In February, we took a look at smaller changes in the pre-release version of OS X Mountain Lion that Mac developers are using. These changes are good indications of what we’ll see when the final version goes live sometime this summer. Apple has released two new previews since then with quite a few updates — some significant, some seriously minor, and some that have even undone changes since we last wrote about it.

Here’s what’s new:

General changes

• The App Store now supports automatic downloads, which is one of the things I’d hoped Apple would add. You can also go backward and forward in the App Store and Game Center with two fingers, the same as Safari. Notably, you still can’t do this in the Finder.
• There’s a new popover for choosing avatars, which is used in Game Center and the Users and Groups pane in System Preferences.
• You can no longer remove apps and stacks from the Dock by simply dragging them off. You have to do it by right-clicking, which I expect is going to draw the ire of many power users.
• Launchpad is no longer arranged alphabetically. The “Utilities” folder has also been renamed to “Others”.
• The linen background in Mission Control is slightly darker than in Lion.
• Font Book now has a full-screen mode and two smart folders in the sidebar for fixed-width fonts and monospaced fonts.
• The battery item in the menu bar has been simplified so that the only option is to show the percentage left or not. Showing time left has been removed.
• You can go from one stack to another in the Dock with one click. In Lion, clicking another stack with one already open just closes the current stack. (Updated: Sorry, this isn’t new to Mountain Lion. Turns out, it doesn’t work in Lion when your Dock is hidden — which mine was — but does when unhidden.)

Safari

• There’s a new button for iCloud tabs, which allows access to tabs on other devices.
• There’s a new page-loading animation, which you can see in this YouTube video.
• Web apps can send native notifications through Safari, as evidenced by the new Notification Center tab in Safari’s preferences.
• Reading List has a new look, with a more neutral background color and paper texture instead of linen. It also supports offline reading.
• When you download a file in Safari in Lion, the file flies into the downloads button. In Mountain Lion, it flies into the downloads stack in the Dock, and a progress indicator appears over the stack.
• Safari has a more “responsive” UI: when you resize a window past a certain point, buttons will be hidden to save space.
• There’s a new tab button next to the bookmarks bar when only one tab is open and the tab bar is hidden.

Notification Center

• There’s a new “do not disturb” mode, which disables notifications when active.
• The menu bar icon has a gray dot in the middle, rather than black. It also changes into a moon when do not disturb mode is on.
• There’s a new button in the lower-righthand corner that’ll take you to Notification Center’s preference pane in System Preferences.

System Preferences

• The General perefence pane has been simplified. The options for smooth scrolling and double-click to minimize are gone, with the latter being moved to the Dock preference pane. The three dropdowns for the number of recent items has been consolidated into one. The dropdown for choosing the sidebar icon size has been moved to the top section. Finally, there’s a new checkbox for “Ask to keep changes when closing documents.”
• The preferences for “tap to click” have been moved into the Trackpad pane and are enabled by default.
• The Mission Control pane now has the option to disable grouping windows by application, so all windows will be shown the same way.
• Time Machine’s pane has been updated slightly, with flatter buttons and a simpler explanation of what Time Machine does.

What do you think of the new changes? Tell us in the comments.

Header image via Flicker user sigsegv.

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Update: It is sold out! Took less than two hours and basically not good news for west coast developers

Apple will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 11 through June 15 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, the company announced today. The five-day conference will give developers a peek into the future of iOS and OS X. The tickets for the event are going to cost about $1,599.

“We have a great WWDC planned this year and can’t wait to share the latest news about iOS and OS X Mountain Lion with developers,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The iOS platform has created an entirely new industry with fantastic opportunities for developers across the country and around the world.”

On the surface, the functionality is roughly the same as previous versions of iChat. It supports text instant messaging with one person or in a group “conference room” and video chat with up to three other people. You can still enter multiple accounts from different services like AIM, Google Talk and other Jabber-based accounts. What’s new is that you can now connect your Mac to the same iMessage account that you use on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. When setting up an iMessage account, you can choose to use your email address, and you can optionally attach your phone number during setup.

Messages walks you through a quick setup when first launched and reveals a somewhat familiar window layout, with conversations listed on the left and the chat pane on the right. The “Buddies” window is still available to show which of your friends are online and available to chat. One thing that might look different is a Mail-like address bar labeled “To:” at the top of a new conversation, where you can just start typing the name of the recipient. It will find all the matches in your address book and present the various choices of phone numbers, email addresses and accounts associated with different chat services for that name. This is particularly important when using the iMessage service, where email might be associated with the Mac and the phone number might be associated with an iPhone.

