Having used Windows computers for many years and have since been converted to Apple Mac, we have experienced both operating systems for a good amount of time. We currently run Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on both MacBooks and an iMac, but also have Windows 7 on two touchscreen computers. Both operating systems suffer from crashes although Mountain Lion has a better track record so far, and certainly is not plagued by the viruses and malware you’ll find with Windows.

We have experienced a few crashing problems with Mountain Lion since it launched, and this includes Safari crashing sometimes when you open a new tab via clicking a link and selecting “open link in new tab“. It is worth noting that when you do this a second time by reopening Safari right after a crash, it doesn’t happen.

The Apple discussion forums are filled with issues being reported by users, which is expected with any new OS and this includes Mountain Lion. There are two clear crash problems affecting a lot of users, and this includes the above Safari problems and also Mountain Lion crashes when resuming from sleep. Some people solved this issue by turning off their Wi-Fi on MacBooks before closing the lid, and also some iMac users found that making sure Bluetooth is turned off stopped a crash when the computer sleeps.

Have you had any crashing with Mountain Lion or default installed software? You can see the forum entries here for Mountain Lion crashes after it resumes from a sleep, and also some other Wi-Fi issues are being discussed in this posting.

If you have not installed Mountain Lion yet then you might want to read some reviews, which can be seen via this article and clearly show the overall Mountain Lion performance is extremely good for the majority.

We installed Mac OS X Mountain Lion without any major problems although that doesn’t mean it has been a perfect process for everyone, and in fact some people are complaining about Wi-Fi and slow mac problems. The majority of users that installed Mountain Lion early gave a very positive review, which matches up with the reviews we’ve seen on technology websites.

Mac OS X Mountain Lion review roundup – today we wanted to direct our readers to reviews from a range of websites, and these take a look at Apple’s new OS from different perspectives. One common agreement is the value for money seen with Mountain Lion, and at $20 you’ll receive a lot for your money considering there are over 200 new features to get your teeth into.

You will find improvements with Safari right away and for us the new Smart Search took a couple of hours to feel comfortable, which is due to a major change in the way you would normally search with Safari. Apple has enhanced almost every area of Lion, which includes Game Center, sharing, iCloud, Messages, and the Notification Center.

If you want to read three Mountain Lion reviews from respected names in the technology space, then you won’t find much better than a review on NY Times, All Things D, and USA Today. We have included a video review below this article, which came from the last link and runs for just over 7 minutes explaining the most important points of the new operating system.

Have you installed Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion yet, and if so how are you finding the OS so far? For us the everyday use of our Mac is pretty much the same, other than the use of Safari, but we do understand the important upgrades are made under the hood. These include Apple’s effort to keep the Mac virus and malware free, which is helped by the new Gatekeeper security. What new features are you appreciating the most in Mountain Lion?

Apple decided the time had come to release OS X Mountain Lion on the Mac App Store, and within the last 24 hours it has been available for download, which also allowed early adopters to leave a their personal review and first impressions. OS X Mountain Lion version 10.8 has a size of 4.05GB, and initial review ratings give the new software 4.5 stars, which are backed by the amount of praise being offered after users give the new operating system a try.

More polished and faster OS X Mountain Lion – the new OS is extremely stable and a large number of early reactions show that the software feels more stable than Lion, which this “must have Mountain Lion upgrade” is made more desirable thanks to the low £13.99 (UK) and $19.99 (US) price. We spoke about the automatic features in the past, and while there are well over new 200 features it is certain improvements like Power Nap that really make this upgrade worthwhile.

Positive user praise for OS X Mountain Lion – the support for Mac OS X 10.8 is already overwhelming, and we have included some of the early reactions on this page for our readers to get an idea from those that have the OS installed. We’re sure you’ll agree that this seems like one upgrade most Mac owners would want to do as soon as possible.

When compared to lion there are a number of comparisons, and most follow the lines of this comment “People didn’t like Lion. They thought it was slower, and wasn’t polished like Snow Leopard. Here, everything changes”. The user review continued “OS X Mountain Lion is fast, responsive, full of useful features, and with iCloud, works seamlessly with all your Apple devices. Don’t hesitate, this is worth so much more than it’s being sold for”.

Those people using a MacBook Pro feel that Mountain Lion also runs much smoother, and another user said, “My Retina MacBook Pro now runs a lot smoother with Mountain Lion. If anyone was holding out to purchase one of these awesome machines, I can happily confirm this is a great compliment for the Retina MBP”.

It is fair to say there will be problems in the coming days and weeks, although at the time of writing early user reviews are extremely positive when compared to the feedback we saw with Lion after launch.

