OS X Mountain Lion gets positive reviews

OS X Mountain Lion 10.8, the next major Mac operating system (OS) from Apple, is finally available in the Mac App Store as a digital download.

A flurry of Mac owners have raced to download the new OS and are already calling it a "great release."

The operating system has captured the number one spot in both the top paid and top grossing charts in the Mac App Store in countries including Australia, Canada, France, the UK, and the US. At the time of writing the operating system had also achieved an average customer rating of 5 out of 5 stars.

Technology blogs have started posting their opinions of the OS too. TechCrunch dubbed it "Quick, Familiar, Cheap, And Drenched In iOS Goodness," John Gruber said "That mindset and development schedule — "What can we do to make this nicer by next year?" — may well be the most important thing from iOS that Apple has taken back to the Mac," and Ars Technica concluded "Think of Mountain Lion as the best desktop iCloud client Apple knows how to make."

"People are going to love the new features in Mountain Lion and how easy it is to download and install from the Mac App Store," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With iCloud integration, Mountain Lion is even easier to set up, and your important information stays up to date across all your devices so you can keep editing documents, taking notes, creating reminders, and continue conversations whether you started on a Mac, iPhone or iPad."

OS X Mountain Lion has more than 200 new features including a new Notification Center, a universal Messages app, Dictation, AirPlay Mirroring, Power Nap, Game Center and the Gatekeeper security feature.

Microsoft is getting ready to release its next generation operating system too. Windows 8 is due to be launched on October 26. 'It's the glue; it's the foundation of everything Microsoft is built on,' said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, it "is simply the biggest deal for this company in at least 17 years.'

OS X Mountain Lion is available from the Mac App Store now for $19.99.