Apple’s newest Mac OS, Mavericks, is still several months away. But if you’re itching for information, we’ve put together everything we currently know about the operating system to give you an idea of what you have to look forward to in the fall.

Why call it Mavericks?

Apple’s finally run out of cat names for its OS X updates—sorry, lynx, bobcat, and liger—so it’s on to a brand new theme. Instead, the company has chosen to base subsequent OS X updates on locations in its home state of California.

The first of these is Mavericks, a famous surfing location just southwest of San Francisco.

I missed the keynote: What did Apple introduce?

A decent amount. Mavericks has a mix of under-the-hood features, enhancements for expert users, and new capabilities. Among the highlights are better support for multiple monitors and Finder tabs; improvements to performance and battery consumption; new Maps and iBooks apps; and updates to Safari and Calendar.

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When it comes to OS X, the cat is out of the bag.

Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi introduced the next iteration of Apple’s Mac operating system on stage during Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference kickoff. Federighi began his presentation with a sly nod to OS X’s past naming conventions. “We do not want to be the first software in history to be delayed due to a dwindling supply of cats,” he said. While “OS X Sea Lion” was briefly considered, Apple has instead decided to launch a new naming convention, based on inspiring places in California.

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The big splash at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this week was iOS 7, the next-generation mobile OS that will ship this fall. The other new operating system announced at WWDC—OS X Mavericks—made significantly fewer waves (despite its being named after one of the biggest surfing meccas in California). But you can’t judge the size or significance of an update solely by the number of features that were previewed.

In the shadow of iOS

One reason we got fewer details about the Mac operating system than about its iPhone counterpart is the audience: iOS has attracted thousands of young developers who don't program for OS X, and many of them are at WWDC. As such, the iOS 7 presentation was all about pomp and flash: a new look and new physics, along with several under-the-hood updates that aren’t yet fully baked. (Notice, for instance, that we never saw a live demonstration of the new Siri features—only pre-recorded slides.) By contrast, Mavericks’s debut was all about its underlying power, with only a small nod to design improvements in a solitary app.

But for iOS developers, design and physics changes are what they need to focus on if their apps are going to be ready when the operating system ships in the fall. That those things also catch the public’s eye is a pleasant side effect, but developers are WWDC’s first and foremost concern. Likewise, while the under-the-hood OS X Mavericks features may not be visually striking, they’re important tools for our developer community to learn how to use.

Mavericks may not seem as flashy to the public, but then again, neither was OS X Mountain Lion in February 2012. Then, we got a quick preview to introduce the next version of OS X, but no major drill-down for its features. Sure, we knew iChat would become Messages and Reminders would get a few more features, but we didn’t really hear about Mountain Lion’s unifying vision. Same with Mavericks this past Monday.

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Though both operating systems are set to arrive this fall, we know a lot more about iOS 7 than we do about its Mac sibling, OS X Mavericks. But with a little digging through the keynote slides and through Apple’s OS X preview website, we were able to find 12 things you may not have heard or noticed about the company’s next operating system.

The Finder goes full screen

OS X’s new Finder Tabs option got some love during Monday’s keynote, but there are a few other new perks coming to your new, tabbed Finder in the fall.

Window merge: If you’ve accidentally opened too many Finder windows, don’t panic: A quick shortcut will merge your windows into one easily-managed Finder window, organized by tabs.

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Those who’ve hooked up their MacBook to an external display are probably all too familiar with the dreaded dance of windows (not to be confused with George R.R. Martin’s bestselling A Dance with Dragons): You’ve got all your windows positioned exactly as you like them, then you disconnect your MacBook and blergh—windows every which way.

Sound familiar? Cordless Dog’s $15 Stay has the fix for what ails you. This menu-bar utility lets you save sets of window locations and sizes. So if you like your Twitter client pinned, just so, to the bottom-left corner of your screen, you can tell Stay to remember that window position—and here’s the key—both when you’re running your MacBook on its own and when it’s connected to your external display. If you want your IM client’s contact list to hug the right edge of the screen on your MacBook’s display but the left edge of your external display when it’s connected, Stay can do that too.

