system and app updates, and update checks happen daily. I think this is huge for app developers

- Preview has support for entering text in text fields of PDF documents which aren't true PDF forms (this honestly might be my single favorite Mountain Lion feature)

For $20, I think this is a solid "polish" upgrade. There's nothing mind blowing, but there's an incredible amount of polish across the system, with a few truly useful features mixed in. For me? Money well spent.

Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#29

Post by illicium »

risratorn wrote: post #25

It's a joke they still haven't fixed the fullscreen feature rendering your second monitor useless. I can't understand why they did it that way and why it hasn't been fixed already.

Everyone keeps saying this, but I think it's FUD. They've fixed the main gripe with Lion's full screen: not being able to full screen an app on the monitor of your choice (as opposed to the main monitor only). Why is the second monitor useless? I'm sure you can still drag app windows to it and interact with them.

edit: You can drag child windows of the full-screened app to the second monitor. The whole point of the full-screen mode is to isolate the app and give it exclusive focus. For everything else, there's the zoom button.

Re: 30 New OS X Mountain Lion Features in 2 Minutes

#30

Post by beloch »

Could rebranding OSX to OS10 be in preparation for OS11? OSXI doesn't sound or look as good as OS11 to me. They're also almost out of large cats...

The time for OS11 is rapidly approaching. OSX has evolved substantially since its release, but is still very much the same OS. If Windows 8 is a fundamental leap (that doesn't lead to a face-plant) then OSX might soon be in the same position as OS9 was after Win95 came out. Is there another NeXTSTEP somewhere out there for Apple to buy?

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