The internet is buzzing with the somewhat surprising news of Apple announcing their latest OS -- Mountain Lion -- to the world, and ridding itself of the "Mac" naming convention. It"s clear with this release that the company is really pushing to unify it"s OS platforms and remove software cruft to create a consistent experience across their range of devices.
First, the one of the biggest (but subtle) thing we"ve heard today is that Apple"s actually dropped "software update" as the mechanism to deliver OS and application updates now, including for iTunes and the other packaged apps. According to our forum, selecting the software update option in the menu now opens the App Store.
We"re sure that many users will be glad to see this in one place, instead of two. Other inconsistencies from iOS have been changed, too, iCal is now Calendar, Address Book is now Contacts, iMessage is now a part of the chat client.
These small, but noticable improvements are likely to be most evident to those who use the devices in their everyday life. However, it"s clear we"re hurtling toward some sort of iOS X future.