Don’t say we haven’t been warning you! This issue focuses on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, released last week. We have three new Take Control ebooks about upgrading to Mountain Lion, using Mountain Lion, and Apple Mail in Mountain Lion to help you get started, but if you want to read something a little shorter to whet your appetite, Jeff Carlson offers a long list of interesting details about Mountain Lion, Sharon Zardetto contributes a review of the new Safari 6, Adam Engst looks briefly at the OS X Mountain Lion Up-to-Date Program for those who purchased Macs recently, and Glenn Fleishman is particularly pleased to share the news that Software Base Station in Mountain Lion finally offers decent security. On the only unrelated note, Michael Cohen runs down Apple’s Q3 2102 financial report. Lastly, Agen Schmitz does yeoman service in covering Apple’s Mountain Lion update to the iWork suite, along with a slew of notable software updates, most of which also relate to Mountain Lion. They include Fantastical 1.3.2, Firefox 14.0.1, Nisus Writer Pro 2.0.3 and Express 3.4.2, SuperDuper 2.7, Yojimbo 3.0.4, LaunchBar 5.3, Scrivener 2.3.1, MacBook Air SMC Updates 1.5 and 1.6, BusyCal 1.6.4, Aperture 3.3.2, iPhoto ’11 9.3.2, and iMovie ’11 9.0.7.
If you purchased a Mac on or after 11 June 2012 and it doesn’t come with Mountain Lion, you can get a free upgrade from Apple. But act soon, since the offer expires relatively quickly.
Outstanding profitability is not quite outstanding enough as Apple doesn’t quite meet the rosiest of analyst expectations in its quarterly results. Still, $8.8 billion in profit on revenue of $35 billion is certainly acceptable, thanks to strong sales of iPads, iPhones, and Macs.
The crew that creates the Take Control ebook series has not been sitting idly by while Apple brushed the last tangles out of Mountain Lion’s fur; instead, we’ve been busy grooming three essential guides for taming Apple’s newly released feline.
Apple updates Keynote, Numbers, and Pages to take advantage of Mountain Lion’s Documents in the Cloud and Dictation features, plus adds support for the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
Years after Wi-Fi’s original encryption method, WEP, was proven to be broken and insecure, Apple finally switches the software base station option in Mac OS X to use the safer WPA2.
Apple is happy to tell you about the main features of OS X Mountain Lion, but you may not know about the details that TidBITS staff members have shared in this article of important (and fun!) Mountain Lion tips.
The latest version of Safari offers some (but not enough) interface polishing and coordination with Mountain Lion features such as Notifications and the ubiquitous Share button, but it drops support for RSS feeds. When the most notable upgrade feature is a retooling of the address field, you suspect it doesn’t deserve its new version number.
Notable software releases this week include Fantastical 1.3.2, Firefox 14.0.1, Nisus Writer Pro 2.0.3 and Express 3.4.2, SuperDuper 2.7, Yojimbo 3.0.4, LaunchBar 5.3, Scrivener 2.3.1, MacBook Air SMC Updates 1.5 and 1.6, BusyCal 1.6.4, Aperture 3.3.2, iPhoto ’11 9.3.2, and iMovie ’11 9.0.7.