As you may have read, Apple has released a developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. You’re likely reading many features over many sites so we thought we’d attempt to accumulate them for you.

iCloud:

In OS X Mountain Lion, sign in once with your Apple ID and iCloud is automatically set up across your Mac. That means right away iCloud keeps your mail, calendars, contacts, documents, and more up to date on every device you use. So when you add, delete, or edit something on your Mac, it happens on your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. And vice versa.

Developers will have an API available that will allow them to use iCloud with their Mac App Store approved app

Messages:

Download Messages Beta and get a taste of what’s coming in OS X Mountain Lion. When you install Messages, it replaces iChat. But iChat services will continue to work. And Messages brings iMessage to the Mac — just like on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch running iOS 5. Here are the features you can expect with Messages:

• Send unlimited iMessages to any Mac, iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.*
• Start an iMessage conversation on your Mac and continue it on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.
• Send photos, videos, attachments, contacts, locations, and more.
• Launch a FaceTime video call and bring the conversation face-to-face.
• Messages supports iMessage, AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, and Jabber accounts.

The beta requires Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3, get it here.

Gatekeeper:

The safest place to find apps for your Mac is the Mac App Store. That’s because the developers who create them are known to Apple, and the apps are carefully reviewed before they’re accepted in the store. If there’s ever a problem with an app, Apple removes it. And before you download and install an app, you can read reviews from other users. Apple wants to be sure the apps you download and install from the Mac App Store are what you think they are.

Apple still allows downloads from third party developers but they encourage them to download a certificate to add to their apps so that Apple can weed out malware infected apps and not accidentally block/warn the user of a safe 3rd party app.

Notification Center:

Something new is always popping up somewhere on your Mac — an email, an instant message, a friend request, a calendar alert, and more. Notification Center makes it easy to stay up to speed, because there’s one place to see everything. Notification banners appear on your desktop and disappear quickly so they don’t interrupt what you’re doing. Swipe to the left, and you’ll see all your notifications in a simple, ordered list. So you’ll always know what’s up as soon as it comes up.

From what we saw on The Verge, it’s actually a two finger swipe.

There is also Twitter and Game Center integration with Mac App Store and Apple apps.

AirPlay Mirroring is also finally coming to the Mac. It simply mirrors your display.

Software Update has been moved into the Mac App Store app. Appropriate and much more useful as this will now update your apps and essential Apple software.

Many are pointing out that Apple has made it a point to drop “Mac” from OS X Mountain Lion.

Apple is dropping support for the following Macs (from MacRumors):

• Any Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook from late 2007 – late 2008 (Model Numbers: MB061*/B, MB062*/B, MB063*/B, MB402*/A MB403*/A MB404*/A, MB402*/B)
• The Mid-2007 Mac mini (Model Numbers: MB138*/A, MB139*/A)
• Late 2006 polycarbonate iMac (Model Number: MA710xx/A)
• The original early 2008 MacBook Air (Model Number: MB003LL/A)
• Macs using ATI’s Radeon X1600 graphics

Basically it looks like you need a Mac that is at the most 4 years old.

We’ll update as more news come out. For more info check out Apple’s site here.