Apple updates its iOS mobile operating system once a year. But why should the iPhone and iPad have all the fun? On Thursday Apple announced that it will release a new version of OS X—Mountain Lion—this summer, just a year after the release of OS X Lion.

Like Lion, Mountain Lion offers numerous feature additions that will be familiar to iOS users. This OS X release continues Apple’s philosophy of bringing iOS features “back to the Mac,” and includes iMessage, Reminders, Notes, Notification Center, Twitter integration, Game Center, and AirPlay Mirroring.

Mountain Lion offers new features such as (left to right) Notes, Reminders, Messages, and Notification Center.

As the first OS X release post-iCloud, there’s also much more thorough integration with Apple’s data-syncing service. Mountain Lion also brings options to limit which kinds of apps users can install. And although there are no actual mountain lions in China, OS X Mountain Lion does add a raft of features to speak to users in the country that’s Apple’s biggest growth opportunity.

Mountain Lion will be a paid upgrade to OS X; like Lion, it will be available only via a Mac App Store download. Apple hasn’t yet set a price or a release date more specific than “summer.” Mac developers will be able to download a developer release of Mountain Lion on Thursday, giving them several months to update their apps to take advantage of the new features in the release.

I’ve had a few days to use an early development version of Mountain Lion. Here’s a look at what’s new so far, keeping in mind that Apple may add and change features over the next few months as we get closer to the planned release.

iOS apps come to the Mac

The new Notes app looks quite familiar.

Mountain Lion comes with several new apps that will seem quite familiar to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. Reminders, Notes, and Game Center have all made the move to the Mac.

Reminders and Notes look very much like they do on iOS. And thanks to iCloud syncing, they’ll display the same data that shows up on your mobile devices. These are still quite simple apps—the goal seems to have been to provide parity with their iOS analogs. The Notes app does support rich text, so you can choose different fonts, insert photos and attachments, create bulleted lists, and drag in URLs to create hyperlinks.

Game Center was introduced to users with iOS 4.1 in September 2010, and expanded in iOS 5. Now it comes to the Mac, letting Mac gamers find friends and compare their gaming prowess, as well as play against each other. Mac game developers get access to a centralized system for network play, opponent matching, in-game voice chat, and more. And yes, Game Center can work across platforms, so games that run on both Mac and iOS can interoperate.

iChat becomes Messages

There’s never been a version of iChat for iOS—instead, Apple handles text messages using the Messages app. That app started life as the Text app, which was used just for SMS messaging on the iPhone, but Apple changed the name to Messages when it added multimedia features. In iOS 5 Messages added the new app iMessage communication system.

With Mountain Lion, the same thing’s happening to Lion. All the features of iChat are still there, but the app’s been renamed Messages and it now supports iMessage (and is now integrated with FaceTime). You can use Messages to send text or images to anyone on a device capable of using iMessage—namely, devices running iOS 5, and Macs running Messages. Unlike SMS text messages, the iMessage system transfers data via the Internet, so there are no text charges.

Like Messages on the iPhone, Messages for Mac lets you hold multi-person chats and can optionally let people know when you’ve received and read their messages and when you’re typing a reply. An integrated video-chat button allows you to kick off a video chat with capable devices, either over AIM (as iChat has always done) or by launching the FaceTime app.

For iOS 5 users who have been waiting for iChat to support iMessage, this is great news—but having to wait until Mountain Lion’s release this summer would be an exercise in frustration. There’s good news on that front: Apple says that Lion users will be able to download a beta version of Messages starting Thursday. The final version will be available in Mountain Lion.

For more in-depth information on Messages, check out our Messages beta hands-on.

Enter Notification Center

A Notification Center alert.

Sometimes one of your apps needs to get your attention. For years, many Mac app developers have built their own (think reminder pop-ups in iCal or Microsoft Office). The open-source project Growl has for years attempted to create a more general notification system supported by lots of apps.

