Apple announces OS X Mountain Lion

Late last week, Apple dropped a surprise announcement when it issued a press release highlighting the impending release of OS X Mountain Lion, the next iteration of Apple’s Mac OS.

Developers can already take a look at Mountain Lion via the Mac App Store if they’re registered Apple developers. Everyone else can enjoy Mountain Lion later this June.

But onto more important things like new features.

Apple is touting Mountain Lion as having over 100 new features, and not too surprisingly, many of them are coming over from iOS.

Some highlights include:

– A brand new Messages app that will incorporate iChat and FaceTime functionality. Essentially, Mac users will be able to “send unlimited messages, high-quality photos and videos directly from your Mac to another Mac or iOS device. Messages will continue to support AIM, Jabber, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk.

– A new notifications feature which is reminiscent of Growl

– Built-in Twitter integration which will enable users to quickly send tweets straight from Safari, Preview, and other apps

– AirPlay Mirroring will finally be coming to the Mac, enabling Mac users to seamlessly stream media content from their machine to their HDTV provided they have an Apple TV hooked up

– Built-in iCloud integration

– Game Center

– Reminders

While OS X (yes, the Mac is no officially gone) is not morphing into iOS, Apple clearly isn’t shy about incorporating many of the more popular iOS features into OS X, further blurring the lines between the two. The end result, I imagine, will be an increased comfort for PC users exploring the possibility of getting a Mac. In other words, the halo effect, which Apple executives acknowledge is very real, is about to get a whole lot stronger given the hundreds of millions of iOS users already out there.

Apple’s full press release on the Mountain Lion announcement can be viewed over here.