OS X Mountain Lion downloads exceed three million

Apple has announced that downloads of OS X Mountain Lion have exceeded three million in four days, making it the most successful OS X release in Apple’s history.

A screenshot of the new OS X Mountain Lion for Apple devices (image: Apple)

With more than 200 innovative new features, Mountain Lion is the ninth major release of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system and is available through the Mac App Store as an upgrade to Lion or Snow Leopard users for $19.99.

“Just a year after the incredibly successful introduction of Lion, customers have downloaded Mountain Lion over three million times in just four days, making it our most successful release ever,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

Mountain Lion features include the all new Messages app, Notification Center, system-wide Sharing, Facebook integration, Dictation, AirPlay Mirroring and Game Center.

iCloud integration makes it easy to set up your Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Messages, Reminders and Notes, and keep everything, including iWork documents, up to date across all your devices. For more information or to download Mountain Lion visit apple.com/osx/specs.

Just hours before the release of Mountain Lion, the latest version of the OS X operating system, new malware has been discovered highlighting the need for Apple Mac users to protect their computers with anti-virus software.

Sophos researchers have discovered that the new Morcut Mac OS X malware, also known as “Crisis”, has been distributed as part of a multi-platform attack, designed to hit both Windows and Mac users – embedded in an archive file which pretends to be Adobe Flash Player.

The threat, which has not yet been seen in the wild, is complex – and when run on an OS X system drops multiple components, reconfigures system settings and installs a backdoor and rootkit combination that connects to a remote server and waits for instructions from malicious hackers.

Staff writer