OS X Mountain Lion: What you need to know
Availability
When will Mountain Lion be available?
Well, there's a developer preview of Mountain Lion available now, so that software makers can update their apps to take advantage of OS X's new features. As for end users like the rest of us, when it announced the developer preview via press release , Apple specifically said "late summer 2012." That's not a precise date, so Mountain Lion could leap into action any time before the Autumnal Equinox on September 22. For your historical reference, Lion arrived on July 20 last year, while Snow Leopard shipped on August 28, 2009 --both those OS X updates were given initial release dates of "summer" as well.
How will I get my hands on Mountain Lion?
The same way you got a hold of Lion--via the Mac App Store. Apple plans to make the new version of OS X available only as a download from its online retail store.