The iMessage service supports “delivered” notifications just like on iOS, and optional “read” notifications to be returned to the sender after you’ve viewed their message. These settings are controlled in the app preferences, where you will also find general preferences, account setup, message settings, alert styles and audio/video settings.

When you launch a video chat with someone using Facetime, it actually launches the Facetime application on your Mac. AIM video chat is still available in the Messages application itself.

When I tried Messages out this morning, replies to an iMessage chat showed up in Messages on my Mac, but also appeared as notifications on my iPhone sitting next to me on the desk. I could switch back and forth between the two devices and continue the conversation on either one. The entire conversation was visible on both my Mac and my iPhone and the entire experience was completely seamless.

Conclusions

The importance of this seamless transition between devices for me is the ability to keep the context of the entire conversation in front of me, no matter where I chose to pick up and continue with my next reply. I might get some iMessage “texts” on my iPhone, but when I get back to the office, I can open my laptop and continue right where I left off.

It happens fairly often that clients (or my wife and kids) will text me about something that I need to look up on the computer to answer. As long as they are on iMessage, I can see the original question on my Mac and easily reply from there.

One nice detail is that the repeat notifications on the iPhone are muted when you read the message on your Mac. I left my iPhone untouched beside me while chatting with a friend on my Mac. I saw that the repeat notification that I usually get for text messages never showed up. This is great as long as the iMessage service knows that I read the reply in Messages for Mac. When I turned off Messages for Mac, the continued conversation now triggered repeat notifications on my iPhone.

The area that might require a little more polishing is that, when the message is unread on the Mac, it still appears to mute the repeat notification on the phone. If you left your Mac running unattended, you might not get repeat notifications of new messages on your iPhone. Obviously, this feature doesn’t affect everyone as some people might disable repeat notifications, but it does point out the necessity of being careful about working with betas and figuring out how things work, and what might change over time as Apple refines the Messages application.

Overall, I am pretty positive about the new features. I think Messages for Mac will actually be a big help in my professional and personal life and will make text/IM even more convenient. As for the big picture, I think the overall theme of Mountain Lion (including this beta of Messages for Mac on Lion) is not so much that iOS features and apps are coming to the Mac, but that the apps will work across both iOS and Mac in a completely seamless experience.

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What you’ll need

You’ll need an iPhone 4S with Siri turned on to get started, of course; TouchPad by Edovia from the iOS App Store ($4.99); and Alfred running on your target Mac, which you can pick up for free from Alfredapp.com. You’ll also need to make sure Screen Sharing is enabled on your Mac, which you can set up by going to System Preferences > Sharing and then checking the Screen Sharing box.

How it works and what you can do

Alfred basically allows you to quickly accomplish tasks through typing queries, application and filenames, instead of having to use the mouse to navigate through folders and your Launchpad application manager. With TouchPad, you can dictate text instead of typing it, which, if you’re operating a media Mac from your couch, for example saves you a lot of time and potential for improper entry via your iPhone’s software keyboard.

To get started, make sure Alfred is running (after the first run, it should be configured to launch at Login). Then, using TouchPad on your iPhone 4S, select the target Mac as the server, and use the software keyboard to type “Alt (⌥) + Space,” which calls Alfred up. Then, tap the microphone icon on your iOS device’s virtual keyboard within TouchPad, and simply say the name of any application you want to find. It should then transfer the text to Alfred, which will show if it found a match, and you can hit “Return” on your iPhone to launch it.

You can dictate any text you like, and options for searching the web will pop up, including Amazon, Google and Wikipedia by default. In Alfred’s preferences under the Features tab, you can also set up a custom search for any URL of your choosing, such as Facebook for instance.

Under the Features tab, you can set keywords to trigger actions related to certain files. By default, saying “Find xx” will locate files in Finder that match whatever term you use; “Open” followed by a keyword launches the file using its default associated application; and using “in” will find specific instances of a term within a file. Keywords allow you to control system features like shutting down your Mac, restarting or emptying the trash.

Even more possibilities

With the paid Alfred Powerpack for £12 ($18 USD), you can add more features to your Siri-enabled voice commands, including the ability to launch and control iTunes, email a contact or open Address Book, and enter specific URLs that launch automatically in your default browser.

