Apple details iCloud, dictation, Power Nap features in Mountain Lion
At Monday's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Apple showed off some of the new features of its forthcoming Mountain Lion operating system update, including dictation for the Mac, tighter integration with iCloud, Power Nap for automatic data updating, and a new version of Safari.
Craig Federighi, Apple's head of Mac software, showed off Mountain Lion on Monday at WWDC 2012, and took the opportunity to show off iCloud integration. He showed how with Documents in the Cloud, users would be able to access their files from anywhere.
The Notes and Reminders applications will also be added to the iCloud website. And notes will be accessible from anywhere with a data connection, on the Mac, iPhone, iPad, or through the iCloud website.
Federighi also announced that voice dictation will also be a part of Mountain Lion. The dictation feature, which does not offer personal assistant functionality like Siri, is also a part of the third-generation iPad.
Also demonstrated was the new Safari, which has a unified smart search field, and a new feature called iCloud Tabs that syncs open websites across devices. Another new feature called Tabview allows users to zoom out and see all of their tabs currently open in Safari.
Another new feature announced Monday is called Power Nap, which allows a computer to stay up to date and back up automatically, even while the machine is sleeping. Power Nap automatically refreshes data, and is silent and power efficient. It works with the second-generation MacBook Air, and the next-generation MacBook Pro with Retina display.
Craig Federighi, Apple's head of Mac software, showed off Mountain Lion on Monday at WWDC 2012, and took the opportunity to show off iCloud integration. He showed how with Documents in the Cloud, users would be able to access their files from anywhere.
The Notes and Reminders applications will also be added to the iCloud website. And notes will be accessible from anywhere with a data connection, on the Mac, iPhone, iPad, or through the iCloud website.
Federighi also announced that voice dictation will also be a part of Mountain Lion. The dictation feature, which does not offer personal assistant functionality like Siri, is also a part of the third-generation iPad.
Also demonstrated was the new Safari, which has a unified smart search field, and a new feature called iCloud Tabs that syncs open websites across devices. Another new feature called Tabview allows users to zoom out and see all of their tabs currently open in Safari.
Another new feature announced Monday is called Power Nap, which allows a computer to stay up to date and back up automatically, even while the machine is sleeping. Power Nap automatically refreshes data, and is silent and power efficient. It works with the second-generation MacBook Air, and the next-generation MacBook Pro with Retina display.
Comments
Siri won't come to the Mac until 10.9.
Terrible, but true. Just watch them do that.
Dropbox?
Too bad power nap only available for Macs with flash storage. It is probably a hardware issue but I would have been nice it any Mac with SSD can take advantage of it.
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Originally Posted by Just_Me
Dropbox?
Dropbox is not an Apple app.
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Originally Posted by NasserAE
Too bad power nap only available for Macs with flash storage. It is probably a hardware issue but I would have been nice it any Mac with SSD can take advantage of it.
i totally agree with you buddy, after upgrading my macbook pro 2011 with the SSD i wish i can use power naps
I don't like unified search fields in browsers. In Safari now, if I type in "key", it goes to key.com, the home page for my bank. With a unified search field, it would go to a search page instead. Same with typing "apple", or "homedepot", etc. Major annoyance for me (other people browse differently, and prefer the unifed field). I hope there's a way to get back to having split search fields.
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Originally Posted by elroth
I don't like unified search fields in browsers. In Safari now, if I type in "key", it goes to key.com, the home page for my bank. With a unified search field, it would go to a search page instead. Same with typing "apple", or "homedepot", etc.
That's my only complaint with that search bar, but I can't possibly go back to the old way. I've been using this for too long.
I do have a serious issue with the ordering of the history suggestions. Bookmarks should come FIRST, then pages I've visited once for five seconds.
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I hope there's a way to get back to having split search fields.
You know that isn't happening.
Using Safari 6 now, a single-word query is treated as a search unless you add a .com or whathaveyou. It seems they actually thought of your exact complaint, and fixed it!
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Originally Posted by Mike Barriault
Using Safari 6 now, a single-word query is treated as a search unless you add a .com or whathaveyou. It seems they actually thought of your exact complaint, and fixed it!
No, that's exactly what he's complaining about. Before Safari 5.2, you could just type "apple" or "appleinsider" or "whatever" into the URL bar, hit Return, and it would automatically add the ".com" and go to that website. Now it's a search.
I hate it also because before you could just use spaces in Wikipedia page names if you knew the URL already. Now if you type a space at ALL, it SEARCHES for that page, meaning you have extra clicks, which is pointless.
Does the new Safari still support RSS like it does in 5.x? Early reports said they dropped RSS support, but I haven't heard any specifics of it since the Keynote yesterday.
In Chrome, not sure how Safari will handle it, the unified search is autofilling url's. When I type in apple it's autofilling to appleinsider.com, a few clicks down or using the mouse there is apple.com and a few other pages mentioning apple from my history/bookmarks.
I'd have to hit delete in order to run a search and not go to a URL.
Yep, that's just what happens in Safari 5.2 and 6.
Then I don't see what the issue is. Seems like its the same behavior?
… We don't want that behavior.
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Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
No, that's exactly what he's complaining about. Before Safari 5.2, you could just type "apple" or "appleinsider" or "whatever" into the URL bar, hit Return, and it would automatically add the ".com" and go to that website. Now it's a search.
I hate it also because before you could just use spaces in Wikipedia page names if you knew the URL already. Now if you type a space at ALL, it SEARCHES for that page, meaning you have extra clicks, which is pointless.
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Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
… We don't want that behavior.
Ok going by what I see here, I'm confused. What I was trying to say is that when I type in appleinsider and hit enter, i go to appleinsider.com, as it has filled in the .com, it does not go to a google search of appleinsider?
This is for sites that I frequent, or have been to recently but it fills in the url by default, not search by default
Right. And in Mountain Lion, it does not do that. It searches instead. We'd prefer the old way, but it's difficult to imagine a system that could distinguish a partial URL from a genuine search.
No, it's a little different.
Suppose you've never been on appleinsider.com before.
When you just enter 'appleinsider' and hit return, it'll take you to a search for appleinsider. If you then click on the search result for appleinsider.com, it takes you there.
Now the second time when you enter just 'appleinsider' in the unified bar, it autocompletes to 'appleinsider.com'. Hitting return will now take you to the site directly instead to a search page.
I think this is the way it should be.
It needs to change precedence, however. I'm sick of a URL I visited once to show up in the list before my BOOKMARKS.
And it needs to stop crashing when I open more than three tabs at once. And it needs the Activity window back.