Apple OS X Mountain Lion uncaged

Apple has pushed out the latest version, and indeed the ninth major release, of OS X, Mountain Lion.

The fresh Mountain Lion has over 200 new features, including a new messaging app, social media features, and AirPlay Mirroring.

You can bag it as an upgrade from Lion or Snow Leopard at the price of £13.99 from the Mac App Store.

To break down the new features a little more, iMessage has now landed on the Mac, meaning you can send messages to folks with an iPhone, iPad, iPod or of course another Mac user. A new Notification Centre also helps to better organise and present notifications.

Social networking, as ever, is a concern, with the new version of the OS featuring full Facebook integration, and easier sharing of photos, files and so forth – with one sign in to use the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr.

The other buzzword aside from social media – the cloud – is also catered for, as Apple has brought forth iCloud integration.

AirPlay Mirroring is in Mountain Lion, the wireless streaming system which can pipe full HD video to your HDTV via Apple TV, and there’s also the Game Centre which has been ported over from iOS, for social multiplayer gaming.

Various other tweaks include support for the dictation of text, and the addition of a Gatekeeper app, to make downloading files from the internet safer, along with honing to make the Safari browser faster.

Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, commented: “People are going to love the new features in Mountain Lion and how easy it is to download and install from the Mac App Store.”

“With iCloud integration, Mountain Lion is even easier to set up, and your important information stays up to date across all your devices so you can keep editing documents, taking notes, creating reminders, and continue conversations whether you started on a Mac, iPhone or iPad.”

Oh, and those who bought a Mac after June 11th qualify to snag Mountain Lion from the app store for free.

Apple also announced its latest quarterly financial results, as we reported earlier today, and Mac sales remained broadly flat (they sold 4 million units, a solid performance).