Better yet, you can have Stay automatically restore your windows whenever a display is connected and disconnected. So once you’ve chosen your favorite window positions, Stay does its thing transparently. (You can instead restrict Stay to being triggered manually, either using its systemwide menu or via a user-defined keyboard shortcut.) And if you’re particular about application window locations, you can choose to have Stay restore each app’s windows to particular sizes and locations whenever you launch that app.

Because Stay uses the names of windows to match them with the ones stored in your saved sets, the utility can have issues with windows whose titles change (for example, with text editors or Web browsers). You can fix that problem in one of two ways: by manually linking your current window to the one Stay has stored, using the Link Active Window To command in the app’s menu, or by setting up a window title pattern for Stay to look for.

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One of my all-time favorite Mac utilities was MaxMenus, a System Preferences pane that let you create multiple custom menus, each containing your choice of apps, files, folders, volumes, and other frequently accessed items. Unfortunately, MaxMenus appears to have been abandoned—you can no longer download it, its website is dead, and while it currently works under Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.2), I suspect some future update to OS X will render MaxMenus useless.

I’ve tried—and quickly discarded—a number of alternatives, but one that works well is PointWorks’s $2 CustomMenu (Mac App Store link). Launch CustomMenu, and its systemwide menu icon appears on the right-hand side of your menu bar. Click this icon and choose Customize Menu, and you can choose the items you want to appear in the menu.

Click the Add (+) button next to Group on the left to create a new group—a section of the menu that’s separated from other sections by a divider line. I don’t know if there’s a limit to the number of groups, but I had ten groups in my menu while testing CustomMenu, and the utility still let me add another. These group names and dividers take up space—and you can’t add items to the menu without using groups—but they make the menu much easier to navigate than if all your items were in a single, uninterrupted list.

Select any group, and you can add items to that group by either dragging apps, files, and folders from the Finder into the group’s item list, or clicking the plus-sign (+) button next to Items to use OS X’s standard file-navigation dialog box. You can also move an item between groups by dragging it. Select an item and click the minus-sign (-) button, or press the Delete key, to remove the item from the list.

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Last week, we reviewed QuickRes, a menu-bar utility for changing the resolution of—and accessing higher resolutions on—Retina-display MacBook Pros. But even if you aren't using a Retina display, you may have wanted something similar, because Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) is missing a convenient feature found in older versions of OS X: the Displays menu extra.

Under Lion (OS X 10.7) and earlier, a simple click in the menu bar let you change screen resolutions and, if you had multiple displays, toggle display mirroring. Mountain Lion includes an option, in the Displays pane of System Preferences, to enable a Mirroring menu (for AirPlay mirroring, not dual-display mirroring), but that menu is missing resolution options—and it appears only when an AirPlay-mirroring-capable Apple TV is available on the local network.

I've been accessing resolution settings by pressing Option and either of my keyboard's Brightness keys—a shortcut that opens the Displays pane of System Preferences. But a more convenient approach can be found in Milch im Gemüsefach's free Display Menu (Mac App Store link).

Like the old Displays menu extra, clicking Display Menu shows you a list of all possible screen resolutions, including HiDPI modes (and, for some displays, refresh rates); choose one to switch to it. If you've got multiple displays, you can also toggle mirroring, which means you can disable Mountain Lion's own Mirroring menu-bar option.

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Whereas the previous version of Mail (included with OS X Lion) looked radically different from its predecessors, the new Mail 6 that comes with Mountain Lion seems nearly identical. In this case, looks aren’t even remotely deceiving. With the exception of a few small and pleasant additions, nothing’s changed here.

Less of an upgrade, more of an upward nudge

Mail 6.2 retains its predecessor’s three-column interface, shortcut menus, colorless icons, and amped-up search capabilities. You can still read messages in threaded conversations, with buttons that appear near the top of each missive in the thread for quick replying or forwarding. And it’s just as auto-magically easy to import your webmail or set up Exchange accounts under the “new” Mail.

Hitting Command-F now activates Mail’s inline find ability, allowing you to search within the text of individual messages or threaded conversations. Apple implemented this simple feature with typical thoughtfulness. A number at the right side of the search box counts how many instances of your chosen term it has found, and adjacent backward and forward arrows help you leapfrog to each clearly highlighted word in the text. Oddly, Mail doesn’t list this under its new features in the Help guide, and it’s buried one submenu deep in the program’s Edit menu.