With Mountain Lion, Mac OS X gains a system-level notification system accessible to every developer, with features much like those already found in iOS. Alerts appear in the top right corner of the screen in a small bubble. Notifications remain there for five seconds, and then slide off screen to the right. Alerts, on the other hand, remain on-screen until you click on the Show or Close (or in the case of some alerts, Snooze) buttons.

The Notifications preference pane.

In iOS 5, you see all your recent notifications by pulling down from the top of the screen to reveal Notification Center. In Mountain Lion, the Notification Center list is a narrow band that lives just to off the right side of your screen. You can reveal it either by clicking on the new Notification Center icon at the far right of the menu bar, or by swiping with two fingers starting at the far right edge of the trackpad. Either way, your Mac’s entire screen will slide to the left, revealing a list of what’s been trying to get your attention recently.

There’s also a new Notifications pane in the System Preferences app, analogous to the Notifications submenu in iOS’s Settings app. From here you can choose which apps appear within Notification Center and how their alert bubbles behave.

Gatekeeper blocks apps… the first time

You’ll be warned if you try to turn off Gatekeeper.

When Apple introduced the Mac App Store, the rumblings started: A lot of people wondered if the Mac was headed for an iOS-like future, one in which only Apple-approved apps could run on the Mac.

But with Lion and now Mountain Lion, those fears haven’t become reality. You can still run third-party apps to your heart’s content. However, with Mountain Lion, Apple is introducing a new feature called Gatekeeper that allows users to choose for themselves what kinds of apps can be installed on their Macs.

Right now, OS X checks an app the first time it launches, and displays a warning. It’s an attempt to prevent malware apps from launching when you never intended them to. In Mountain Lion, that feature has been extended and tied into a new setting in the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences.

By default, Mountain Lion will only let Mac App Store apps and Apps from “identified developers” launch for the first time. To become an “identified developer,” Mac developers have to register with Apple and get a personalized certificate, which they then use to cryptographically sign their apps. Apple doesn’t do any sort of background check on the developer, and it doesn’t see any of the software.

Apple says that although these apps aren’t as safe as Mac App Store apps, they’re safer for a couple of reasons. First, a signed app can’t be modified (to add in some spyware, for example) without breaking the signature. By default, Mountain Lion will refuse to launch an app modified in that way. Second, if it turns out that an app from a particular developer is actually malware, Apple has the ability to revoke that developer’s license—at which point no future Mac users will be able to install software from that developer.

The user can set Mountain Lion to be broader or narrower with the list of apps it’s willing to launch. There’s an option to allow only Mac App Store software to run, and an option to allow any app to run. The latter option is the equivalent of what’s been the case in all previous versions of OS X.

For a more in-depth look at Gatekeeper, read our Hands on with Gatekeeper story.

Sharing and Twitter

A Share Sheet in Safari on Mountain Lion.

Mountain Lion introduces an interface element inspired by iOS—Share Sheets. They’re a pop-up menu that appears when you click on the Share icon in an app. Apple has implemented Share Sheets in several Mountain Lion apps, including Safari, Preview, and Notes, and developers can add them to their apps as well.

A Share Sheet provides a quick way to share whatever you’re working on—a photo in iPhoto, a webpage in Safari, a document in Notes—with other services. If you share a webpage from Safari, you can choose to insert it (or just its URL) in a new Mail message, or insert a link in a new message in Messages, or even compose a tweet containing the URL. From Preview, you can choose to email the document you’re viewing, send it via Messages, tweet it via Twitter, upload it to Flickr, or transfer it locally via AirDrop.

Sharing a webpage to Twitter from within Safari.

Most of these aren’t really new functions. What’s different is that Apple has centralized them and given developers access to this element, which presumably will lead to a more consistent sharing interface in future Mac apps. If that sounds familiar, it is: This is once again an example of the Mac taking a page from iOS, in this case from the Share button that’s found commonly throughout iOS.

In most contexts, Share Sheets will include a Twitter option. That’s because Mountain Lion is joining iOS 5 in adding system-level support for the popular communication service. You can add your Twitter account information in the Mail, Contacts & Calendars system preference (which is just dying to be renamed to Accounts). Once that’s done, it becomes easy to quickly share items from just about anywhere via a Share Sheet. Select Twitter and a small floating composition window appears, allowing you to write and send a tweet quickly, without leaving the app you’re working in.

