Mac OS X Mountain Lion's Messages Beta

If you are excited by today's Mac OS X Mountain Lion announcement and can't wait till the summer to experience some of the apps then you are in luck! Apple have released a beta version of Messages. Messages brings you the iOS iMessage feature to your Mac. You can communicate to and from Mac's and iOS devices and even include attachments such as pictures and HD video.

You can start a conversation on your Mac and then continue it on your iPhone whilst on the move. All of your iOS devices can receive your new message notifications. You can even go from messaging a contact to joining them in a FaceTime call, to speak to them face to face.

Download the Messages beta here.

Mac OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview

Apple have announced that their next version of Mac OS X will be called Mountain Lion. It will be released in the summer of 2012. For those of you who are Apple developers you can download the developer preview today.

The new feature list is heavily influenced by iOS as many predicted and Mac OS X Mountain Lion will include dedicated Mac apps for Notes, Reminders and iMessage. All of which work with iCloud. There will also be a notification centre, which can be accessed via a trackpad gesture, to centralise notifications of new iMessages, emails and notifications from third party apps. Lots of the iOS features within apps, such as the share button will be included so you can tweet from within apps, just like on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad.

For more information see Apple's Mountain Lion Preview.