OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
Apple announced a developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain
Lion (Mac App Store link)in
mid-February 2012, and it became available on July 25, 2012. As
expected, it makes Macs even more iOS-like, continuing the trend begun
with OS X 10.7 Lion in July
2011.
Features
ported over from iOS include AirPlay Mirroring, Game Center, Messages,
Notes, Notification Center, Reminders, and Twitter integration. New
features include Gatekeeper and Share Sheets. Gatekeeper can restrict
Mountain Lion Macs to running only apps from the Mac App Store. Share
Sheets is designed to make it easier for you to share links, photos,
and videos by sending links in Safari, emailing or messaging from
Notes, posting photos to Flikr and videos to Vimeo, and "tweeting just
about anything."
As with Lion, Mountain Lion will only available by purchase and
download from the Mac App Store, where it will probably retail for the
same US$29.99.
Apple has really raised the bar on hardware requirments. Where Lion
had only left Core Dou Macs behind - all of them introduced in 2006 -
Mountain Lion is abandoning Core 2 Duo Macs that use Intel GMA 950 or
GMA 3100 graphics. Some of those were introduced in Late 2006, but some
were not discontinued until Mid 2009, which means they will be barely
three years old when Mountain Lion is released.
Models supported by Lion but not Mountain Lion include:
Oldest supported Macs by release date:
Mountain Lion Links
Downloadable Updates
Standalone Updates let you update to a newer version of Mac OS X
from your hard drive instead of using Software Update, which requires
an Internet connection. Download the one(s) you need and install them
after mounting the disk image and launching the Installer program.
There are two types of Standalone Updates: Individual (or Delta) and
Combo.
- Individual Updates update one version of Mac OS X to the
next version. For example, the Mac OS X 10.8.4 Update updates Mac OS X
10.8.3 to version 10.8.4. Individual Updates are also known as Delta
Updates.
- Combo Updates update the base version of a Mac OS X release
to the version specified in the Combo Update, including all
intermediate updates. For example, the Mac OS X 10.8.4 Combo Update
updates any earlier version of Mac OS X 10.8 to Mac OS X 10.8.4 using a
single installer, as opposed to installing the individual Mac OS X
10.8.1, 10.8.2, 10.8.3, and 10.8.4 updates.
Standalone Updates are generally available 24 to 48 hours after the
Update is available through Software Update.
If you burn a Standalone Update to CD, its disk image must be copied
to your desktop or another location on your Mac OS X startup disk in
order to be installed.
This page will be updated as Standalone Updates become
available.