VIPs: The “I” stands for “invisible”

If you want messages from your favorite senders to rise above the clutter of a crowded inbox, you can now make them VIPs. This places them in a separate heading in the left-hand navigation pane, as with flagged messages or smart mailboxes. It’s a great way to create custom mailboxes for the people you care about most.

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I usually cover one Gem per column, but today I’ve got two simple apps that complement iTunes. One is an update to a previous Gem, and the other is new for Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8).

Skip Tunes 2.0.1

Back in February, I reviewed Skip Tunes 1.0, an inexpensive ($1 at the time) menu-bar controller and information display that works with the iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio apps. Skip Tunes puts a tiny controller in the menu bar that shows three buttons: play/pause, skip (hence the utility’s name), and a music icon. The idea is that you get a quick-and-easy way to pause or skip—the most common music-listening actions—without having to switch to your music app. As a bonus, clicking the music-note icon displays the current track’s album art, as well as track information, a progress bar, and a more-complete set of controls: skip back, play/pause, and skip forward.

Skip Tunes 2.0.1 (Mac App Store link) () has increased in price to $2, but it’s also gained some additional functionality. The biggest is a feature whose omission I lamented in my original review: keyboard shortcuts. You can now configure systemwide keyboard shortcuts for previous track, play/pause, and next track; the shortcuts affect whichever of the three supported music apps you’re currently using.

In addition, Skip Tunes’s popover display has gotten a considerable overhaul: The entire display is now larger, more polished, and Retina-ready; the progress bar shows track time (elapsed and remaining) and lets you scrub through the current track; and there’s now a shuffle-play toggle. The controls and progress bar now appear only when the pointer hovers over the album art, and you can now click anywhere on the album art to switch to whichever music app is playing. Finally, if none of the three supported music apps is running, Skip Tunes hides its systemwide menu.

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Mountain Lion’s notifications system and Notification Center are great for letting applications get your attention and present you with information; if you’re using Lion (OSX 10.7), the third-party utility Growl performs a similar function. But have you ever wished you could use these features to get your own attention—for example, to post a quick note or reminder without having to use a full-blown notes or calendar/reminder app, or to leave an onscreen note for yourself when you step away from your Mac?

That’s the idea behind Sticky Notifications (Mac App Store link), a simple but useful utility that lets you take advantage of Notification Center (in OS X 10.8) or Growl (in 10.7 or 10.8) to post simple reminder notifications. (In Lion, you don’t even need to have Growl installed—Sticky Notifications integrates the feature. If you have Growl installed in Mountain Lion, you can choose whether Sticky Notifications uses Growl or Notification Center.)

Launch Sticky Notifications, and a small note icon appears in your menu bar. Click that note, or press the app’s customizable keyboard shortcut (I use Shift+Control+Option+Command+N, believe it or not), and a small window appears for you to type your reminder’s title and, optionally, a subtitle and a message. Press Return (or click Notify) and your reminder appears onscreen immediately as either a Mountain Lion notification or a Growl notification. It stays there until you dismiss it by clicking it.

If your reminder contains URLs, Sticky Notifications can automatically open those links in the appropriate applications when you click the reminder. This feature makes Sticky Notifications a convenient way to remind yourself to check a website or to email a friend or colleague.

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One year and one week since the release of OS X Lion, Apple is back with Mountain Lion, also known as OS X 10.8.

Like Lion, Mountain Lion offers numerous feature additions that will be familiar to iOS users. This OS X release continues Apple’s philosophy of bringing iOS features “back to the Mac,” and includes iMessage, Reminders, Notes, Notification Center, Twitter integration, Game Center, and AirPlay Mirroring. There are even a few features that are making their debut with Mountain Lion, and will find their way back into iOS 6 this fall.

As the first OS X release post-iCloud, Mountain Lion offers a much more thorough integration with Apple’s data-syncing service than Lion offered. Mountain Lion also brings options to limit which kinds of apps users can install, offers systemwide integration with social networking and media-sharing services, and gives some recent MacBook models the power to keep working even when they appear to be asleep. And although there are no actual mountain lions in China, OS X Mountain Lion does add a raft of features to speak to users in the country that’s Apple’s biggest growth opportunity.

