Your official Mountain Lion release day is almost here.

And to celebrate, you should buy an actual mountain lion as a pet.

Nothing could go wrong from this decision.

Late Monday, Apple released the gold master version of its OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) operating system. The build, a 4.3 gigabyte download, requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.7 and an Apple developer account (US$99 per year) to run.

The final version of OS X 10.8 will be available for direct download and installation via the App Store.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.