Have you installed OS X Mountain Lion, and if so how are you finding the new OS?

In the last few hours we’re hearing about some more features take shape in Mountain Lion, and in particular the Automatic Downloads feature promised earlier on this year. The latest developer build of OS X 10.8 has shown signs of automatic app installs, although these are not fully working in the current beta. You can see a message pop up asking you to turn on automatic app downloads for future purchases, which will not work in the current developer build but is likely to release for testing very soon.

We welcome this feature to Mac OS X and have loved being able to buy apps on our iPhone 4S, which are then automatically downloaded to our iPad 3, although this can be any iOS device you’ve selected to have automatic downloads after installing iOS 5. The majority of Mountain Lion owners will enjoy the same benefits soon, and the software is scheduled to go on sale later this summer. You can read more about Mountain Lion’s new automatic download feature in this article.

You might also want to read about Messages beta, which we posted some videos and details on back in February this year, and if you’re thinking about purchasing the new 2012 MacBook Pro you can read about description Retina modes here.

Before we start delving into specs we thought we would talk a little about software. Apple recently pushed out a developer preview of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion which boasts over 100 new features (when compared to Snow Leopard) and blurs the lines which currently separate Apple’s desktop operating system from iOS. Mountain Lion is said to hit the Mac App Store sometime this summer, therefore we could well see the 2012 iMac arrive with this OS version pre-installed – software innovation is all well and good, but to convince people to part with their hard-earned cash Apple will have to offer some pretty impressive hardware specs.

So let’s have a look at what’s currently offered. Currently there are four base iMac models which fall into two main categories, 21.5-inch and 27-inch. We expect the same form-factors this time around, perhaps with slightly thinner dimensions, but beneath the hood there should be plenty of mouthwatering changes in specifications.

As you probably already know there’s plenty of upgrade options in regards to internal hardware, so we expect this next time around, but one thing that we can pretty much guarantee is that the Sandy Bridge Intel Core processor offerings will be replaced with Intel’s new Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. These chips boast plenty of improvements, mainly thanks to the innovative new 3-D Tri-Gate transistors which are utilized, and when you compare Sandy Bridge side-by-side with Ivy Bridge the latter should deliver unprecedented performance improvements and low power consumption – you can see more details in regards to the new Ivy Bridge platform over at Wikipedia. There are talks of Ivy Bridge delays, if this is the case we expect Apple to perhaps delay the iMac refresh as releasing new Sandy Bridge-based iMac models would be questionable to say the least.

Currently there are plenty of RAM configurations available (4, 8 or 16GB), but no-matter what you choose you’ll get 1333MHz DDR3 memory. This time around we know that the Ivy Bridge platform which the 2012 iMac should be based upon supports 1600Mhz DDR3 memory, therefore we expect Apple to utilize this faster memory – we doubt that Apple will improve on the 16GB memory cap currently offered, in fact we’re not even sure if OS X would truly benefit from more than this.

We’re not going to talk about storage options too much as quite frankly there’s nothing which will really blow your socks off. The issues in the far east have ensured that hard disk drive and solid-state drive prices haven’t fallen a great deal, in fact they might have even gone up, so we won’t be too surprised if Apple decides to stick with hard disk options ranging from 500GB to 2TB, a 256GB SSD option and some options where you get a SSD as your primary drive and a HDD as a storage drive. I don’t know about anyone else but I’d quite welcome a hybrid drive option as well, wouldn’t you?

Perhaps the hardest thing to speculate about is graphics and display changes. Firstly as previously mentioned we think that Apple will stick with the 21.5 and 27-inch options, but some people are also wishing for a new 30-inch variant. Perhaps this time round Apple will bump up the smaller display’s resolution from 1920 x 1080 to 2560 x 1440. As for the 27-inch model we don’t really see much of a need for a higher resolution, but if there is a jump we expect the new iMac to keep the 16:9 aspect ratio, perhaps 3840 x 2160 is a possibility, but we doubt it.

Your guess is as good as ours in regards to specific GPU options, but we think that last year’s Radeon HD 6750M, 6770M and 6970M will be replaced by HD 77xx, HD 78xx and HD 79xx options. You can see a list of new GPUs which Radeon plan to release soon here, as you can see some of these will utilize the PCIe 3.0 socket and offer more advanced power consumption whilst deliver richer-than-ever visuals.

That just about sums up what people really care about in regards to specifications, in terms of ports, technology support, functionality and design we don’t think there will be too many surprises, but with that said Apple certainly like to shock the world – for now we’d love to hear your opinions on the next iMac.

