Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion is live on the Mac App Store

You can now finally get your hands on Apple’s latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion, on the Mac App Store for $19.99.

Apple announced that it would be releasing the OS today as part of its earnings release yesterday, after previously promising that it would be released in July.

Good luck getting the OS up and running anytime soon, though. It took me about 15 minutes to successfully purchase Mountain Lion from the App Store, thanks to the hordes of Mac owners trying to update at the same time. The update itself is also 4.05 gigabytes, so it’ll likely take you a while to download it.

Remember that if you’ve purchased a Mac computer on or after June 11, you can get a free upgrade to Mountain Lion.

Unlike last year’s OS X Lion release, this update will only be available for download via the Mac App Store. Just like Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion is an incremental update, more than a completely revamped OS. (That’s why it’s so cheap.)

Mountain Lion brings over many features first seen in iOS, like a notification center, built-in social networking support, iMessage, and voice dictation.