At $20, Mountain Lion is Apple’s cheapest OS X upgrade since version 10.1 was free 11 years ago; like Lion, Mountain Lion is available only via a Mac App Store download. The combination of the low price and the easy download will likely make Mountain Lion the most quickly adopted OS X upgrade of all time. Given how solid a release I found Mountain Lion to be, that’s a good thing.

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The ninth major release of Apple’s server operating system is as big a change as the change from Mac OS X Server 1.0 to Mac OS X Server 10.0. (Readers with longish memories may remember that OS X Server had a pre-10.0 version, which was called version 1.0.) In many ways, Mac OS X Lion Server (version 10.7; Mac App Store link) succeeds, but it's hampered by UI annoyances and inconsistencies that will probably be fixed in future updates. But right now, using Lion Server is a tad more maddening than it should be.

Welcome Server.app; good-bye Server Admin—sort of

There’s a new kid in town for managing Lion Server, and it's called Server.app. I’m sure that this new server-management program will one day completely take over all the functions of the familiar Server Admin application, but right now it doesn’t, which results in a somewhat tedious bit of hopping back and forth between applications to get things done. For example, Server.app handles Address Book, File Sharing, iCal, iChat, Mail, and other service settings. Server Admin handles DHCP, DNS, NetBoot, Software Update, and others.

The impression is that Server Admin handles what Server.app doesn’t—but there are instances when you need to use both applications, such as for the Mail server and the Podcast server. Server Admin has access to more settings than Server.app does, so they complement each other. But when both applications manage the same settings, such as host name or SSH enabling, it’s really annoying.

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Tapfuze’s $3 Shade Control (Mac App Store link) is a simple yet useful utility that serves a single purpose—providing you a way to easily toggle your monitor’s brightness setting. When you install Shade Control it appears in your menu bar, represented by a lamp icon. Click the icon and you see a slider for adjusting brightness up and down as well as a toggle command.

With Shade Control toggled on, adjust the brightness for your current environment—you’re working in a dark room and don’t need the monitor at full brightness, for example. When you’re ready to return it to its “regular” setting (as configured by the keyboard brightness controls or Display preference setting), just choose Toggle Off from the Shade Control menu. Simple.

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Apple product releases may have been few and far between so far in 2013. But if Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday is anything to go by, the company has put the time since its last major press event in October 2012 to good use.

The company unleashed a torrent of announcements Monday, starting with a preview of the latest version of OS X and wrapping up some two hours later with a look at a substantial overhaul of iOS. And while much of what Apple showed off won’t be available to the buying public until later in 2013—only the updated MacBook Air lineup and redesigned AirPort products shipped on Monday—the WWDC keynote was a reminder that the company has big plans for the rest of the year. It also served as a rebuttal to Apple critics who’ve made note of the company’s relative lack of product news in recent months.

“Can’t innovate any more, my ass,” Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller snarled when showing off a redesigned Mac Pro on Monday—a not-at-all subtle poke at an increasingly common critique of the company among the Internet’s chattering classes.

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Apple’s 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference keynote was packed with announcements of serious import to developers in Apple’s ecosystem—chief among them, the debuts of the wholly-redesigned iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks.

Significant operating system overhauls can be a mixed blessing for developers: There are all sorts of new APIs (application programming interfaces) to master, and all kinds of new functionality to exploit—but that also means there’s an onslaught of new work to be done to update their apps. Macworld spoke with a variety of Mac and iOS developers to gauge their reactions to the WWDC announcements.

On iOS 7’s new look

“As far as the OS updates go, iOS is a huge game-changer,” Rogue Amoeba CEO Paul Kafasis said. His company makes a variety of audio software, including a pair of iOS apps—one of which is currently available in the App Store and another that’s in the works. Kafasis believes that iOS 7’s new look instantly makes many existing apps look “out of date.” His prediction: “Almost everyone will need to update their apps” so that they blend in with the rest of the operating system’s visuals.

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Monday was Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote, and this one was jam-packed with new announcements. In this podcast, Jason Snell, Lex Friedman, Dan Frakes, and Dan Moren--all keynote attendees--break down all the announcements and what it all means.

Download Episode #359

Show Notes

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When OS X Mavericks arrives later this year, a new version of Safari will come along for the ride. Apple’s latest Web browser boasts smoother scrolling, a new Top Sites implementation, and several under-the-hood improvements.

