John Gruber’s take on OS X Mountain Lion is just as much about the way it was presented to those of us in the press:

Handshakes, a few pleasantries, good hot coffee, and then, well, then I got an Apple press event for one. Keynote slides that would have looked perfect had they been projected on stage at Moscone West or the Yerba Buena Center, but instead were shown on a big iMac on a coffee table in front of us.

And:

But this, I say, waving around at the room, this feels a little odd. I’m getting the presentation from an Apple announcement event without the event. I’ve already been told that I’ll be going home with an early developer preview release of Mountain Lion. I’ve never been at a meeting like this, and I’ve never heard of Apple seeding writers with an as-yet-unannounced major update to an operating system. Apple is not exactly known for sharing details of as-yet-unannounced products, even if only just one week in advance. Why not hold an event to announce Mountain Lion — or make the announcement on apple.com before talking to us?

That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now.

My first question after the presentation wrapped up was the same: why announce Mountain Lion this way instead of a big press event? 

The answer I got was much more vague and more along the lines of “not sure” or “we didn’t think about it”. It also wasn’t coming from Phil Schiller.

I think Gruber is right in that Apple wants to keep their events sacred, and the only way to do that is to limit them. Had they done an event for Mountain Lion, it would have been three events back-to-back-to-back in a short amount of time (iBooks -> Mountain Lion -> iPad 3). 

Given the fact that Mountain Lion, while it has some big, important changes, is more of a incremental upgrade also undoubtedly played into this. As did the knowledge that they’ll probably talk about the software again at WWDC in June (the Mountain Lion launch isn’t set until “late summer”).

With Lion, Apple essentially gave a preview of the software twice — once at the unveiling in October 2010, and then again at WWDC 2011. It seemed a bit redundant. 

This time, only a few members of the press saw the first unveiling. I suspect everyone else will (with a few new additions) at WWDC.

I also think this way of doing things leads to better stories about the software. During a big keynote, all of us would have been rushing to file as quickly as possible. That leads to sloppy work largely repeating (and often mis-repeating) what was said on stage. This way, we got to use the software and to think about it for a week before actually writing about it. 

While Jesus Diaz has a few good points (like the two-finger versus three-finger swipes depending on Launchpad versus Desktop), overall this reads like a bunch of nitpicks.

Yes, Lion does some things differently than Snow Leopard. Yes, some people won’t love all of them. But overall, I think the transition from Snow Leopard to Lion is going to be remarkably seamless for most users. It’s different, but it’s also familiar.

The most different thing is the inverse scrolling, which makes OS X more like iOS and will finally fix my brain when I switch between my devices. 

To mention Lion in the same sentence as Vista (which Diaz does in his intro) is ludicrous. 

When Diaz complains that Launchpad is “an extra click (or two or three)”, it’s pretty clear that he’s missing the bigger picture. The big move in Lion is the move from the click to the swipe. That is, the move from the mouse to multi-touch. And once you figure that out, it works. Quite beautifully, actually.

So here’s some pretty definitive proof that 10.6.8 will be the last version before OS X 10.7 (Lion) hits. Again, I’d guess it’s a couple months away rather than at WWDC which is just about a week from now. Instead 10.6.8 may be distributed at that time, alongside a new RC build of Lion.

And yes, it obviously will be distributed through the Mac App Store, just like the developer builds have been.

Don’t really follow this. Apple has been internally testing Lion for months now. If they mean the final version, that’s a pretty fluid thing. GM-candidates have also been around a long time.

From what I’m hearing, there are still some major design changes being fully fleshed out. And while we’ll definitely see Lion at WWDC, July might be a more reasonable timeframe for it to be fully on the prowl.

Considering the Mac App Store is the way they’re distributing OS X Lion developer builds, I’ll give this a big: no shit.

Looking at their mocked-up screenshot though, I am curious as to how quickly Snow Leopard users will upgrade. I’m guessing much faster than if they had to go buy the disc at a store.

And I wonder what the price will be? Given how much Apple has shaved off software like Aperture and soon Final Cut, I’d bet Lion will be pretty cheap. Perhaps the same $30 price as Snow Leopard?

Ed Bott predicts a wave of “serious malware” is about to hit OS X. Why? Because as it becomes more popular, it will be the target of more attackers.

Okay fine, but didn’t someone warn us about this same thing two and a half years ago for the very same reason?

Oh yes, Ed Bott.

“Coming soon”.

Subtle changes make sense, but what’s with the return of fixed scroll bars? I loved the removal of them (they would appear only when scrolling to give a sense of place — like in iOS). Strip away the chrome and just leave the content.

Update: Reading the MacRumors comments, it looks like it still may be a user-defined option. (And MacRumors deleted that section of the post without saying anything.) Phew! Cooler is that it’s now set depending on the input device you’re using!