Lion os how much

Apple offered v Pay once and download for all your personal Macs. By comparison, Microsoft's online store charges, get this, more for Windows 7 downloads than the box copies because a disc is sent out, too.

Of course, Apple makes more of its money selling hardware, while Microsoft's business is selling software. Jobs spent hardly any time on stage before handing the demo to Schiller. That Jobs didn't give the demo is commentary on his state of health. During healthier days, Apple's CEO would do most of the presentation himself.

Still, his presence is meant to convey something to Apple investors and Wall Street analysts. Lion is one of Mac OS X's biggest upgrades in years. Apple previewed the operating system in October , under the marketing tagline: "Back to the Mac. Mac App Store is one of the more notable features, as well as user interface changes.

Among them: Launchpad -- what Apple calls an iPad-like screen of apps that looks to me more like a secondary screen of icon shortcuts. Full-screen apps, which mimics iPad's presentation of them.

After you opt in, Apple will begin the great syncing, pulling data from your iOS devices onto your computer and vice versa. If you uncheck one of the elements, it will remove the synced data from your computer though not before warning you. The primary iCloud page also offers up a status bar on the bottom, letting you know just how much of that iCloud storage you're currently using. A feature that was unavailable back when Mountain Lion first arrived in beta, the Documents Library marks a big step forward for iCloud.

Just save something in a cross-device app like Pages, and it offers up a drop-down menu of locations, starting with iCloud, which makes that file accessible on devices signed into that account.

Accessing the Library is as simple as clicking Open in an app with that functionality. From here, you can open the doc to read or edit, duplicate it, rename it or transfer it via email, AirDrop or Message, courtesy of the Share button. Docs can be viewed as icons or lists, and can be sorted by name, date and size. You can also create folders by dragging one doc onto the other, iOS-style. Documents can also be dragged and dropped from the Library onto your desktop and vice versa.

Pinch-to-zoom, another "sure, why not" feature, has been brought over to TextEdit, letting you adjust text size using the trackpad. It'll save your cursor a trip to the toolbar, but mostly it feels like another step in Apple's eventual plan to incorporate that functionality into all of its native apps. And, again, why not? The MacBook's got a great trackpad -- might as well get as much use out of it as possible.

Still, the implementation isn't perfectly smooth here -- once pinched, the text takes a moment to snap into place. The Auto Save functionality introduced the last go 'round has been peppered with some additional features. Choosing Rename highlights the title, offering up a quick and easy way to affix a new name to the file. The "Move To" option, meanwhile, offers Apple yet another opportunity to integrate iCloud, letting you transfer anything saved to your desktop to that ethereal land of infinite document sharing.

Actually, by saving to your desktop, you've already skipped out on an iCloud opportunity. Apple has front-loaded the feature, making it the default location for saved documents. Of course, you can also save to your desktop, if you're still living in a localized, pre-cloud universe. Saving to iCloud lets you share your documents across other OS X devices. If you want to edit a doc created in TextEdit on an iOS device, however, you're out of luck -- it only works on Mac-to-Mac transfers for the time being.

If you save a file in Pages, however, you'll get that cross-platform functionality. Apple describes its functionality thusly: "Jot down things you need to remember and easily find them later. After all, it was a program designed for making quick notations on the go, on a small screen. The program does, however, offer up more functionality than its Post-it-esque predecessor, Stickies which, for the record, managed to avoid the The interface looks like a pad of well-loved legal paper, with a few sheets already ripped out.

Typed text shows up on the notebook lines in customizable and optional bullet points and numbered lists. Images and attachments can be added as well, simply by dragging and dropping them directly onto the app, for a more accurate representation than you're likely to be able to sketch out on your real-life notepad. Handier still are links, which, when highlighted, can also be dragged and dropped right onto the paper.

Along the top, you get the date and time and an option for expanding the little app to full-screen, if you're the sort who loves to cram a lot of information onto a single page. Along the bottom are a trashcan for dumping notes you no longer need what, no crumpling paper animation? To the left of the sheet is a list of the notes you've made and above that is a search bar for finding something amongst the pad. Double-click a note in the list, and it'll get "pinned" to the desktop, staying open after you close the app.

At the bottom is a big Plus for making new notes. Click the button just to the right of that and you'll get a broader list of notes across devices. Yep, Notes is connected to iCloud too, getting pushed to connected devices in a matter of moments. Click the Plus icon next to the list items, and you can organize your notes into sub-folders. It's a truly handy tool for keeping track of those little bits of information that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle.

The changes to Autosave are welcome, as well -- anything that makes it harder for us to accidentally lose our hard work is alright by us. TextEdit has certainly received some nice boosts, particularly its broader integration with iCloud. Apple's clearly looking to take on Google Docs here, though we'd be hesitant to make the jump, given that Docs is more accessible on more platforms. Those holding their breath for the arrival of Siri on the desktop will likely be pretty blue in the face until this time next year -- the cheeky personal assistant isn't on the list of Mountain Lion's plus features.