These changes help deliver the improvement that Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi stressed the most during Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote—how energy efficient Safari will be in its latest iteration. OS X Mavericks introduces a new power-saving feature called App Nap, which decides where your Mac should direct its power supply. When Safari isn’t your primary program, App Nap will essentially put it to sleep, greatly reduces your Mac’s power usage.

To demonstrate how this works, Federighi showed off an energy-intensive web page with lots of animation alongside a CPU-usage graph. When Safari was the in use, the graph’s power-usage shot up. But when Federighi switched over to iTunes, the power went way down. This feature will be especially helpful in preserving the battery life of MacBooks with Retina display, according to Federighi.

Compared to current versions of Chrome and Firefox, Apple contends Safari is lightning fast. SunSpider’s metrics clock Safari’s speeds as 1.44 times faster than Chrome; JSBench logs Safari at 3.8x against Chrome’s 1.5x. (And according to Federighi, looking at Firefox’s numbers is “just sad” by comparison.)

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Book lovers, teachers, and students rejoice: iBooks has come to the Mac—and it supports iBooks Author books, too. Apple Senior Vice President Craig Federighi previewed the new Mac version of iBooks to a cheering audience at Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, alongside other improvements in the upcoming OS X Mavericks.

iBooks for Mac includes all the features users have come to expect in the iBooks app on iOS, including full access to the iBookstore and your iCloud-synced user library. The bookshelves of iOS 6 are gone, leaving simple rows of cover titles in your library.

Once you open a book, you’re presented briefly with the cover before your text is revealed. Once inside, you can bring your book to full screen, add bookmarks, search through the book, change the text size and font, switch to Night Mode, add highlights and notes, and study using study cards.

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As my mother always told me, the three things you don’t discuss at the dinner table are money, politics, and launcher applications. But we aren't at the dinner table, so I’m not afraid to tell you about the latest update to my launcher app of choice: Running with Crayons’s Alfred 2.0.

The original Alfred was a wildly capable application that not only let you launch other programs on your Mac via your keyboard, but also allowed you to do things like perform Web searches directly from its window, store snippets of frequently-used text for quick access, and even control your music playback in iTunes. The good news is all those features remain in Alfred 2.0.

One feature has fallen by the wayside, however. Alfred also offered Extensions that would let you perform a variety of other sometimes complex functions via AppleScript and Terminal scripting, as well as interact with groups of files and search filters. But though Extensions are gone in Alfred version 2.0, the app’s developers have taken the idea behind them and turned it into something even more powerful: Workflows.

If you associate the term “workflow” with OS X’s own Automator, you’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head. Alfred’s Workflows are a lot like that built-in Mac feature, allowing you to create powerful, multipart processes that can do everything from offering live search result suggestions from a website to showing you your local weather forecast.

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Mac users who’ve felt locked into the much-maligned Quicken Essentials now have another alternative: On Tuesday, developer IGG Software announced that the latest update to its Mac-only app iBank app can import documents from Intuit’s software.

It’s a popular request, according to IGG. “For nearly three years, Quicken Essentials for Mac has frustrated anyone hoping to switch to iBank 4,” IGG President Ian Gillespie said in the company’s announcement, “particularly because of its inability to export customers’ personal finance data to a standard format.”

While Quicken Essentials does allow users to export their data into a comma-separated values file (CSV), the results can be less than useful when it comes to importing that data into another application. Otherwise, the program exports only into Quicken’s own QXF format, which is used for moving files between different versions of Quicken.

Intuit has gotten a lot of flak over the years for its poor support for the Mac platform. Since Apple removed Rosetta—the part of the OS that enabled you to run PowerPC apps—in Lion, the older version of Quicken no longer worked with current releases of Mac OS X. Quicken Essentials was the company’s attempt to release an updated version of the software, but it met with much criticism over its reduced feature set.

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In addition to the many other updates Apple fielded on Wednesday, the company released updates to its two popular photo-editing desktop apps, iPhoto and Aperture, both centered on adding features present in iOS 6.

Both the iPhoto update and the new Aperture update include the ability to use Mountain Lion’s new Shared Photo Streams feature. And each app now features a menu command letting users open iPhoto libraries in Aperture—and Aperture libraries in iPhoto. Both apps also feature performance and stability improvements.

