OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Working with Applications and Utilities

You can dictate text to your Mac in text fields and any windows that accept text using the new dictation feature enabled in the Dictation & Speech system preference. It requires an active Internet connection to send your speech to Apple's servers for transcription to text and to receive the converted text back.

Gatekeeper application security is new to OS X Mountain Lion: It prevents applications obtained outside the Mac App Store from running, unless you give permission for other applications to run, as Chapter 7 explains. The goal is to block malware on Macs.

In OS X Mountain Lion, you can begin typing an application's name to have the Launchpad find it for you. Although there's a Search box in the Launchpad, you don't need to use it to search—just begin typing.

OS X Mountain Lion has renamed the Address Book application to Contacts, the iCal application to Calendar, and the iChat application to Messages, to match their names on iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad. Also, the Reminders and Notes applications are new, again to match iOS, although their basic functions existed in previous versions of OS X in, respectively, the iCal and Mail applications.

Also new to OS X Mountain Lion is the Game Center application for comparing gaming scores with friends, again derived from iOS. Chess is integrated with Game Center, so you can compare your chess games to that of your friends via Game Center.

OS X Mountain has taken the Share menu approach ...