Apple releases preview of new Mac operating system
Apple Thursday released a developer preview of the next version of the
company's Macintosh operating system, bringing some popular features
from iPhone and iPad to its Mac computer.
The new software, named
OS X Mountain Lion, is available to developers as a preview release
starting Thursday, and Mac users will be able to upgrade to it in late
summer this year, reported Xinhua.
Mountain Lion will include
over 100 new features, including Messages, Notes, Reminders and Game
Center which are familiar to users of Apple's mobile devices powered by
the iOS
operating system.
The software, Apple's first OS X
after the company launched its iCloud cloud-computing service, will
enable users to easily set up the service and access documents across
their devices.
The developer preview of Mountain Lion also
introduces Gatekeeper, a security feature that gives users control over
which applications can be downloaded and installed on their Macs.
With
an eye to the fast growing Chinese market, Mountain Lion also has a
number of features specifically designed to support Chinese users,
including significant enhancements to the Chinese input method and
making Chinese search engine Baidu an option in the Safari web browser,
as well as system-wide support for the Chinese micro-blogging service
Sina weibo.
"The Mac is on a roll, growing faster than the PC
for 23 straight quarters, and with Mountain Lion things get even
better," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide
marketing, said in a statement.
Latest numbers from Apple showed
that the company sold a record 5.2 million Macs during the fourth
quarter of 2011, representing a 26-percent unit increase over the
year-ago period.
