lion

commentary Apple's Game Center should, theoretically, be a service and a hub that ties together gamers across Apple's devices. It should be a social connector, a method of discovering new games based on what others are playing...and a mobile service on the order of Xbox Live.

Right now, it's very little of any of that, largely because the average iOS device owner probably has no idea Game Center is on their device...or what it even is. Regardless, the new version of Mac OS X, Mountain Lion, includes Game Center as one of a handful of more cross-compatible iOS/OS X services. At the moment, its offerings -- connect to leaderboards, see achievements, play cross-platform, and connect to friends -- are limited because, well, there just aren't that many Game Center games for Mac yet.… Read more

OS X Mountain Lion brings the familiar iOS Notification Center to the Mac. Getting notifications on a Mac from installed apps is nothing new to OS X. Users of the popular app, Growl, have been receiving notifications from their favorite apps for a long time. Now they're faced with a decision to manage notifications in two places, or choose one notification system over the other. Or are they?

Instead of managing alerts in both Notification Center and Growl, you can integrate Growl into Notification Center by installing a simple app called Hiss.

Hiss, currently in beta, is free to … Read more

Mountain Lion has pounced into the Mac App Store. If you haven't already upgraded to the latest version of OS X, you'll want to make sure your Mac is ready for the upgrade.

Once you have gone through the preparation and installation of Mountain Lion, you're not going to want to wait to dig right in and get all of the new features set up.

One of the (many) features OS X has incorporated from iOS in Mountain Lion is the Notification Center. If you use an iOS device, you're already familiar with how … Read more

The latest edition of Mac OS X, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, is packed full of new features, over 200 in all. One of them is a built-in dictation service, similar to the dictation feature found on the iPhone 4S.

By default, dictation isn't enabled after installing Mountain Lion on your Mac. If you want to use it, you're going to have to enable it. 

The default shortcut to start dictation on your Mac is pressing the Function (Fn) key twice. The first time you try to start dictation, you'll be prompted to enable it. … Read more

A number of people who have qualified for a free upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion through Apple's up-to-date program have found that after applying and receiving their code, they cannot use it to download the new software. When they enter their code in the store, an error pops up that claims the code was already used.

This error is rooted in the problem in which Apple prematurely opened its up-to-date program earlier this week. The up-to-date program was live for a few hours before Apple took it down, and during that time the program issued a number of … Read more

Apple has released its OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (see CNET's full review) and it's available for download from the Mac App Store on systems running OS X 10.6.6 or later. If you're interested in the new OS, then be sure to read our guide on preparing your Mac for installing the upgrade, which includes information on the OS requirements, backing up, and clearing up resolvable issues before performing the upgrade.

You also might be interested in creating a standalone install drive for Mountain Lion. As with OS X Lion, Apple will likely release … Read more

A new procedure has surfaced that may allow owners of the older and unsupported Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 machines to run Mountain Lion natively on their systems.

When Apple initially released OS X Mountain Lion developer previews to testers and its development community, word spread that the OS would leave out some of Apple's earlier Intel-based Macs, including the first Mac Pro systems that still pack a decent amount of computing power. Apple made these requirements official more recently on its OS X up-to-date Web page for Mountain Lion.

The reason for these limitations revolved around … Read more

Whenever Apple releases a new version of its OS X operating system, it soon follows with updates to some of its popular programs for OS X. Today's release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (see here for CNET's full review) is no different, and Apple has made several updates available for its iWork productivity suite, its iPhoto consumer picture manager, and its iMovie home video editor.

The updates are available through Mountain Lion's Mac App Store, which Apple has unified for managing updates to both Mac App Store purchases and also other system updates in the … Read more

While you're waiting for OS X Mountain Lion to download, don't forget to update your other Mac apps, including Safari, Aperture, iPhoto, and iMovie.

The Safari update is more substantial, while the other programs are getting a handful of new features and fixes.

Note that, for now at least, Safari 6 is only available on Macs running the new Mountain Lion operating system update. There is currently no upgrade path if you're using Windows or a previous version of OS X. The product page on Apple's Web site says, "The latest version of Safari is … Read more