Tech giant Apple recently announced that the company will unwrap its newest operating system, Mountain Lion today, on Wednesday.

Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a report, which was presented during its Q3 earnings call on Tuesday: "We're thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter. We've also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we've got in the pipeline."

The Cupertino-based company already demoed the operating system at the Worldwide Developer Conference 2012 in June. The new version of the software integrates lots of innovative features and updates. What is more exciting with the OS is that it brings many iOS features to the Mac desktop ecosystem.

As far as the release date, price and availability of the new software is concerned, Apple earlier informed that the software would go live sometime in July. Now it has set the release date as July 25. The OS X update will be available for download for $20 in the U.S and hopefully £13.99 in the U.K. Meanwhile, users of the 2012 MacBook Air and Pro variants will get the OS for free.

The update is the first major Mac OS X upgrade for over a year, and aims to close the gap between Apple's Mac OS X and IOS. Once installed, Mac OX X 10.8 Mountain Lion will deliver over 200 new features to Mac computers, including enhanced Icloud support, Facebook integration, Imessage support and voice dictation.

"The pace of innovation on the Mac is amazing, OS X Mountain Lion comes just a year after the incredibly successful launch of Lion," said Philip Schiller, Apple's SVP of Worldwide Marketing, at WWDC last month. "With iCloud built right in and the new Notification Center, Messages, Dictation, Facebook integration and more, this is the best OS X yet."

As revealed by Apple last month, not all Mac owners will be able to upgrade. Mountain Lion won't be compatible with Macbooks dated pre-2007 or a Mac Mini from before 2009. You can check your model on their website. Even if your machine can run the OS, there may be certain features that will not be supported.