Twitter integration doesn’t stop there. You can also use Twitter to populate the avatars of friends in your Contacts list with their Twitter profile pictures. (Yes, Address Book has been re-named Contacts in Mountain Lion to match its counterpart app in iOS.) Tweet notifications can also optionally appear automatically in Notification Center.

The new Twitter preferences in the Mail, Contacts, and Calendars preference pane.

iCloud integration

Lion and iCloud were developed in parallel. As a result, while the current version of Mac OS X supports Apple’s suite of online services, it doesn’t truly embrace it. One of Apple’s goals in Mountain Lion is to truly integrate iCloud throughout the system.

It starts at setup: In Setup Assistant, the system will ask you for your Apple ID and will sync your existing accounts, settings, and personal data. It might not be quite as thorough as restoring an iOS backup from iCloud, but the idea is that your iCloud account will unlock a whole bunch of Mac data so you don’t have to keep re-entering it on every new system you use.

Mountain Lion also brings a new Documents in the Cloud view to the traditional Open and Save dialog boxes. Any apps that support Documents in the Cloud will open to an iCloud view that displays documents available via iCloud, with most recent items first. You can organize this view by dragging one document on top of another and creating a folder, iOS-style. (There’s also an On My Mac button that will display a more standard file-picking interface, if you want to open something that’s on your hard drive.)

AirPlay mirroring

Mirroring a Mac screen to an HDTV is easy in Mountain Lion.

iOS 5 introduced the concept of AirPlay mirroring, in which an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S can display the contents of its screen on any HDTV that’s connected to a second-generation Apple TV.

The Mac joins the party with Mountain Lion, which will send a 720p video stream of what’s on your Mac’s screen to the Apple TV. When a Mac running Mountain Lion senses the presence of an Apple TV on the local network, an AirPlay icon appears in the menu bar. Click and select an Apple TV, and you’re mirroring.

In other words, an Apple TV will soon also be a wireless display adapter for the Mac, letting you display webpages, YouTube videos, iTunes rentals, Keynote presentations, or anything else you can think of onto an HDTV without any added wires. (Apple says that only Macs with second-generation Intel Core processors can use this feature.)

Safari tweaks

Safari’s URL bar now features integrated search.

Apple isn’t making a big deal about changes to the Safari Web browser in Mountain Lion, but I noticed a few new additions. There’s a Share Sheet in the toolbar, with options to add a page to Reading List, add a Bookmark, email the page, send the page to Messages, or share it via a Tweet. The Safari Reader button has gotten large and now sits just to the right of the address bar, turning blue when a page is eligible for reader.

Gone from next to the address bar is the search box. Instead, at long last, Apple has unified the address bar and the search box. Now if you type “fourth doctor” into that box, you’ll get a bunch of links about Tom Baker instead of an error message telling you that Safari can’t find the website “http://fourth%20doctor/.” The address bar also now omits the http:// prefix on URLs, and while the main part of the site is displayed in black text, the rest of the URL displays in gray.

The new Safari toolbar emphasizes the domain name of the page you’re browsing and has a more prominent Reader button.

And although I couldn’t find this feature in the version I tested, Apple says that Mountain Lion will bring the ability to sync Safari tabs to iCloud, so your open browser tabs can sync between Macs.

China-specific features

Storyline: Apple announces Mac OS X Mountain Lion

Apple readies Mac OS X Mountain Lion update for summer release

Mountain Lion: Messages replaces iChat, gets public beta

Mountain Lion: Hands on with Gatekeeper

Mountain Lion: Hands on with Notification Center

Show More Storyline

Apple’s had huge success in China lately, most particularly with the iPhone. With Mountain Lion, the company is trying to improve support for those who write in Chinese as well as recognizing that most of the popular sites that Apple integrates with OS X aren’t actually available within China.