Additionally, iPhoto was tweaked to let users add comments to photos that have already been published to Facebook; the app also adds new card and calendar themes to its library of existing options.

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Apple has almost entirely abandoned DVDs—remember, those shiny discs that no longer fit into many modern Macs? But despite the shift to online photo and video services, not everyone is capable of streaming media over the Internet. A DVD (and increasingly, a high-definition Blu-ray disc) is still a near-universal way to share the photos and videos as a holiday gift. Besides, friends and family members can’t unwrap a pipeline of bits and bytes.

When I wrote about this subject four years ago, iDVD did most of the heavy lifting—an app that let you build slideshows, assemble video, and burn a disc. However, Apple’s interest in iDVD fizzled along with its interest in DVDs as a whole—and Blu-ray media never even got a foot in Apple’s door. Unless you already own a copy of iDVD from the purchase of an older Mac or iLife, the only way to get it is by buying a boxed version of iLife from a third-party reseller; Apple doesn’t sell iDVD at all. Fortunately, you have other options.

Content is everything. The first step in creating a holiday DVD is the fun part: assembling your content. Start pulling together photos and video snippets from your cameras (whether from stand-alone cameras or camcorders, or mobile devices such as the iPhone or iPod touch) on your Mac. Photo applications such as iPhoto ’11 ($15), Aperture 3 ($80), Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 ($149), and Photoshop Elements 11 ($100) import both types of media, giving you a central location for organizing your project’s assets. I suggest making a new album or collection, or a folder in the Finder, to hold the pieces you want to use.

Before you start, take a moment to think about the project’s structure and how your viewers will interact with it. Will they watch just one movie? If so, you probably want to build that in a video editor such as iMovie ’11 ($15) or Premiere Elements 11 ($100), which gives you a lot of control over the movie’s presentation.

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Apple wants you to use iCloud as the location for your saved documents. If you aren’t willing to cooperate, Apple applies some pressure to get you to change your mind.

Case in point: The Open and (especially) the Save dialogs for apps that support OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion’s new Documents in the Cloud feature (also called iCloud Document Library). Apple has changed the rules here, as compared to how things worked in previous versions of OS X.

When you select to save a new Untitled document, the Save dialog opens with a folder location already selected. In OS X 10.7 Lion and all prior versions of OS X, if you’ve never changed this default location, it’s probably your Documents folder. If you do change the folder location, the app typically remembers your decision. This means the next time you attempt to save a new document, the default folder will be the location you last chose. This is what most users want and expect. So far, so good.

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As a follow-up to last week’s column on Mountain Lion troubleshooting, here are two more OS X 10.8 bugs for your collection. Both of these critters result in crashes of the affected applications.

Network proxy bug

There’s good news and there’s bad news here. The good news is that this bug affects only a minority of users—those that enable “network proxies” (as done by going to Network System Preferences, clicking the Advanced button and selecting Proxies). The bad news is that, if the bug affects you, it’s serious: Several different third-party programs are likely to crash on launch.

The author of MarsEdit explains:

The issue is related specifically to the ‘Auto Proxy Discovery’ and ‘Automatic Proxy Configuration’ settings in Network preferences. If you have one of these options checked, you are very likely to crash in MarsEdit, Safari, Tweetbot, and any number of other apps that rely on Apple’s networking libraries.

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When Apple ships a new version of the Mac OS, it generally takes no more than 24 hours for the questions to come pouring in. Such is exactly the case with Mountain Lion. You have questions, I have answers.

I’m not happy with Safari 6. When I type in a web address and press Return, I’m taken to a Google search page rather than the site I want to visit.

First, be a bit more patient. If you type and immediately press Return you won’t see Safari’s list of results—one of which will likely be the website you want to visit. Instead, type the important bits of the address, wait for the list appear, and select the site from that list.

Next, know that once you visit such and such a site, it will appear as the top hit on the next go-round. That is, unless you’ve cleared Safari’s History or first accessed that site with private browsing switched on. In such cases Safari has no memory that you’ve visited that site and so won’t propose it as a top hit.

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Just a year after Lion (OS X 10.7), Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) is here. And just like Lion, getting Mountain Lion is as easy as downloading an installer from the Mac App Store—a few clicks (and some patience) is all it takes to install OS X 10.8 over your existing copy of Lion or Snow Leopard. But that doesn’t mean you should make the jump without any preparation, or that there are no important decisions to make along the way.

