February 18, 2012, 7:08 AM —
With smartphones and tablets quickly gaining widespread adoption, even IBM is calling this a "post-PC era". It's a world of portability, apps, and touch-enabled devices. This is clear not only in the dominance of mobile devices and laptops on the hardware side, but in the way that Apple and Microsoft are merging their mobile and desktop operating systems.
Apple began incorporating iOS features into OSX with its Lion release in mid-2011, and will continue adding them with Mountain Lion, announced today and due by the end of the summer. Microsoft used its Windows Phone 7 for inspiration, and will release its Windows 8 beta for both desktops and tablets--rumored for the end of February--and possibly a phone based on Windows 8 later in the year. The two approaches appear to yield similar results.
Here are seven ways both Mountain Lion and Windows 8 include features that were initially found on mobile devices:
1. App Store
