Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Finally Released, Available on the Mac App Store for $19.99

The next major release of the Mac operating system, OS X Mountain Lion, made it’s debut this morning in the Mac App Store after many months of development and public testing among the developer community.

You can grab a copy of Mountain Lion exclusively from the Mac App Store for the fair price of $19.99. The download is large, so expect it to take an hour or more, and make sure that you have a strong and stable internet connection. It’s a shame that Apple no longer sells hard copies that can speed up the installation process, let you perform a clean install, and be used as emergency boot drives. If you have purchased a new Mac computer after June 11, you are eligible to receive a free redemption code that will let you install Mountain Lion from the Up-to-Date program on your computer.

In what is a benevolent move on Apple’s part, copies of Mountain Lion can be installed on more than one computer. To do so, simply log into the other computer’s Mac App Store with your credentials and click the “Purchases” tab. From there, you can re-download the operating system with the click of a button.

Mountain Lion boasts over 200 new features, the most significant of which being Notification Center, iMessage, Game Center, Dictation, Power Nap updating, iCloud integration for Notes and Reminders, social network sharing tools, and GateKeeper security. In summary, it brings the most popular features of iOS to Mac OS.