State of the Art: Placing a Dollar Value on Apple’s Mountain Lion Software — State of the Art

Apple takes a different approach with its OS X software for the Mac. It intends to offer a modest new version every year. Installation is a 15-minute, one-click operation, and the price is piddling. For OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion, which comes out Wednesday, Apple wants $20 — and you can install one copy on as many Macs as you have, without having to type in serial numbers or deal with copy protection hurdles.

If you’re a Mac owner, then, here’s the question: Is Mountain Lion worth $20? (A note: I have written a how-to manual to Mountain Lion for an independent publisher; it was neither commissioned by nor written in cooperation with Apple.)

There’s only one precise way to answer that, of course: assign a dollar value to each new feature.

Now, Apple claims “over 200 new features.” But some of them are tiny tweaks (Safari checks for software updates every day! Ooh!) or techie-only treats (“Xsan, the high-performance cluster file system”). Fifteen are improvements for Chinese customers, which is great for Apple’s world-domination plans but irrelevant to non-Chinese speakers.

So how many are real steps forward?

Mountain Lion continues to put velvet handcuffs on people who own iPhones, iPads and other Macs. For example, three iPhone/iPad apps are now on the Mac, too: Notes (a yellow pad, now with formatting and graphics), Reminders (a to-do list); and Game Center (lets you play against people on their Macs, iPhones and iPads, although few compatible games exist yet).

All of these sync with other Apple machines wirelessly, courtesy of Apple’s free, increasingly sophisticated iCloud service. The new apps join Mail, Calendar (formerly called iCal) and Contacts (formerly Address Book), which already sync with your iGadgets. Change a phone number on your phone, and it’s instantly updated on your tablet and computer; set up a reminder on your Mac, and your phone will chirp at the appointed time or even place.

It’s all useful and a bit magical — if you own more than one Apple device. Clearly, the company wants to keep you a happy prisoner inside its beautiful walled garden.

So what’s the value for these new syncing apps? Well, if phone apps cost $1 or $2, and computer shareware $20 or $30, then these new apps are probably worth about $7.

The new Notification Center is also modeled on an iPhone/iPad feature. It’s a dark gray panel that slides onto the screen when you drag two fingers onto your trackpad (or click a menu-bar button). Here are all the nags, messages and alerts that your programs have issued, consolidated into one tidy, customizable list: today’s appointments, incoming messages, software updates, Twitter updates and so on.

They tie into Mountain Lion’s new alert system, in which each incoming alert bubble slides quietly into the corner of your screen. It’s like a butler who tiptoes into your room with lunch, sees that you’re busy, and sets the tray down on the side table before quietly withdrawing.

But being bombarded with bubbles would be a big bummer. So the Mail app’s new V.I.P. feature lets you designate certain people whose messages you never want to miss — your spouse, your boss, the cable guy. You can set it up so that alert bubbles appear only when those people write. That’s so smart. Notification Center: easily worth $3.50.

Dictation has come to the Mac, too. When you double-tap the Fn button on your keyboard, you can speak to type.

It’s exactly the same recognition technology as the iPhone’s. So it requires no voice training and no special microphone, but it requires an Internet connection. And the accuracy is not quite what you see in the Martin Scorsese Apple commercials for Siri. Still, dictation fast and useful, to the tune of $5.75.

The new Share button is a keeper, too. It pops up everywhere — in shortcut menus, window edges, programs like Safari and Preview, and so on.