On the text-input side, Mountain Lion will offer better suggestions and corrections via a dynamically updated dictionary, something an Apple representative told me was because Chinese word usages are evolving rapidly. Apparently English words are often inserted in Chinese text, so Mountain Lion allows the mixing of Pinyin and English without switching between keyboard layouts. Apple says Mountain Lion also doubles the number of characters recognized by trackpad-based handwriting recognition.

On the Internet services side, Mountain Lion offers support for Chinese alternatives to several worldwide services. Search-engine Baidu is now an option in Safari. Chinese microblogging service Sina weibo is supported in Share Sheets, just as Twitter is. In addition to Vimeo and Flickr, Mountain Lion will support sharing to Chinese video-sharing sites Youku and Tudou. And Mail, Contacts, and Calendar syncing will be supported to Chinese service providers QQ, 126, and 163.

Just the beginning

Of course, this is only the first disclosure by Apple about what’s in Mountain Lion. There are undoubtedly dozens, if not hundreds, of minor tweaks and small new features being added. And there might even be big ones as yet undisclosed—after all, we’re four to seven months away from Mountain Lion’s arrival.

If you’re a Mac user, the best news about Mountain Lion is this: Apple doesn’t seem to be reducing OS X’s development cycle and putting it in maintenance mode. Instead, OS X releases seem to be accelerating, perhaps so that the annual release cycles of iOS and Mac OS X can feed off one another.

It’s also clear that with both Lion releases, Apple is dead serious about making Mac OS X and iOS as synced up as they possibly can be, both in terms of interface and—thanks to iCloud—data. Mac users who aren’t fans of iOS might complain, but these days Apple sells many times more iOS devices than Macs in any given quarter. Having all of Apple’s products bear a family resemblance to one another can only help.

[Jason Snell is Macworld’s editorial director.]

During their third quarter earnings call, Apple reportedhigh sales of iPhones and iPads, and announced it would releaseOS X 10.8 (also known as Mountain Lion) on Wednesday. The update brings Facebook integration and several iOS features to the Mac, and will cost $19.99.

The release date was previously only known to be sometime in July. iOS is still coming out “this Fall,” according to CEO Tim Cook, who also said they have some new products “in the pipeline.”

Mountain Lion includes iMessage and a Notification Center, two popular iOS features, and a new ubiquitous share button is coming to many applications. New dictation and iCloud features have been added, along with a mode called PowerNap, which allows newer Macs to receive updates and messages while asleep.

The company sold 26 million iPhones and 17 million iPads this quarter, up significantly from the same time from last year. Some analysts were concerned that the upcoming iPhone 5 would dampen demand for the current model, and others suggested that the most recent revision of the iPad was underwhelming and would not see a major increase in sales.

Eligible Macs (2GB of RAM, 8GB of hard drive space, and OS X 10.6.8 or newer) will be able to download the update from the Mac App Store tomorrow. As with the Lion release, there won’t be a DVD version of the OS for sale.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Apple’s next release of OS X “Mountain Lion” is slated for release by the end of this month, with some recent developments suggesting it may be out by asearly as next week. If you are thinking about upgrading your Mac to the new operating system, then you might consider reserving some time this weekend to ensuring your system is capable of and prepared for the upgrade.

While for the most part you should be able to download and install the upgrade without any problems, there are a few things you can do to help prevent running into odd problems.

Ensure your Mac meets the requirements
As with the move to OS X Lion, this next upgrade has some advancements that will leave out some older Mac hardware. In this case, the requirements primarily revolve around graphics capabilities and support for the system’s 64-bit kernel. As we previously reported, Apple has anofficial list of supported hardware, so if your computer is one of the following systems then, it will not be able to run Mountain Lion:

You can see your system’s model number in this field in the system profiler/information utility (click for larger view).

