It is very early for me to give first impressions of Mountain Lion because I just installed it late last night but my experience thus far has been quite positive. It installed very quickly on my MacBook Pro with Retina display and within about 1/2 hour, I was exploring the new features of the latest Mac OS.
Safari 6 has some great new features and one that was a surprising loss. Instead of having a separate search box for Google, there is now a single search box either to type in URLs or to do your searches. I have found that to be fast and much better in terms of finding information.
I discovered that Apple eliminated the RSS reader from Safari. I use RSS to keep up with a lot of things and was used to having the feed in Safari where I could see at a glance how many new feeds were there to read. Well, it ain’t there anymore, so I have to adapt and am now using Google Reader with an excellent App called Reeder ($4.99, opens Mac App Store). I am sure that there will be extensions built for Safari that will reintegrate RSS feeds, but this is one thing you might want to take a look at if you use RSS feeds.
Some of the other new features in Safari include a Share button that will allow you to easily share web pages via Mail, Messages or Twitter. The promised Facebook share feature does not seem to be there yet, unless I am missing it somehow. I like the new View Passwords feature in Safari preferences, too, which stores and allows you to see all the passwords you use for various websites.
One of the neatest features of Safari 6 is iCloud tabs. With iCloud tabs your open Safari tabs on your Mac are now open on your iPhone or iPad version of Safari and you can continue browsing as you switch devices. Unfortunately, this is not quite functional yet as it will require iOS 6, which is not scheduled for release until the fall.
Tab view works right now and is pretty handy if you use multi-gestures. At the righthand side of the tabs is an icon representing tab view. In this viewing mode you can use Multi-Touch gestures to navigate between open tabs. If you are not using tab browsing you are missing some of the most powerful features of Safari.
Moving from Safari, I decided to check out AirPlay Mirroring with my Apple TV. This is a great new feature that allows you to send whatever you have on your Mac screen to your TV wirelessly through AppleTV, in high definition. Mountain Lion adds a menu item to activate AirPlay mirroring and also to access the display preferences to set the correct resolution for AirPlay. Works smooth as silk. First, I just activated it and used my HDTV to browse around the net and explore Mountain Lion and then I decided I would try to play a video from my Mac. I was blown away at the quality of the picture and that the sound was automatically routed to my TV, too.
Contacts has a pleasant new feature that has a Groups column so you don’t have to keep flipping back to the groups page.
I haven’t tried dictation yet, but that might be on tap for tonight when I am in a quiet environment. If it works as well as Siri on the iPhone, I might be up late talking to myself. Grace will think I am having a conversation with someone but it will only be with my Mac…
iCloud is expanded to now include documents from Pages or Numbers, too!
One great feature in Mail that is new is the VIP indicator and VIP Mailboxes. You can designate anyone as a VIP by simply clicking on the star next to their name when you open their message. Then you have a VIP smart mailbox where you can just view messages from those VIPs. Very handy!
I have been using the beta version of the new iChat called Messages and the release version is great. iMessage allows you to send messages to anyone with an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS5 or better or to a Mac with Mountain Lion. iMessage will allow you to text message to any phone number, too! Another handy feature is that if you want to forward a message, all you have to do is highlight the message and choose forward.
There is a lot more that I haven’t had the time to check out but at $19.99, Mountain Lion is a significant value and a must-have upgrade for your Mac!