Apple has, however, seen fit to bring Dictation over to OS X in a major way, incorporating it into any app that involves typing.

You can also put it to work in third-party applications -- we were able to dictate Gmail messages in Chrome, for instance, though we couldn't quite get it to work in Google Docs, regardless of whether we had it open in Safari or Chrome. Hit the Function key twice you can also change this command in the settings , and a small microphone glowing purple will appear in a word bubble off to the side of the app.

Speak slowly and clearly, hit Done when you're finished, and it'll get to work. We gave the feature a test drive and were pretty impressed with what we saw:. This is me trying out dictation. It seems be working out pretty well so far. I'm not sure if I could type an entire paper using this however. But perhaps for short things this is a good idea.

I don't know, people in my office [ are ] probably going to stare at me funny if I keep using this to type all of my things. One or two fumbles. Still, not bad for a first go. And yeah, this writer has been told that he has a tendency to mumble. For periods, simply say "period. But again, it can't do much about your coworkers staring at you while you talk to your computer.

The Mac App Store gets some upgrades here, too: app update notes show up in the Notification Center, you can use the trackpad to swipe between pages in your App Store history and a Share button lets you broadcast your app discoveries over Twitter, Messages and Facebook.

And since ML is only available through the App Store, it makes sense that all OS X upgrades come through there as well, downloading automatically for your installing pleasure. App updates auto-download as well, and all new applications you download will get pushed to other computers tied to your account. Oh, how people would have laughed at you 10 years ago, had you told them that one day, Apple would become a kingpin in the gaming world. Yet in a relatively short amount of time, the company has managed to go from a virtual non-presence in gaming to the creator of one of the industry's most popular platforms.

Of course, that popularity grew mostly independently of Apple's desktop operating system. Having managed to capture the imagination of slews of mobile gamers, the company is now looking to translate some of that success into the desktop experience, offering up an OS X version of Game Center, the social gaming experience first introduced for iOS 4. The primary reasoning behind bringing the feature over to the desktop seems to be the opportunity to allow OS X users to compete against iPhone and iPad owners in multiplayer games in an already bustling ecosystem with million registered accounts, as announced at WWDC last month.

Sign in with your existing account and you'll bring over your info from iOS. Through Game Center, you can find friends and opponents. Game Center also offers up in-game voice chat, parental controls and, of course, notifications, which alert you to friend requests and invitations, and tell you when it's your time to play a turn-based game. We can certainly see the appeal of maintaining scores across devices and playing against pals with iOS, but at the moment, we can't see the desktop version of Game Center becoming vital gameplay -- at least not in the near future.

When Apple first tipped us off about Gatekeeper, we were admittedly skeptical. We're all for security, of course, especially in a world were OS X's growing popularity has made it an increasingly popular target for hackers, but as OS X begins to look more and more like iOS, it runs the risk of becoming a far more controlled, less flexible environment.

Because, let's be honest: Apple craves fewer things more than complete control over its hardware and software, even if that means severely limiting the influence of third parties. Gatekeeper seeks to reduce the presence of malicious applications on your system. By default, your system is set up to only accept downloads directly from the App Store or identified developers -- a fact that leads to dialog boxes such as this one:.

This can all be adjusted by making your way into the Security and Privacy pane in System Preferences, where you can ratchet up the security allow applications downloaded from Mac App Store or pare it down allow applications downloaded from anywhere. Apple would no doubt love to keep your downloads restricted to its tightly vetted App Store. But even extended to include non-App Store downloads by companies with a Developer ID, legit programs can still get flagged see: Spotify.

Of course, Apple's been working double-time to get developers signed up ahead of Mountain Lion's launch -- and, worst case scenario, you can always switch your system settings when you need to download an app not listed in Cupertino's database.

Though Gatekeeper is the primary new security addition to Mountain Lion, Apple's got a few more tricks up its sleeve to tackle the aforementioned ever-growing threat against OS X.

For one thing, the OS promises to check for security updates every day. According to Apple the encryption being offered up is currently in the process of getting its FIPS certification, to help it hit the government's standards.

We're not yet seeing the kind of focus on security enhancements that Microsoft will talk up with each new release of Windows, but Apple does seem to be coming to grips with the fact that, yes, Macs can get malware. As ever, Dashboard is always just a three-finger swipe away. Not a ton has changed from a UI standpoint, but Apple's apparently looking to bring more folks over to the barebones interface by making widgets easier to discover.

Swipe your way in and you'll see Plus and Minus buttons at the bottom of the screen. Clicking Minus brings pop-up Xs on top of your widgets, so you can get the ones you don't want out of your sight so long, Ski Report. Hitting the Plus will bring a list of all the default widgets -- pretty much the same selection offered up in Lion, albeit in a slightly roomier configuration.

Click a widget and it'll appear on your main Dashboard page. You can also hold down on a widget and then click to transfer it to the front of the Dashboard. Along the top of the page is a search bar so widget hoarders can find an item amongst the clutter. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights.

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