Of course, this is all about Siri basically replacing typing, and you still have to hit the software “Return” key to make the magic happen, but it’s a lot easier than fumbling with VNC or virtual trackpad software when trying to navigate a Mac set up as a media center. If you’ve found other neat ways to use Siri on your Mac, please share them in the comments.

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First, BusyCal doesn’t have that annoying faux leather iPad style interface. It retains an unadorned look more in line with older versions of iCal. There are hacks to return your iCal to classic mode, but sensible good looks isn’t the only thing BusyCal is offering.

BusyCal supports direct syncing of calenders between computers, and if you desire, can bypass the cloud altogether. Otherwise the app supports syncing to any CalDAV service such as MobileMe as well as Google. Setting up Google Calendar sycning is a breeze. You put in your credentials and away you go. Your calendars instantly appear. Lion’s iCal requires a few additional steps to add multiple calendars, which is both annoying and unnecessary.

In iCal for Lion, the calendar list floats on top of your calendar, making it near impossible to view both it and your calendar list. BusyCal retains a unique column for your entire calendar list, as well as a month at-a-glance view (mini-month). Although BusyCal doesn’t have iCal’s yearly view, it does have a list view of all your upcoming events, regardless of when they fall, and can integrate daily events into an optional icon on the menu bar. This is a handy feature to answer the basic question of where you have to be today.

Other nice features in BusyCal include the ability to add graphics to an event, as well as sticky notes and custom banners. These features will even sync with other BusyCal users, but won’t sync with your iPhone or Android device. Best of all is that BusyCal will show you the daily forecast with highs and lows right on the day in question.

Although Lion introduced some great new features, iCal is one giant step backwards in my opinion. BusyCal on the other hand retains great features from Snow Leopard’s iCal, while adding some new ones as well. BusyCal is sold directly for via the Mac App Store for $49.99 ($79.99 for a family pack), which is more than Lion costs as a whole, but the price of entry may be worth it to users that once relied on some iCal features that are no longer there.

Disclosure: Busymac provided a copy of BusyCal for review purposes.

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If you’re not familiar with iChat, it’s Apple’s multiprotocol IM client that comes preinstalled on every new OS X computer. Users can enter AIM, me.com, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber account credentials to use those services, and they can sign in to more than one account at a time. Like Mail for OS X, it’s a flexible tool that can centralize much of a user’s IM-based communication needs.

Code discovered by developer John Heaton (via TUAW) in the most recent iOS update includes mentions to those services that iChat works with out of the box. Of course, Apple doesn’t yet let you sign in to IM services from AIM or Jabber natively on iOS devices, though there are a wealth of third-party options that do in the App Store.

Still, if Messages continues to grow into something that allows access to multiple IM services in one central location, in addition to text messaging and iMessage services, that will expand its usefulness quite a bit. Of course, I’m still hoping iMessage makes it to the desktop first, but this would be a nice small feature update for iOS sometime down the road.

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A tale of two iClouds

I have a respectable library of around 15,000 songs, or about 100 GB of music from a mix of iTunes and CD purchases. With iTunes Match, I decided to ease into things using an account that has a respectable number of iTunes Music Store purchases, but on a machine that started off with zero ripped tracks in its music library.

While the activation of iTunes Match on this account from this particular Mac was rather quick — since the library was small — it wasn’t painless. After activating one of my iOS devices, I noticed right away that a little over half my music wasn’t added to my iTunes Match iCloud music library.  I made the mistake of assuming that iTunes Match would add my purchase history to my Match library, when it actually just uses your locally stored iTunes content. In the end, iTunes Match did recognize all of my iTunes music (once it was all downloaded to the computer I was using), but it would be in Apple’s interest to clarify this point.

Adding ripped music to iTunes Match

About 20 percent of my music library comes from just one artist: the Grateful Dead. I took the first ten albums in the infamous Dick’s Picks series and ripped them to my Mac’s iTunes library to see if I could have them matched.  iTunes Match performed well (assuming that’s because all the albums are available in the iTunes store), and started to match my ripped tracks as soon as they were added to my local iTunes music library.

I also added music I’d ripped previously by dragging the files to my iTunes library. As I was doing this, I checked the iCloud status of each track using the iCloud Status column, which you can enable in the View > View Options… menu.  Valid iCloud Statuses include Waiting, Error, Removed, Duplicate, Ineligible, Matched, Uploaded and Purchased.  You can create a Smart Playlist to keep track of which of your tracks fall into which iTunes Match category, as pictured above. Note that “Purchased” tracks, which are bought through iTunes, don’t count against your 25,000 song limit.

