The Mountain Lion update to OS X is rather more potent than some have described. The Reminders function is a quite nice improvement but the stand-out feature, in my view, is the implementation of multi-touch gestures, much like the way an iPad and other devices are controlled. This feature permits me to chuck the trackball (or mouse) that I've used for, gee, decades! The quick summary is that others have dismissed this upgrade as trivial but I disagree with that altogether and give it five stars. Read on for details.
Under Mountain Lion, instead of a trackball or other pointing device, I now use Apple's Magic Trackpad which is a battery-powered device, just as is Apple's Wireless Keyboard, and the Trackpad can perform any function that would previously have been done with an alternative pointing device. The gain is that this change frees two USB ports (or one if you're using an external USB hub).
Related considerations: The Magic Trackpad and the Wireless Keyboard use rechargeable batteries so you will also want to get Apple's Battery Charger and six batteries. You will need two batteries each for the Trackpad and the Keyboard and you will want two charged batteries on reserve so you can immediately switch out to fresh spares when any run down. Note: always switch out both batteries at once. Note also that everything described here has intelligent voltage switching so any of it will work on voltage from 100 volts to 240 volts (i.e. no problem using them in the U.S. or Europe).
There are multiple advantages in usability as the Magic Trackpad and the Wireless Keyboard connect to the computer via Bluetooth. That means two USB ports which would have been required by traditional input devices are now free and this, for me, is a tremendous benefit. For example, a laptop typically has two USB ports and an iMac has four so these are premium resources as any external USB device with any intelligence at all cannot be used on an external USB hub but rather must be connected directly to a dedicated port. While a keyboard and a mouse can be connected to an external USB hub, that still only leaves one free USB port on a laptop and that can be a tremendous restriction.
The advantage to multi-touch gestures is not so obvious and using them can be a bit unusual if you have only used Apple desktop systems but they will come quite naturally to you if you're already familiar with an iPhone or an iPad. It goes beyond the scope of my intentions in this review to describe the multi-touch gestures but help on their use is very easily obtained through System Preferences / Trackpad.
One quite excellent thing about Mountain Lion for anyone as financially-challenged as myself is that you can buy it from Apple's App Store for about $25 US. That's quite a nice price for an operating system but what makes it even better is that it's perfectly legal to download Mountain Lion on any other Apple system you own. Apple provides the iCloud service for your data protection, accessibility, etc and Apple also regards your home network, in effect, as a cloud of its own. Buy once and download anywhere and this applies to anything you purchase at the App Store.
Yes, of course I sound like a fanboy and I don't care. I have thirty years experience in big systems on IBM mainframes and it was one flaming pain in the ass. Therefore I want in any home system something that is not a flaming pain in the ass and almost everything Apple does qualifies perfectly in that regard. Mountain Lion continues that drive toward flexibility and ease of use and I'm very much appreciative of it. Five stars!
Side-note: This article was recovered from content that was previously destroyed as I believe the article is worthwhile plus I wanted to know how difficult it would be to do it. As it turns out, it's quite difficult. One possibility is to write code to extract the content but that's taking time to go backward in time and I'm sure you can imagine what Cavafy's opinion might be of that strategy. Therefore, I will keep moving forward and the blog will evolve as it will.
Under Mountain Lion, instead of a trackball or other pointing device, I now use Apple's Magic Trackpad which is a battery-powered device, just as is Apple's Wireless Keyboard, and the Trackpad can perform any function that would previously have been done with an alternative pointing device. The gain is that this change frees two USB ports (or one if you're using an external USB hub).
Related considerations: The Magic Trackpad and the Wireless Keyboard use rechargeable batteries so you will also want to get Apple's Battery Charger and six batteries. You will need two batteries each for the Trackpad and the Keyboard and you will want two charged batteries on reserve so you can immediately switch out to fresh spares when any run down. Note: always switch out both batteries at once. Note also that everything described here has intelligent voltage switching so any of it will work on voltage from 100 volts to 240 volts (i.e. no problem using them in the U.S. or Europe).
There are multiple advantages in usability as the Magic Trackpad and the Wireless Keyboard connect to the computer via Bluetooth. That means two USB ports which would have been required by traditional input devices are now free and this, for me, is a tremendous benefit. For example, a laptop typically has two USB ports and an iMac has four so these are premium resources as any external USB device with any intelligence at all cannot be used on an external USB hub but rather must be connected directly to a dedicated port. While a keyboard and a mouse can be connected to an external USB hub, that still only leaves one free USB port on a laptop and that can be a tremendous restriction.
The advantage to multi-touch gestures is not so obvious and using them can be a bit unusual if you have only used Apple desktop systems but they will come quite naturally to you if you're already familiar with an iPhone or an iPad. It goes beyond the scope of my intentions in this review to describe the multi-touch gestures but help on their use is very easily obtained through System Preferences / Trackpad.
One quite excellent thing about Mountain Lion for anyone as financially-challenged as myself is that you can buy it from Apple's App Store for about $25 US. That's quite a nice price for an operating system but what makes it even better is that it's perfectly legal to download Mountain Lion on any other Apple system you own. Apple provides the iCloud service for your data protection, accessibility, etc and Apple also regards your home network, in effect, as a cloud of its own. Buy once and download anywhere and this applies to anything you purchase at the App Store.
Yes, of course I sound like a fanboy and I don't care. I have thirty years experience in big systems on IBM mainframes and it was one flaming pain in the ass. Therefore I want in any home system something that is not a flaming pain in the ass and almost everything Apple does qualifies perfectly in that regard. Mountain Lion continues that drive toward flexibility and ease of use and I'm very much appreciative of it. Five stars!
Side-note: This article was recovered from content that was previously destroyed as I believe the article is worthwhile plus I wanted to know how difficult it would be to do it. As it turns out, it's quite difficult. One possibility is to write code to extract the content but that's taking time to go backward in time and I'm sure you can imagine what Cavafy's opinion might be of that strategy. Therefore, I will keep moving forward and the blog will evolve as it will.
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