mountain lion

By frank perry, 27 July, 2012

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Mountain Lion Overview. I am impressed so far with mountain lion. I love the new safari features allowing me to see websites I've visited through iCloud now I can see them on my iPhone and iPad too. I love the new moving documents feature, now I can have documents in iCloud edit them on my iPhone and iPad send them back to my Mac and brows different versions of the same document. I love the rename feature. Some minor issues Im still trying to work out. In the new messages app, I still haven't figured out how to send a message to a contact, I've figured out how to add people I want to send messages too and so on but the send function always seems to be dimmed even after I've typed in my password. This app needs a preferences window to allow users to remove their passwords particularly if we don't share our computers with other users. Mail is working really well. Contacts seems very good and now I can edit them on the Mac and the changes automatically go to my other devices. I love the new calendar application. I can now edit events on one device and all changes take effect on my other devices. Love the new reminders application on the Mac. Now I can finally delete reminders on the Mac and have iCloud delete them from other devices. Voice over is better than it's ever been pronounces words better, easier to add words to the dictionary as well. The Australian price is the same as the US one, that's a change for apple but it's a good one none the less. I've tried the dictation feature in the notes application, and it works. Tip for users, insure there is little or no background noise. As I am partially blind I am able to give partially blind users some feedback about iPhoto. Provided you have enough sight to see the photos and know what to do you're going to love the iPhoto application. You can now share photos easier than ever meaning you can upload them to your twitter account and so on. . I love the fact you can now isolate the voice over audio separately from the system audio. This is a fantastic feature not just for totally blind people but partially blind people like me who use voice over when the eyes get tired. Now I can have voice over in one set of output speakers meaning voice over doesn't speak over the top of music I'm listening too. If I was to give Mountain Lion a rating I would give it 4 and 3 quarter stars, I hope I can resolve the issues I'm having with the new messages application soon.

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Comments

By David Woodbridge on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - 16:41

At the moment I believe iCloud tabs in Safari are only between Macs, not iOS devices: this is an iOS 6 upcoming feature.

By RWolf on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - 16:41

So far I'm very happy with mountain Lion. Considering that I did the install direct from the App Store as opposed to a clean install, I was surprised at the noticeable speed boost. The OS works smoothly and is very stable, which is usually one of my main concerns regarding new OS releases. For $19,99, €15,99, £13,99 I think it's a true bargain and compared to Lion you get more for less money. A few things I've noticed that I'm pleased about: - We can now see app icons in the status bar, now renamed "menu extras". I think this is going to make managing apps that run in the background much more practical. - In the application chooser, particularly system dialogues, it now tells you where a dialogue is from. Usually this was clear enough, going on context, but it's nice anyway. A few things I noticed that I'm a little disappointed about: - If you have other voices installed, there are updates available for them. They say these add stability and better pronunciation and in general this seems the case. However, the issue where the voices change pitch are still around, though less frequent. So, not perfect yet. - The method of opening apps within LaunchPad now takes longer, though there is a workaround. In Lion LaunchPad became my main way of opening apps, rather than through the dock, finder or spotlight. In mountain Lion the left and right arrows won't change the page anymore. Instead they will navigate through the app list on the current page. However, Apple has built a spotlight search into LaunchPad. Just type the first few letters of the app, just like you'd do in a finder window and VO will announce what it finds straight away, hit return and the app opens. This works regardless of which page you are on, though it will switch to the correct page before opening the app, which I only know about as VO tells you: page changed.

Hello, The arrow keys on there own never changed pages in Launchpad, it was command+left and right arrow. That still works in ML, although VO still doesn't report what page you're on.

By Siobhan on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - 16:41

Hello everyone. My only slight problem is when I open my Macbook Pro from sleep, VO tells me two system dialogs displayed. One of them, makes sense. It's the password field to open the finder so I can start using it. The other one I have no clue. I can't get to it using anything i'm familiar with. If someone has seen this, and can help, I'd appreciate it. It's just a minor annoyance for me, if I know something's there and can't find it, i'm curious to know what it is. All in all, Voice over works well with the new OS

By Signaltonoise on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - 16:41

I've been using a mac for about a year now. I'm legally blind which means I can use the zoom feature when I need to and I do a lot along with also using VO a lot. I'm a college student getting a BA in Music concentrated in Sound Engineering. I didn't like Lion at all it was like what Vista was to Windows. Now Mountain Lion is different you can actually see what's on the left side of your menubar and even interacte with it. I'm finding my machine to be a lot fasterthan it was with Lion. I'm running a macbook Pro early 2012 and loving the new update. There are still some bugs just like with any new OS and some applications still aren't updated great for VO like Pages, but overall it works the way I would expect.