In Lion, Apple's big push toward security revolved around . With the Mac App Store officially sandboxed as of June 1, however, Apple's next project is to make sure folks purchasing programs outside of the store can have confidence in their buys.

Gatekeeper is Apple's proposed solution. It allows you to choose one of three settings for running applications on your computer: those only purchased from the App Store, those that have , or any application downloaded from any developer.

It's the middle option--which lets developers code-sign their apps with Apple to ensure that there's no malware at play--that may prove most popular when Mountain Lion launches; it allows many developers with apps that can't abide by the Mac App Store's sandboxing guidelines (Bare Bones Software's , for one) to still have their apps certified by Apple.

Yes, we know a fair amount about this version of OS X, but there's still plenty to discover. As we mentioned earlier, Mountain Lion doesn't ship until the wonderfully-ambiguous "late summer," and for good reason: Knowing Apple, the company still wants to show off a few tricks that it's taught this big cat--probably on-stage at WWDC. We'll have and information on Mountain Lion as WWDC week progresses, so stay tuned. And if you're dying for more information than even this round-up can provide, check out our .