SL is the final version of what Leopard was promised back in the day. Mountain Lion is the almost finished version of Lion.
There are a few things unfinished in Lion that some of us hope will finally come to fruition in 10.9 such as the graphics bug that affects some Pro and iMac users. We've even been promised that iWeb will finally work (GoogleDrive and Drop Box have reduced this to "ho-hum" status but still, it would be nice for some users including me).
10.6.8 was released at the same time as 10.7 to make a few things compatible like the App store so it's no surprise that a few other 10.7 features work also such as TB which is supported back to 10.6.4.
Apple has a history of that: 10.4.11 came after 10.5; 10.7.5 followed 10.8.1 etc.
I won't give up full screen and I won't give up 64 bit and go back to bridging in an attempt to get a few more VIs out of 4 GB of RAM.
ML is running way better on my machine than SL ever did. Crash free. Let me repeat that: CRASH FREE.
So no, it's not "the same" by any stretch.
Agreed!
For all the romantic talk of some so-called superiority of SL, not for me. Besides DP, my world uses other applications that work much better in ML.
In addition, I have a handicap that takes advantage of certain OS features that most users would not use. For that reason and my day job, I was in the trenches with Apple on certain features that sort of broke in SL, got worse in L and didn't work at all in the first release of 10.8 (oops!). BTW, scanning and
wireless scanning now work really well since 10.8.2. You can now use Image Capture if you don't wish to do it within another application (or the app's not otherwise supported). You're welcome.
My daughter has the Danish language version of Rosetta Stone which was never upgraded beyond PPC. According to the company they saw no need - oh well. So I set up her MacBook as a dual boot and for kicks tried to see if wireless scanning was possible in SL. Couldn't make it happen - ethernet or usb only. Re-booted into Mountain Lion, worked like a charm as it should.