(Credit: Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNEt)

• iMac6,1 or earlier (polycarbonate cases)
• MacBook4,2 or earlier
• MacBookPro2,2 or earlier
• MacBookAir1,1 or earlier
• MacMini2,1 or earlier
• MacPro2,1 or earlier
• XServe2,1 or earlier

To look up these model numbers, go to the Apple menu and choose About this Mac, and then click the More Information button. If you are already running Lion, then the system should show you the model’s time frame that you can compare to Apple’s official list; however, if not, then click System Report and you will see the system information tool open. In the Hardware section of the tool, check the Model Identifier and compare it to the list above. If the model is the same or smaller as those in the list (e.g., MacBookPro2,1), then it will not run Mountain Lion.

The next requirement for the upgrade is to have access to the Mac App Store for the purchase, which requires at least OS X 10.6 to be installed and upgraded to its latest version. If you currently have OS X 10.5 on your system, then you will need to purchase Snow Leopard and install it before you can upgrade. While Apple does have an up-to-date program for those who have purchased new Mac hardware, it has so far made no mention about those who have just purchased Snow Leopard or Lion.

A final component of hardware requirements is RAM. Many of the systems that support running Mountain Lion were shipped with 2GB of RAM, which is the minimum amount of RAM recommended for running the new OS. The more RAM you have in your system the better, so if you can be sure to upgrade to at least 4GB, but preferably 8GB or more.

Back up your system
If you do not have a backup routine set up on your system, then you might take advantage of this weekend to do so. Get a spare hard drive and enable Apple’s Time Machine backup routine to make a fully restorable backup of your system. Apple’s Time Machine is not the only option for this, and you can use a number of system cloning tools like SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner for making mirror copies of your boot volume.

Clear up resolvable issues
As we use our systems, various odd problems may crop up, including slowdowns, application freezes and crashes, or other unwanted behaviors. Before upgrading to Mountain Lion, try clearing up as many of these as possible. Running a general maintenance routine on your system may help by clearing out caches and other temporary items, and also go to Software Update and install any updates for your version of OS X. In addition, be sure to fully update any third-party software as developers will be releasing updates to work with Mountain Lion’s new sandboxing and security technologies.

While you can do your best to address crashes and other problems you might be experiencing, if you cannot address them then do not let that stop you from updating. Often an update may clear up such problems, so do what you can to fix them beforehand, but then try the upgrade anyway. As long as you have a full system backup, then you can restore your system from it should anything go wrong.

Optionally create a Mountain Lion installation drive
Starting with Lion Apple’s preferred delivery method for the OS upgrade is through its online store; however, you can still create a boot disk from the install package. We previously outlined how to do this with OS X Lion so be sure to read those instructions for doing so. The process for Mountain Lion should generally be the same:

If you get errors when restoring the InstallESD image directly, then first mount it and restore the mounted volume to your desired external drive (click for larger view).

(Credit: Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)

1. Purchase and download Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store.
2. Quit the installer when it automatically launches.
3. Locate the installer in your Applications folder.
4. Right-click the installer and choose “Show Package Contents.”
5. Go to the Contents > Shared Support folder.

In the Shared Support folder you will see an disk image called “InstallESD.dmg,” which contains all the files to boot to the OS X installer and upgrade your system. You can use Disk Utility to restore this image to an external drive as was the case with Lion. However, in doing so you may run into a couple of differences. First, you will likely need a drive that is larger than most standard 4GB USB drives, and second, you might get an error when restoring the disk image file directly to the external drive. If you get an error, then first mount the image by double-clicking it, and then drag the mounted “Mac OS X Install ESD” volume to the “Source” field when restoring it to the destination drive of choice (thanks to MacFixIt reader Michael A. for outlining this option).

Consider waiting
As a last word of note, consider waiting on upgrading. Mountain Lion has some attractive advancements that will have many people immediately downloading it on its first day out of the cage. This inevitable rush gives you the opportunity to wait and see if any outstanding bugs managed to get by the testing process. Apple rigorously tests the OS with developers in its volunteer testing program, but even so it cannot account for all situations and bugs will undoubtedly slip by. With past OS releases, Apple has quickly issued updates to address various problems, so you might wait until version 10.8.1 or 10.8.2 is released before installing it on your system.

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