Adds options for preventing unused apps from quitting and disabling the rubber band scrolling effect. (Free, 1.8 MB)

Mountain Lion continues Lion’s tradition of spontaneously force-quitting applications. Fortunately, there’s now a magic wand that lets you turn off this reprehensible behavior.

Looking for details on the best ways to upgrade to Mountain Lion and take advantage of its new features? If you enjoy video presentations, tune in to our second TidBITS Presents event to watch Joe Kissell and Matt Neuburg share tips from their Mountain Lion books.

Kirk McElhearn has been dictating for years, into tape recorders, digital dictaphones, and his Mac via speech recognition software. He shares his top ten tricks and techniques for making your life easier with the new dictation features in Mountain Lion and the third-generation iPad.

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.

With Mountain Lion, Apple removed the Web Sharing options from the Sharing preference pane, but left the underlying Apache software installed. You could buy Apple’s OS X Server to bring back Web serving capabilities, but if that’s overkill, you can instead control Mountain Lion’s Apache from the command line or use a free preference pane from developer Tyler Hall.

Adds Power Nap support for 2011 and 2012 MacBook Air models running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (Free, 698 KB/663 KB)

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.

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.

Mountain Lion changes the rules on AppleScript file formats in a subtle yet important way. It’s a potential trap for the unwary, even if they are not running Mountain Lion themselves.

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.

After experiencing the speed offered by the new Retina MacBook Pro — but needing to return the review unit — Jeff Carlson decided to put a solid-state drive into his sluggish MacBook Pro. But because he couldn’t give up its existing storage, he tried something different: he replaced the optical drive with the SSD.

Fixes an issue that increased increased CPU power consumption and improves USB compatibility for all MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models released in June 2012. (Free, 76.64 MB)

We’re getting ready for our next big live event, which will cover upgrading to and using Mountain Lion, with TidBITS editors Joe Kissell and Matt Neuburg presenting. Let us know which days of the week work best for you!

It’s nearly time for another upgrade to Mac OS X, and to help you prepare for a trouble-free experience, we’re pleased to bring you Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Upgrading to Mountain Lion,” the latest version of a book he has written for every big cat since Panther. It’s available now with a $5-off introductory price, and will receive a free update with all the details once Apple lifts our non-disclosure agreement. You can also pre-order Matt Neuburg’s “Take Control of Using Mountain Lion,” again with a $5-off introductory price.

The combination of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper and Apple’s recently enacted sandboxing requirement for the Mac App Store will provide Mac users with significant protection from attackers, but Apple will need to maintain the right balance of control and freedom or risk hamstringing the Mac platform.

The new MacBook Pro with Retina Display (say that 10 times fast!) is garnering positive reviews from most quarters for its centerpiece feature as well as its speedy responsiveness.

Apple has released Thunderbolt Software Update 1.2.1 to fix the boot failure problems caused by the 1.2 release. And, in a refreshing change, the company has acknowledged the mistake and apologized for the disruption.

Just in time for its obsolescence, iDisk gains the speed boost it has always needed, thanks to a WebDAV update in Mac OS X 10.7.4.