OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion review

The ninth major version of OS X adds more than 200 new features. A few major additions stand out from the crowd, but there are many more small tweaks tucked in for good measure. Download it now from the Mac App Store.

Just like its predecessor, OS X Mountain Lion draws much inspiration from iOS, the operating system that powers the iPhone and the iPad.

The only place to get it is the Mac App Store. Unlike OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple won't be selling this version on a pricey USB flash drive, so you'll need access to a fairly good internet connection to download the installer.

Getting it is a cinch. Open the Mac App Store and you're sure to see Mountain Lion listed prominently on the front page, just a couple of clicks away from purchase. It installs right over the top of your current version.


It's wise to make a complete backup of your system before you go ahead with the upgrade. If you do that with Time Machine, it's easy to roll back to your previous operating system if something goes wrong.
You can upgrade straight to Mountain Lion from Lion or Snow Leopard. If you're still running Snow Leopard, make sure it's updated to 10.6.8. You don't have to upgrade to Lion first; save some money and skip it entirely.

Some Macs that shipped with Leopard (10.5) are able to run Lion, too. You'll need at least 2GB of RAM installed, but the ride will be smoother with 4GB. Most Macs provide easy access to their memory sockets, so you can upgrade much less expensively by purchasing third-party RAM and fitting it yourself, instead of paying Apple to do it.

To get from Leopard to Mountain Lion, you'll first have to install Snow Leopard, because it's the earliest version of OS X with access to the Mac App Store. Snow Leopard is still available on DVD from the Apple Online Store for £26/$29.

The maximum cost of upgrading your OS is £40, but check that any applications you depend upon have no known issues with Mountain Lion. OS X no longer includes Rosetta, the technology that enabled PowerPC apps to run on Intel Macs. If you're upgrading from Leopard or Snow Leopard, you'll need to ensure that your applications have been rewritten to support Intel processors.

Mountain Lion abandons support for some old models, some of which aren't really very old at all. Apple lists compatible models by the time and year they were introduced. Check out our list of OS X Mountain Lion-compatible Macs.

It's easy to confirm your Mac's age in Lion. Click the Apple icon in the menu bar, choose About This Mac, then press More Info. The next window lists your model's era.
Older versions of OS X don't reveal the age of hardware so easily. Open System Profiler, copy your Mac's serial number from the Hardware Overview to the clipboard, then paste it into this form to find it out.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion review: Finder and interface changes

There are many small changes in Mountain Lion that might sway your decision to upgrade. Among them are several concessions from Apple to a few mistakes it made with Lion.

The way Mission Control groups windows by application is divisive. Some people find it more organised than the scattergun presentation of Snow Leopard's Exposé, while others find it gets in the way of finding what they want. Apple has added an option to Mission Control's preferences that spreads out all of your windows.

Mission Control has an Expose-alike layout

Launchpad is now a serious contender as an application launcher. That's entirely down to the addition of a search bar, which is immediately ready to receive keyboard input when you open Launchpad. Type something and matching apps are displayed. Choose the correct one with the arrow keys, then press Return to open it.

Launchpad has now become a proper app launcher complete with search bar

The Finder in Lion sported a reorganised sidebar. Depending on the window size and the number of items lsited, this meant scrolling down the list in order to access USB flash drives and external hard drives.

Mountain Lion enables you to reorder the groups in the sidebar and bring removable devices back to the top of the list for quicker access.

When you copy files in the Finder, it still displays a window with an estimate of how long it will take. It also now displays individual progress bars on each of the items that are being created in the destination. So, if you start copying a lot of files, but decide you really need a portion of them because you have to head out very soon, you can see precisely when the right point has been reached, then cancel the remainder of the operation.

File copy progress is now displayed in Finder

There's no need to open a Finder window just to rename a file that you're working on – at least in the built-in apps. Click its name in the title bar and you'll find a Rename option in the menu. It also appears in the File menu.

Renaming from the title bar

Rather than just appearing when you roll over a sweet spot to the right of a document's name, the menu that provides access to previous versions of a document now has a broader clickable area that encompasses the whole name. The menu's items are now replicated in the File menu, so you can assign keyboard shortcuts to them.

After you start scrolling in a window, roll the pointer over the bar and it widens, making it easier to click and drag to another part of a document.

Sadly, full-screen mode in Mountain Lion isn't much of an improvement. When you switch an application on a secondary display to full-screen mode, it stays on that display instead of moving to the main one. But your other screens continue to pointlessly display a linen texture, instead of enabling you to pin another full-screen app to them.