We've installed Mountain Lion more times than we can count—even more times than we installed Lion a year ago—in order to put together this guide to installing the latest Mac OS. In the articles below, we cover the requirements for running Mountain Lion; the things you should do to get your Mac ready; and the purchase and download processes. We walk you through the actual installation; recommend some post-install tasks; discuss some upgrade challenges; and help you decide if a "clean install" is for you.

We've also got instructions for creating a bootable Mountain Lion installer drive, as well as for installing Mountain Lion over Leopard (OS X 10.5)—provided you have the appropriate license to do so. Finally, we've got a hands-on look at OS X Recovery (also known as recovery mode) and Internet Recovery. With this guide and $20 (for purchasing Mountain Lion), you should be able to make the transition to 10.8 painlessly.

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[Editor's note: This article is part of our series of articles on installing and upgrading to Mountain Lion.]

Apple has released Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), and while we’ve got a full review to read, those looking to install the new OS also have more-practical matters: Getting their Macs ready for Mountain Lion.

As with Lion (OS X 10.7) last year, Apple is advertising Mountain Lion as dead-simple to install. But as with every major upgrade to OS X, there are a few things you can do before upgrading to ensure that your Mac is ready to go.

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Make your workflow

With a copy of Microsoft Office 2008 or 2011 on your Mac (these versions of Office install Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Automator actions), launch Automator and from the new workflow sheet that appears, select Service and click Choose.

At the top of the workflow, configure the first line to read Service Receives No Input in Any Application. This ensures that the service will be available at any time.

Now, select Contacts from the Actions library and, from the Actions column to the right, drag Find Address Book Items to the workflow area. In this action, make sure that the first pop-up menu reads Find People Where. In the area below, configure the action to read All Of The Following Are True and Any Content Contains. You can leave the field following Contains empty. Click on Options at the bottom of the workflow and enable the Show This Action When the Workflow Runs option.

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Spotlight is the Mac’s search engine, just as Google is one of the Web’s. To search for—or through—files and folders on your computer, access Spotlight from any Finder window, or from the Spotlight menu at the far right of your menu bar.

In the Finder, start a search by selecting File -> Find, by pressing Command-F, or by clicking in the search field of any window. Open the Spotlight menu’s search field by clicking on the Spotlight icon at the far right of your menu bar or by pressing Command-space bar. Here are answers to frequently asked questions about using Spotlight.

Q: Is it possible to narrow my Spotlight searches somehow—say, when I just want to find an image?

A:When you start a Finder search with Command-F or by typing in a window’s search field, the window changes to a search window. There’s a search bar at the top that lets you define the scope of your search (usually to either This Mac or the current folder). Beneath that is a criteria bar with pop-up menus set to Kind Is Any—by default Spotlight searches through all types of files.

Click on Any (the attribute menu) and you get choices such as PDF, Presentation, Text, and Image. Narrow your search results by choosing the kind of item you’re looking for. You can add or delete criteria bars by clicking the Add (+) or Delete (-) button in the search bar or criteria bars.

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Reader Bradford Poirier likes a feature introduced in Lion, but finds one of its behaviors distracting. He writes:

I really like Lion’s full screen applications feature. Typically I run four “desktops.” The first is the main desktop for OS X, then on the right I have a blank desktop that I use as a space for applications with a lot of windows. I then run Mail and Evernote in full screen in the last two desktops. I like the order they’re in—Desktop 1, Desktop 2, Mail, Evernote. The problem is that if I am on Desktop 1 and I click Evernote from the Dock to switch to it, switching reorders the desktop arrangement—shifting Evernote to the position after Desktop 1. I’m tired of constantly rearranging these spaces. Shouldn’t I be able to keep them in the original order?

You absolutely should and you absolutely can. All you have to do is launch System Preferences, select Mission Control, and uncheck the Automatically Rearrange Spaces Based on Most Recent Use option. When you do that, you can use the Dock to switch to different desktop spaces with the confidence that all your spaces will remain exactly as you originally configured them.

Of course you still have the option to manually rearrange them by calling up Mission Control and dragging the resulting spaces to different positions. With that Automatically Rearrange option off the desktops will remain in the new order you imposed.

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