Ever since Apple introduced the Mac Store,
many people have speculated that it was only a matter of time until the Mac,
like iOS, could only run software sold directly via the store.
I never really thought that was a serious
possibility and Mountain Lion seems to clinch it. The new Gatekeeper feature,
found in Mountain Lion’s Security & Privacy preference pane, adds an
intermediate level of protection between fully approved App Store apps and random
files download from unknown sources over the internet.
Gatekeeper
eyes your apps
It’s Apple’s attempt to bring more
iOS-style security to Mac users even if the apps they use are not from the App
Store and it’s a great move.
By default, Mountain Lion will launch newly
downloaded aps from the Mac App Store as well as any apps written by
‘identified developers’ without complaint. Identified developers are members of
Apple’s Mac developer program who have obtained a certificate linked to their
identify which they use to cryptographically sign their apps.
(Apple doesn’t do any sort of background
check on the developer and it doesn’t approve any of this software. All it
means is that Apple knows who the developer who signed the app was and that
gives Apple the ability to revoke the developer’s license if they’re discovered
to be a distributor of malware.)
The act of cryptographically signing apps
also prevents legitimate apps from being tampered with after the fact, since
any modified apps will fail the check that Mountain Lion performs.
Most people will only run into Gatekeeper
when downloading an app that hasn’t been updated with a developer signature.
You can turn off Gatekeeper altogether, of course, but you can also choose to
open unidentified apps manually: Just control-click on the app in the Finder
and choose Open. Gatekeeper won’t stop you.
It’s also important to note that, as the
name implies, Gatekeeper is not a system that continually scans your Mac
looking for malware. It works only the very first time you try to open an app,
using the same system that warns you before you open just about any file that
you downloaded from the internet. Once you give that app entry through the gate
and into your Mac, there’s no more security.
Gatekeeper’s not the only security addition
to Mountain Lion. The Security & Privacy preference pane’s Privacy tap is
now more granular. In addition to control over location-based data (introduced
in Lion) and the sending of diagnostic information to Apple, you can also control
access to Contacts, Twitter and Facebook.
Sharing and social services
In an attempt to reduce the amount of steps
required to share stuff on your Mac with others, Apple has added a sharing
button to most of its apps and provided access to the same sharing
functionality for third-party app developers. When you click on the (familiar
to iOS users) Share button in an app, you’ll see a pop-up menu listing several
ways to share the item you’re working with.
You
can quickly share web pages with Twitter using Safari’s Share button
Extending the theme of sharing, Apple has
integrated Twitter and Facebook, as well as other services including Flickr and
Vimeo, throughout Mountain Lion. (I was able to try the Facebook functionality
on a demo system lent to me by Apple; the initial release of Mountain Lion
doesn’t support it, but it’ll be made available in an update sometime soon.)
In Safari, the Share button lets you post a
link to Facebook or Twitter (and, in a nice touch, that choice will bring up a
‘share sheet’ where you can compose your own text, rather than sending out a
generic pre-formatted message), add a bookmark, send a link via Messages, add
the page to Reading List or send the story via email. (If you choose to send
the story via email, you can choose to send a link, the HTML of the page or a
stripped-down view of the page in the style of Safari’s Reader feature.)
You can add your Twitter and Facebook
account information in the Mail, Contacts & Calendars system preference.
Once that’s done, it becomes easy to quickly share items from just about
anywhere via the Share menu or the buttons at the top of the Notification
Center list. I was able to post an image to Twitter and Facebook from within
Preview, as well as send it to Flickr. I could even transfer it to a nearby Mac
via Apple’s AirDrop file transfer feature, all without leaving my Preview
window. You can even choose whether to make your Facebook posts public, just to
your friends or to a limited list of friends.
Twitter and Facebook integration goes beyond
that, though. Mountain Lion can sync with your Facebook contacts list, so that
all your Facebook friends appear in Contacts. If the members of your Contacts
list are also your Facebook friends, Mountain Lion will do its best to avoid
making duplicate entries. (A few of my friends were duplicated when I tried
this, but merging them back into one record wasn’t too hard using the Merge
Selected Cards command in Contacts.)
Mountain Lion can also optionally update
the pictures attached to each of your contacts based on those contacts’ public
Facebook profiles, even if they’re not Facebook friends, and can do likewise
with Twitter avatars.
Goes in here, comes out there
There aren’t that many different ways to
say, “Here’s a feature that you’ve seen on iOS that’s also now on the Mac.” But
here we are again: AirPlay mirroring, a feature introduced in iOS 5, has
arrived on the Mac.
AirPlay
Mirroring is a new feature to iOS 5 that allows you to stream anything on your
iPad 2 or iPhone 4S directly to your HDTV with the help of an Apple TV
For a while now, Macs have been able to
play back iTunes audio and video to Apple TVs (and audio to AirPort Expresses),
but in Mountain Lion, you can mirror the contents of your Mac’s display on any
video device connected to an Apple TV (so long as it’s the small black
version).
When a 2011-vintage or later Mac running
Mountain Lion senses the presence of an Apple TV on the local network, an
AirPlay icon appears in the menu bar. Click and select an Apple TV and your
desktop will be duplicated on the TV it’s connected to.
If you’re in a Mac-centric office,
equipping every conference room with an Apple TV seems like a no-brainer. And I
found myself using this feature all the time at home.