As each music file was added, I watched the status change from ‘waiting’ to ‘matched’.  This was the outcome I was hoping for. Six of the ten albums I matched has one or more tracks not matched, but they were uploaded instead, and thus still available via iCloud.

I tried everything to get iTunes to match all of my music, but there are some music files that it flagged as ineligible.  These are files that are either larger than 200 MB in size, have DRM from another music store or account, or were ripped at either a lower bit rate or to a format that iTunes doesn’t recognize.

To try to reduce ineligible tracks and increase matched vs. uploaded ones, I tried re-ripping problem songs from their original CDs to a higher bit rate. Despite my efforts, certain songs (which were available in the iTunes Store) just wouldn’t match. Hopefully the service’s ability to match tracks improves over time. In my opinion, 11 out of 189 songs being uploaded rather than matched isn’t a very good ratio, especially since the high bit rate of matched tracks is such a selling point of the service.

One last observation was that my album artwork wasn’t making the leap to the cloud immediately.  I’m kind of fanatic when it comes to album art, so at first this was troubling, but as time passed, I noticed that some of the covers started appearing.  I probably just need to be a little patient as iTunes Match catches up with demand. It’s good that Apple is prioritizing music uploads over artwork, too, if it comes down to a choice between the two.

Deleting, then downloading matched music

I recall a time when you could pay a company to rip your music collection for you. Apple’s iTunes Match is sort of like that, in that it takes your existing collection and provides you with a better, more usable version, which is exactly why I wanted to delete my source library and rebuild it using Apple’s higher-quality cloud-based tracks.

To test out how it would work, I went to a single album that had all of its tracks matched in my iCloud library, and deleted them.  I was careful not to delete the music from iCloud, too. Rather, I deleted the music from my local iTunes library without ticking the box next to “Also delete these songs from iCloud.”  The music was not actually removed from my library, but the status of the tracks I removed changed to reflect their presence in the cloud but not in local storage. Upon re-downloading, all of my 128 Kbps music files had been replaced with a collection of 256 Kbps music files.

Two conclusions

If your library is composed of mainly iTunes-purchased music, then I think you will enjoy what iTunes Match has to offer. Beyond simply keeping your music files in the iCloud, you’ll also be able to manage and share a set of playlists. This is a value-add feature that you can’t get by just downloading your previously purchased music from the iTunes Store. Plus, if you have a lot of legacy iTunes tracks with DRM, this is a good way of getting rid of that protection without having to pay per track to upgrade with iTunes Plus.

If, on the other hand, you have a substantial music library built mostly through ripping, then you may find yourself having to do a significant amount of pruning to get it in good enough shape to take full advantage of iTunes Match. After getting past the initial ordeal, however, I think most music fans will enjoy the cloud-based convenience features that iTunes match has to offer.

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• facetime://myfriend
• facetime://myfriend@somewhere.com
• facetime://5558675309

OS X Lion FaceTime desktop and Dock icons

The useful trick is to create a clickable desktop icon that will launch FaceTime for Mac and connect to your friend automatically.  One way to do this on OS X is to type the URL into Safari’s address bar, and before hitting return, drag and drop the typed URL onto the desktop.  Once it’s on the desktop, you can edit the icon’s image, replacing it with a photo of your contact if you want. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Launch Safari in OS X Lion and enter your contact’s FaceTime URL (as described at the beginning of this article) in the address bar.
2. Before hitting return to launch to the URL, drag and drop the URL onto the desktop.
3. Right click on the desktop shortcut you just created and select “Get Info.”
4. Use preview to copy the image you want to use into your clipboard.
5. Select the default image in the Get Info dialog until it is outlined blue.
6. While the default image is selected, use Command + V to paste the image.

As an added bonus, the shortcut you just created can even be added to the Dock.  You just have to add it to the far right side of the Dock, where all of the folders are located. You can’t move it to the side of the dock left of the divider, which is reserved for applications.

iOS FaceTime Bookmarks and Favorites

Things get a little more tricky when it comes to iOS Home Screen icons.  The problem is that Safari needs to be viewing the URL in order to save the URL to the Home Screen. This isn’t possible in this case, because Safari launches FaceTime immediately once the custom URL is entered.

