I was on the Apple website this morning looking to see how much money I needed for a MacBook Pro as I am going to buy soon and as soon as I clicked on the Mac tab a BIG Apple promo on the site said OS X Mountain Lion preview. That of course caught my interest, the first thing I noticed is that there is no Mac in front of OS X Mountain Lion, I’m like that’s odd. (Ill come back to that in a bit.) So I click on it and a video pops up, I’m watching this thing and I start to cry. Cry tears of joy! This OS is amazing. Apple says it features at least 50 new features, here are my personal favorites.

AirPlay Mirroring. I just bought the Apple TV 2 last week and I’m loving it, my iPad and my TV are now best friends. I just love the AirPlay Mirroring on my iPad. Coincidently I was thinking to myself that day (which was my birthday) wouldn’t it be great if I could have this on my Mac. As I mentioned earlier, I’m getting a new MacBook, how great it would be to have a 13 inch MacBook and then have a 52″ external monitor! Well, low and behold, just a few days later, Apple releases a video showing just that. I give a lot of presentations off of my iPad using my works Apple TV and being able to bring my laptop to work and do it more professionally, thats just amazing.

iCloud intregation. I’ve been using iCloud a lot for my data to sync music, contacts, notes etc between my iDevices. How cool would it be if I could make contacts on my Mac, make notes on my Mac? Well with Mountain Lion, I can do that. It comes with a notes app. iCloud is now a lot more integrated into the Mac. I personally think this is an absolute excellent idea.

Messages. Personally, I dont use iChat. I’m just not a fan. But I love iMessages on my iPad. Wouldn’t it be awesome that if I could start a conversation on my Mac and I can leave off right onto my iPhone or iPad. I think it would be absolutely great. I love to chat and I’m on my Mac a lot. And I’m on my iPad a lot. AND I’m on my iPhone a lot so iChat intregation is absolutely great.

Reminders and Notes. As I mentioned earlier, Mountain Lion comes with a Notes app. This is spectacular. As you could probably guess, I am a business-person. So as you should also guess, I take a lot of notes, on my iPad and iPhone, both of which are 3G. I can now make notes on my Mac and sync them to my iPad and iPhone and vice versa. You can make notes, “tear them out of the notepad” and put notes on your desktop without having the actual Notes app even open. Next is Reminders. Again as I said I am a business person and as being such I have a lot of reminders. These reminders are always on my iPad, and they just work great. Again I’m on my Mac a lot, and I just have to remind myself of a lot of things. This reminders app is going to be great!

Share Sheets. This feature is simple but seems to be a very important one. This feature allows you take a picture, video, or even an entire web page and share it via email, messages, Twitter (OS X Mountain Lion has Twitter intregated just like iOS) and a few others. It’s absolutely amazing.

Game Center. With Game Center for Mac, not only can you play games that are both Mac and iOS, you can play them by multiple devices. For instance, I can play games on my Mac along with friends on an iPad. Now as I said, I’m a business person but my son will love this feature. A lot more people will make games for Mac just for this functionality.

Notification Center. This has got to be one of the most significant iOS 5 features out there. Like I said I’m a business person and I have a lot of notes, a lot of reminders, and a lot of messages. Mountain Lions Notification Center is no different, and it looks like its going to be another great addition to OS X.

As I mentioned before, Apple has taken the word Mac out of Mac OS X. Not only for Mountain Lion but for Lion as well. Personally, I think it’s a brilliant idea to push the two types of devices together since it allows for ease among iOS and Mac OS X users alike. I believe that Apple is absolutely headed in the right direction. I also believe that Windows 8 will be another flop like Windows Vista, and unlike when they had Vista, Microsoft does not have another chance if they mess up. They’re already screwed when it comes to music players, phones, and tablets, which Apple succeeds at very successfully. If they are to survive, Windows 8 needs to be a success, and personally it looks like a flop. If Microsoft is to take a hit from Windows 8 they might end up taking a blow- one that is way too big to handle. This would allow Apple or (God help us) Linux to jump in and take the market of PCs. Apple, just keep doing what you’re doing. Microsoft, you too, I love to see you fail.

Thanks for reading,

Joe