I have a 2010-vintage 13″ model with a 2.13 GHz Intel Dual-Core CPU, 4 GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1067, and the same Nvidia GeForce 320M that’s in my HP dv6t Quad Core notebook, which Apple seemingly uses to better effect than HP does. I’ve read other reports online that have recommended against the upgrade, and mentioned that older MacBook Airs run more sluggishly on Lion and Mountain Lion than they did on Leopard. In fact, I’ve gone ahead and sprung for a big enough storage subscription to cover all of my iDevices–iPod, iPad, and two iPhones–under a single iCloud account now. Other than that, I haven’t yet noticed too many other dramatic changes except that iCloud is better integrated. So far, the handiest tip I’ve seen in using the slightly altered UI is to place two fingers next to each other near the right edge of the touchpad: this calls up a “fat scrollbar” at the right-hand side of a scrolling window and makes scrolling very easy. I fired off the download package, and it took me through the rest of the process in about an hour (half an hour or so to unpack the files and prep the machine for the actual OS install, and another half-hour to perform the installation). Home screen for the OS X Mountain Lion installerīut once I got the file downloaded, the install was a breeze. I’ve downloaded similarly-sized .ISO files from MSDN many times before, and it has seldom taken more than 45 minutes to an hour for those downloads to complete.

I’m not sure if it was heavy demand for the approximately 4 GB download file, or online Internet traffic related to the Olympics (the US women’s soccer team played a very strong French team, and managed to beat them 4-2), but it took nearly two hours for me to download the file. When I got the news yesterday that the latest 10.8 version of OS X, aka “Mountain Lion,” was available, I jumped on the opportunity to download and install the new OS upgrade for a mere $19.99 at the Apple Store.

Mountain lion install disk