The (Mountain) Lion King: Apple Presents New Mac OS

Apple has announced its spangly new OS X Mountain Lion, which is now available to developers.

The nifty new OS has filched a load of features from the iPhone and iPad and crammed them into Apple’s laptop and desktop computer platform.

Unfortunately for those of us who aren’t crafty devs, Camp Cupertino says we’ll have to wait until “late summer 2012” to be able to get our mitts on the beast.

New features on board include iOS beauties such as Notification and Game Centres, and AirPlay mirroring for Notes and Reminders.

But the major new arrival is Gatekeeper, which allows you to control all of the apps on your Mac. Gatekeeper works by allowing your Mac to only run apps downloaded from the Mac App Store, or those that have been given a unique Developer ID from Apple.

It’s essentially a new security feature that restricts users to using only Mac App Store apps, thus creating a more controlled environment. However Apple recognises that that this may not go down too well with everyone, so have made Gatekeeper an optional feature that can be turned off.

Exciting times for Mac lovers, roll on the summer!