Mountain Lion has been out for over a week now. While generally stable it does feel like a really small upgrade…although it was for a small price. Some initial thoughts below:
– Wake from sleep – are they doing the same as iOS and displaying an image and then the actual desktop? In fact as the week has went on I’m convinced the wake is slightly slower than on Lion.
– Definitely snappier and faster than Lion once booted. Seeing the speed increase when I upgraded the Air and especially on the iMac where I went for a fresh install.
– I really like tab syncing across all platforms. Very handy and it happens quickly without any distraction. Like many things, it just works.
– Sharing is useful. Needs to allow for other services to plugin. Knowing Apple that will be in next years update.
– Safari – stable on the Air but totally unstable on the iMac and thats with a fresh O/S install, no extensions and no flash. Strange. Impressed with Safari speed though. Finding it much faster than Chrome and it finally unifies address and search bars. I do notice that CPU usage is high with Safari. I think it will be one or two point releases before I try Safari again as it’s just not stable at the moment.
– iCloud doc’s still confuse – my head does not get each app having it’s own document store – easy to lose content? Maybe I need to use it more.
– Dictation actually works…mostly. Best for short statements like a tweet though.
– Battery life on my 2012 Air is reduced by Mountain Lion and by quite a margin. Hope Apple address this quickly. Also noticed that the magsafe adaptor goes green but the battery is at 95% and still has 20 mins to get fully charged. CPU issues from Safari and a battery that isn’t always fully charged might explain my shortened battery life.
– Notifications are good but not as useful or granular as Growl.
– Yet to be convinced by Messages. Conversations don’t sync across platforms for me. Handy to be able to send large files to and from iOS though. Won’t replace Adium for IM mostly due to the poor UI.
– New screensaver options are good.
– RRS button removed in Safari. Probably says more about RSS than anything else. There’s an extension to get back the feature though.
– Those invisible scrollbars are much improved.
– Dock looks clearer, not so much the running app indicators. Maybe they aren’t needed after all?
– Most third party app’s working fine. Not as big an issue as when Leopard or Lion came out.