The latest version of Apple’s OS X – 10.8 or “Mountain Lion” – has been roaring for almost 10 months and until recently, there wasn’t a ‘new’ OS to compare it with. Now that Windows 8 is out, businesses have the ability to compare these two new and different platforms, and businesses are increasingly starting to lean more towards OS X. While many proponents cite its ease of use, there are many other advantages to Apple’s newest platform.

If you’re still on the fence about switching, here are five advantages of OS X 10.8.

• Centralized notifications – Windows 8 uses tiles, and while they look great, they take up a lot of room and can make you miss important notifications. With OS X, all your notifications are in one place – the Notification Center. With Notification Center you can customize what apps will show notifications and even the order of importance. Need to get some work done? Quickly and simply turn off all notifications. When you’re done, turn them back on, and all notifications will pop up.
• AirPlay mirroring – Do you give lots of presentations? If so then you no doubt carry a laptop around with a whole mess of cords. OS X has a feature called AirPlay mirroring, which allows you to beam your display to any HDMI TV that’s connected to an Apple TV unit. This could be useful if you’re planning to go to an all Mac environment. No messing with cables, just bring the laptop, press a button and away you go.
• iCloud for easy sync – If you use any of Apple’s other devices, you can sync information and files across all Apple devices using iCloud. This is a great feature as you won’t have to worry about which device has what file. If it’s on iCloud, it can be accessed by any Apple device that is compatible with iCloud – which means pretty much any modern Apple product.
• Don’t type it, speak it – If you have your hands full and need to take notes, or even draft a letter, you can use your voice. In any place you can type, hitting the Function key twice will bring up the Speak to Type option. From there, speak and the words will show up, usually with accurate punctuation, too.
• Integrated Messaging – One of the more popular categories of apps on smartphones are those related to chat. iMessages for the iPhone is great, and with it you can send texts for free to any user. But it’s not great when you are at work and your phone keeps buzzing, annoying colleagues. Messages is an app for OS X that integrates all the popular chat programs like iMessages, Google Talk, Yahoo!, etc. and combines them into one app. This makes chatting more convenient, and the extra cool thing about it is that you can text people on their iPhones, and vice-versa.

These are just a few of the great features that Mountain Lion users will find that make the OS a completely different, and arguably better, experience than Windows 8. If you’re interested in switching over to Apple, please let us know, we may have a solution for you.