Messages
Particularly after iMessage hit iOS devices the mac equivalent, iChat, became expendable. But many users want all their conversation history in one place. Messages for mac is that feature. Messages allows users to keep in contact with their friends and family through the same network as iMessage. With just a click you can send unlimited messages to anyone with Messages or anyone on iOS 5. Moreover, sending pictures, videos, and more are just as easy. Now whether you are out and about with your iPhone or browsing the web on your Mac you can stay in contact with your peers. And with end-to-end encryption, your personal data is as safe as ever. (Lion users can check out a free beta of Messages today)

Share Sheets
Mountain lion makes sharing easier than ever before. Built into many OS X 10.8 applications are sharing options to post interesting content to the world. With one click you can share breaking news to your twitter followers, post videos to vimeo, upload photos to flickr, and more. At launch Notes, Reminders, Photo Booth, iPhoto, and Safari will all have integrated sharing functions.

Gatekeeper
Apple’s operating system is known for its security. Rarely do we see widespread malware impacting mac users. However, Apple has taken another preventative measure in the form of gatekeeper. Gatekeeper allows users to choose what applications can be installed on their machines: only applications approved by Apple in the mac app store, only applications from the app store or from verified developers, or any application. Apple is building a barrier between malicious apps and the end user by allowing you to only use approved applications. But unlike iOS, power users still have the option to run wild and install whatever they please.

AirPlay Mirroring
This has to be my favorite feature of Mountain Lion. Users can mirror their desktop wirelessly to their HDTV via Apple TV. Of course Apple TV is an additional purchase but consider the possibilities. Watching movies on the big screen, sharing keynote presentations, displaying photos, teaching–there are infinite use cases for this. And now that mirroring is wireless they all become a lot easier.

Apple has made of point of taking the strongest aspects of iOS and merging them into OS X. Full iCloud integration, a unified notification center, and gamecenter are all additions to OS X I haven’t even mention yet. Apple isn’t breaking new ground with mountain lion but rather is refining an already strong operating system. And hey, launch is still months away. I believe Apple has a trick or two left up its sleeve.

Mountain lion is slated for release summer 2012. Although no firm announcement on pricing was made I suspect this update will be available for the same $29 fee as OS X lion.

What You Need

• An External Hard Drive
• Time Machine
• Time

Maintenance
Before you do anything, it’s time for some maintenance. I went through the folders I use the most and deleted all the unnecessary files. From old documents to program DMG’s, I removed most of the unneeded bloat from my hard drive. Not only is this a generally good habit, it saves some space on your drive and makes your back-up that much shorter. From there, I sorted extraneous files and cleaned up my desktop. (Right now, the only icons on my screen are of the three hard drives.) Basically, I preformed spring cleaning in August.
I also suggest taking inventory of all the applications and preferences panes you have installed. Jotting down the few panes you have isn’t an issues but if, like me, you have a lot of apps hand writing them all down is troublesome. For that, open up terminal and type: “ls /Applications/ >> appsiuse.txt” without quotes. You’ll now have a text document with all your apps listed.
Check Your Software
Some maintenance every now and again is worth while but before investing any more time and money into this upgrade make sure the software you use most is supported. If you NEED a certain application and for whatever the reason, it doesn’t work, you’re in trouble. If you have a back-up you could reinstall leopard and restore you’re back-up but that’s a hassle. Use this wiki to check what software is currently supported in snow leopard before moving on.
Back-Up
The bread and butter of this post: protecting your data from failure. It’s highly recommended that you back-up your computer regularly but I cannot stress how important this is now. Installing a new OS posses the largest risk for error and you can never be too careful with your documents and irreplaceable media.

While other tools such as carbon copy cloner and SuperDuper work well, I’ll be using time machine for this post. Grab a clean external hard drive, firewire is recommended for speed and the ability to boot from the drive, and plug it into your mac. From there, go into your applications folder, launch time machine and turn it on.

Now, just let the program run it’s course. When you first enable time machine it will create a complete back-up of your computer. For me, after maintenance and moving youtube videos/events to a different external hard drive, I had about 170GB of data that needed to be backed up. This process can take some time so I recommend backing up your entire hard drive the day before your upgrade. This saves time when you have snow leopard in hand and allows you some breathing room to resolve any issues you may have.

That’s everything you should do before installing snow leopard. The easiest way to upgrade is to choose upgrade in the snow leopard installation interface. Ideally, it will install snow leopard and keep all your settings, documents, and media the way you left them in leopard. However, for those of you who want to start fresh, you can always wipe your drive clean and install snow leopard by it’s self. From there, you can restore your data from time machine or just start from the beginning: it’s your choice. I plan to detail this process, in video, in the near future so stay tuned and subscribed.

I was a little surprised when I watched this video though. To actually get this to work you need an illegal copy of OS X and the video covers where to download it from. Now I wasn’t surprised how the video takes you through the entire process but to actually show and endorse illegal activity was surprising.

In any event, it is an interesting watch. I think apple will need to open OS X to all systems in order to expand but right now there are alternative ways to get OS X on any machine.