But all is not lost. You can always add a contact’s FaceTime ‘number’ to your list of Favorites in the Phone app. But it’s also possible to create a list of Safari Bookmarks with URLs for your FaceTime contacts.

1. Launch Safari in OS X and select “Show All Bookmarks” from the Bookmarks menu.
2. Manually type in the FaceTime URL(s) to your list of Bookmarks.
3. Use iCloud to sync your OS X Safari Bookmarks with your iOS device.
4. Alternatively, use iTunes to sync your OS X Safari Bookmarks with your iOS device.

This can be handy if you prefer to manage your list of favorite FaceTime contacts separately from your list of favorite Phone contacts. Something else to keep in mind is that since this is a valid URL to Safari, anywhere you embed or type this URL can become a launch point for FaceTime. So you could keep a list of FaceTime URLs in a document stored in your Notebook, or even add your own FaceTime URL to the signature of your email. Pasting your FaceTime URL into iMessage will also give the person you’re chatting with a quick and easy way to start a FaceTime with you.  You can go one step further by creating an iOS keyboard shortcut for “ftm” (short for FaceTimeMe) which will expand to your FaceTime URL. So now through FaceTime, everyone has their own dial-in number for quick and easy video chat.

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Dragon Express’ main selling point is its price; right now, it’s available for $49.99 in the Apple App Store, which is listed as a limited-time introductory price. The full Dragon Dictate, by comparison, retails for $200. And for most users, the less-feature-rich Dragon Express will probably be a much better option, anyway, since it still allows you to dictate to your computer and then use the resulting text in any app of your choosing, which is likely the function most are after.

With Dragon Express, you dictate directly into the program, which you can call up any time by clicking on the menu bar item that serves as the main hub for the app. You can then start dictating, check the resulting text and tell Dragon Express to send it to the active app you are currently using. You can also search Spotlight directly to find files in Finder, search the web right from the app (opens a search in your browser of choice using Google, Yahoo or Bing, depending on what you choose) and post to both Twitter and Facebook once you supply your credentials.

Two caveats to keep in mind when using this tool: First it works much better with a USB headset, and it is pretty hard to use without, unless you’re in a nearly soundproof environment. That’s actually one of the benefits of the more expensive Nuance product, since Dragon Dictate ships with a USB mic. Second, there’s a training process you go through at launch, in order to get the best results from the speech-recognition engine. This takes between 2 and 10 minutes, depending on the quality of the mic you’re using.

Also, this is an express version, and it doesn’t contain the fancy whiz-bang abilities of its big brother, including extensive voice command libraries that let you launch apps and control commands within them. But the ability to paste to an active app and perform a select few oft-used functions like tweeting and searching is plenty for me.

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The program has three major components: Calendar Cleaner, Contacts Cleaner and Sync Tune-Up. If you want just one of the components, you can purchase the first two separately at the Mac App Store. However it’s likely you’ll need all three so I recommend the buying the full package.

Contacts Cleaner looks for issues that could cause errors such as invalid characters, malformed phone numbers as well as duplicate information. What I like about this program is that it not only finds the errors, but tells you why it thinks they represent a problem. For example, I’d often put “husband and wife” in the First Name field, but Contacts Cleaner warns me “This contact has a space in the first name. In some cases these names can become transposed after syncing with Google.” Sure enough when I went into Google, I noticed that problem.

Calendar Cleaner does similar checks for errors that can occur with your various sync destinations. My calendar was fraught with malformed recurring events that wouldn’t sync, and a pass by Calendar Cleaner fixed those in no time.

Both programs give you the option of opening the item within Address Book or iCal in order to make sure you know what kind of change is being made before you authorize it. Apple’s Address Book application looks for merged items itself, but doesn’t give you options to control what is merged. iCal users have no built-in options to search for duplicates and merge events.

Finally, Sync Tune-Up (only available as part of the bundle) gives you a front end for more fine-grained control over fixing your sync-related issues, such as de-registering individual devices and software, or the “nuclear” option which rebuilds the entire sync database. If your sync is taking extra long or you’ve made a bunch of changes with your devices or accounts, a nice reset can do you a world of good. A good indication of problems can be found by looking at your console logs and looking for mentions of the “truth” and too much vacuuming.

The more you sync, the more likely it is that problems will occur. To prevent or repair these problems, Spanning Tools is a great option.

Disclosure: Spanning Tools provided a copy of the software for review purposes.

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