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One of the nice things about the new Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion release is that the Notes application makes it easy to have notes sync from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad. But what if you're an Android user or want your notes to flow outside the Apple ecosystem for some reason? Yes, it can be done.

I don't take a lot of notes, but I've found it handy to have some things like frequent flyer numbers jotted down digitally in an easy-to-locate format. As a longtime Outlook user, I've used Outlook'… Read more

One of the new features in OS X Mountain Lion is the new AirPlay Mirroring feature. AirPlay Mirroring makes it easy to give presentations, watch Flash videos (Hulu, anyone?) or show off photos from your recent vacation on a TV. If you want to see AirPlay Mirroring on OS X in action, make sure to check out Jason Parker's video demonstration.

One thing that isn't really advertised about the new AirPlay feature on your Mac is the capability to send only the audio from your Mac to any AirPlay compatible device. Meaning, you don't have to mirror … Read more

With the introduction of iCloud -- Apple's service for storing your data and content online rather than on your devices -- you can now sync all of your stuff wirelessly between your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. This is great for adding things like appointments into your calendar as they will instantly appear on all of the Apple gizmos you're using.

If you haven't set up iCloud on your devices, it's easy to do, but you have to ensure you're using the same Apple ID on all your gadgets. By default, my iPhone was set to … Read more

commentary Apple's Game Center should, theoretically, be a service and a hub that ties together gamers across Apple's devices. It should be a social connector, a method of discovering new games based on what others are playing...and a mobile service on the order of Xbox Live.

Right now, it's very little of any of that, largely because the average iOS device owner probably has no idea Game Center is on their device...or what it even is. Regardless, the new version of Mac OS X, Mountain Lion, includes Game Center as one of a handful of more cross-compatible iOS/OS X services. At the moment, its offerings -- connect to leaderboards, see achievements, play cross-platform, and connect to friends -- are limited because, well, there just aren't that many Game Center games for Mac yet.… Read more

OS X Mountain Lion brings the familiar iOS Notification Center to the Mac. Getting notifications on a Mac from installed apps is nothing new to OS X. Users of the popular app, Growl, have been receiving notifications from their favorite apps for a long time. Now they're faced with a decision to manage notifications in two places, or choose one notification system over the other. Or are they?

Instead of managing alerts in both Notification Center and Growl, you can integrate Growl into Notification Center by installing a simple app called Hiss.

Hiss, currently in beta, is free to … Read more

Mountain Lion has pounced into the Mac App Store. If you haven't already upgraded to the latest version of OS X, you'll want to make sure your Mac is ready for the upgrade.

Once you have gone through the preparation and installation of Mountain Lion, you're not going to want to wait to dig right in and get all of the new features set up.

One of the (many) features OS X has incorporated from iOS in Mountain Lion is the Notification Center. If you use an iOS device, you're already familiar with how … Read more

The latest edition of Mac OS X, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, is packed full of new features, over 200 in all. One of them is a built-in dictation service, similar to the dictation feature found on the iPhone 4S.

By default, dictation isn't enabled after installing Mountain Lion on your Mac. If you want to use it, you're going to have to enable it. 

The default shortcut to start dictation on your Mac is pressing the Function (Fn) key twice. The first time you try to start dictation, you'll be prompted to enable it. … Read more

Apple has released its OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (see CNET's full review) and it's available for download from the Mac App Store on systems running OS X 10.6.6 or later. If you're interested in the new OS, then be sure to read our guide on preparing your Mac for installing the upgrade, which includes information on the OS requirements, backing up, and clearing up resolvable issues before performing the upgrade.

You also might be interested in creating a standalone install drive for Mountain Lion. As with OS X Lion, Apple will likely release … Read more

Apple says the next major version of its Mac operating system will roll out to consumers tomorrow morning.

The news came tucked inside Apple's third-fiscal-quarter earnings release where Apple reported earnings of $9.32 per share on revenues of $35 billion. The company pulled the same announcement trick for OS X 10.7, announcing its next-day availability during a conference call last year.

As a quick recap, the $19.99 software update brings a handful of iOS features to Macs, including the notes and reminders apps. It adds a few other things, like Twitter integration, Apple's Game Center, … Read more