Rui CarmoLargely thanks to the hectic pace of the past few months, the Mountain Lion announcement caught me somewhat off guard, as did the way Apple did things this time around.
Both of which are good - I’m pretty much OK with there being a consistent set of metaphors and embodiments of common functionality across desktops, tablets and phones (even if, like many, I’m not crazy about the actual looks of most of it), and like the way they’re allowing for off-store developer signing (even if it feels somewhat, well, restrictive for someone who’s used to building his own tools lots of times).
And, even though it pains me somewhat after years of using Growl, I even like their approach at displaying app notifications, even if long overdue (I just hope it’s something one can bolt on to low-level scripts and homegrown tools without hassle).
The only thing I’m not entirely crazy about is the likely mess of having to choose between saving files locally using standard dialogues and having an entirely new UI to deal with iCloud - I like the filesystem approach, for it’s not unusual for me to deal with dozens of things at a time, and the dinky little grouping UI that Apple has delivered on iOS simply won’t scale.
But I’m having quite some fun with the Messages beta already, both due to its ground-breaking omission of the obnoxious “i” prefix and to it apparently having the same plug-in interface than iChat - which means the plugins I have squirreled away somewhere gathering dust work fine.
I’ve been waiting for this for a good while, and have a few interesting uses for it all.
If only I had the time…