OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Growls at the Masses

From DailyTech: Today Apple, Inc. (AAPL) is the only real challenger to Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) (perhaps) natural monopoly in the personal operating system space. Apple has its work cut out for it challenging Microsoft's slick Windows 8, which launches later this year. In many ways Windows 8 "out-Apple's" Apple, adopting a eye-catching new rich multimedia user interface, the Metro UI. And the new OS isn't just eye candy -- it's brimming with hard base-level technical innovation as well.

Apple isn't scared, though. It's continuing to march to the beat of its own drummer and is preparing for the launch of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, the successor to OS X 10.7 Lion.

A small note -- this will be the first Apple OS X OS to drop the "Mac" from its name. In other words, OS X 10.7 was "Mac OS X 10.7", formally, while OS X 10.8 is simply "OS X 10.8".

While Apple is much maligned by critics who say its operating systems are glorified system updates, in reality Microsoft and Apple's approaches aren’t that far apart. Microsoft, with Windows 8, has moved to a 3-to-4-year development cycle.

"Mountain Lion" falls into the role of the minor release (and to boot, Lion wasn't as much of a "major release" as most had hoped), but nonetheless offers some interesting improvements. Namely, it continues Apple's push to make OS X more iOS-like, largely on application level.

Much like Google Inc. (GOOG), Apple is pushing synced web-connected apps, which offers a redundant, contiguous flow of work, helping to prevent against computer crashes, power outages, and other evils. The approach also allows you to take your work on the go more easily, by accessing your current PC stream from your tablet or smartphone.

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