What are your spec expectations for the 2012 iMac? Is there a need for a 30-inch iMac? Are higher display resolutions necessary? Let us know below!

When we first tried iOS 5 and the new message system it seemed a step that was both obvious and extremely useful, which meant that you could text people without an iPhone and the messages would show in a green color but those with an iOS device showed in blue. If your friends or family had an iOS device then the messages with videos and photos could be sent via Wi-Fi, and this saves you money/text allowances because they’re free between Apple devices.

It’s hard to explain what a massive difference it makes to prioritize Wi-Fi for sending messages and using 3G as a secondary option, which not only gives faster delivery and instant display of the recipient typing but also benefits thousands of people that like to send text messages internationally.

The next step is Apple’s Messages beta – we wrote about a number of features for Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion a couple of days ago, and today we wanted to focus on the new Apple Messages beta. Some of our readers would rightly point out that other messaging services already have what Apple is building, although it’s how Apple are centralizing all messages under one service for many Apple products, which is likely to build more allegiance for the popular tech brand.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will change everything – We’ve heard about people trading Android phones in for iPhone’s just because they love the iPad, iPod touch or Mac OS X computers. Users want their gadgets to work better together and when it comes to messaging Apple are going to make iOS and OS X work in harmony, which means starting a conversation on one Apple device and then carrying on where you left off with another. Think about talking on your iMac via the future Messages app and then going mobile to carry on messaging.

Let’s take a closer look at Apple Messages beta – we’ve included some videos below this article to help you get a better understanding of the new Messages beta, although if you want to jump in and download the software right now head over to this page on Apple’s website. The first video below gives you a quick overview from the moment Messages is installed, which is great if you want to see how the setup guide works.

The second video takes a look at how Messages beta easily works with other iOS devices like the iPhone, and in this video they start typing on a Mac and then jump onto an iPhone to see the message already there ready to carry on with that device if the user wants to. In the third video we’ve included a just under 10-minute hands-on with Mountain Lion 10.8, although those of you that want to see the official preview should see the fourth video below.

Have you downloaded the Messages beta for Mac OS X, if so how did you find it? Let us know if you find any problems with the beta.

The next major release for the Mac operating system is set to be released during the summer on the Mac App Store, while according to AppleInsider a preview of the software is available now for Mac developers. Apple is promising that the new software will bring with it more than 100 new features, with many coming from the iOS and iPad mobile operating system.

These new features with Mountain Lion include a replacement for iChat called Messages. Also there are Notes, Reminders, and Game Center for Mac. The new operating system will also have AirPlay Mirroring, Notification Center, Share Sheets, and Twitter integration.

It will also be the first OS X release that will feature iCloud for simple setup and integration with apps. The preview version also has the Gatekeeper feature that keeps users safe from malicious software as it gives control over the apps that are installed on a Mac.

Jim Dalrymple of The Loop has spent a week with a copy of Mountain Lion and said that all the new features will be enjoyed by both Mac and iOS users. He called the theme of Mountain Lion is “familiarity”. The new Messages feature can be got hold of now in its beta form, and allows users to chat to friends based on their Apple ID. It will also connect with other chat services such as Google Talk and Yahoo among others.

There is better integration with iCloud that now connects it with Bookmarks, Calendars, Contacts, Documents & Data, FaceTime, Game Center, Mail, Notes, Reminders, and the Mac App Store. Once an iCloud user ID and password is entered many features will automatically be set up on a new Mac.

The Notification Center from iOS will be accessed by clicking a circle button on the top right of the screen, and with a simple gesture of sliding two fingers from the right edge it can be moved to the right side of the screen.

Reminders and Notes allow users to create and keep track of to-do lists across all of their devices, while game center will allow for the Mac gaming experience to be personalized. Users will be able to find new games and challenge friends whether they on an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or a Mac.

AirPlay Mirroring will let users stream a secure 720p video wirelessly to an HDTV from their Mac via Apple TV. The new Twitter integration will let users sign in once and then tweet straight from Photo Booth, Preview, Safari, third-party apps, and Quick Look.

Chinese users will also benefit from increased support from Mountain Lion, which will now have the option of Baidu search via Safari. There have been big improvements made to the Chinese input method as well as connectivity for Calendar, Contacts, and Mail via top email providers such as 126, 163, and QQ and Share Sheets connectivity with Toudou and Youku.

Developers now have a huge number of new APIs, which will provide access to enhanced features and core technologies found in OS X. Cross platform multiplayer games for iOS and Mac can now be developed thanks to the new Game Kit API. Pricing has yet to be revealed but it will only be available for purchase on the Mac App Store. Check the demo video below of Mountain Lion.