Mountain Lion, the latest version of Apple's OS X desktop operating system, went public Wednesday to the delight of Mac users everywhere. But while the world fawns over updates to Safari and a number of features cribbed from iOS, most people are skipping over perhaps the most significant update of all: AirPlay Mirroring.

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OS Cats: Meet the Real Mountain LionDon't look now, but Apple just created a formidable cord-cutting platform. The new operating system can change the way we watch video in the living room, and might even compel some users to finally cancel their cable and satellite services. Any video content that's available for the computer can now be just as easily watched on an HDTV. All you need is a 2011 or newer Mac running Mountain Lion, and a $100 Apple TV.

The new AirPlay mirroring feature should have the Xfinitys and DirecTVs of the world very concerned.

>While mobile devices are locked into easily controlled ecosystems, and are reliant on apps for content delivery, the PC is the last platform that Hollywood can't effectively touch.‪

‬AirPlay Mirroring in Mountain Lion uses the same basic tech found in iOS devices: Your computer wirelessly transmits whatever is playing on your Mac desktop to your Apple TV, which then shoots this mirrored content to your HDTV via an HDMI cable. Display settings are automatically determined by your Mac, so you don't have to adjust the resolution over and over again, hoping to find the perfect recipe for optimal TV watching.

Once your mirroring set-up is complete, anything you might play on your desktop can be displayed on your big-screen TV – and this is where all that unique, cord-cutting potential comes into play. Sure, you can start playing computer games on the big-screen. And you can also pipe Rdio tunes, or any other music, directly to your TV speakers. But most importantly, you can mirror all those free, streaming desktop services that would otherwise cost money (or not work at all) if streamed directly to a TV.

For example: Hulu's free, PC-only streaming library is suddenly available on your TV without Hulu's $8 monthly tax in the form of a Hulu Plus subscription (this tax is imposed on set-top devices like the Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation). And then there's CBS.com. On the network's website, you can watch (and now AirPlay mirror) tons of network TV shows. Yes, these shows also appear in the CBS iOS app, but the app doesn't support AirPlay mirroring. The same holds true for ABC content: It can be mirrored via ABC.com, but not via ABC's iOS app.

How long will all this streaming desktop content remain free and unfettered? Only time will tell, but the latest evolutions in desktop mirroring could have long-term effects on the delicate relationships between Hollywood content producers, cable and satellite companies, and technology companies like Apple. Currently, desktop computers are somewhat of a bastion for free, streaming content, as evidenced by the Hulu, CBS and ABC policies above. Restrictions are tighter on mobile devices, and this even extends to YouTube, which disables mobile viewing – but not desktop viewing – for user videos that contain copyrighted music content.

But now easy, simple desktop mirroring presents game-changing opportunities for savvy users. Gartner analyst Michael McGuire told Wired, "[Video mirroring] is the longer-term threat. It's the kind of thing the MVPDs [Multichannel Video Programming Distributors], the Comcasts of the world, dread."

Indeed, cable and satellite providers should be filled with dread. While mobile devices are locked into easily controlled ecosystems, and are reliant on apps for content delivery, the PC is the last platform that Hollywood can't effectively touch. Think about it: While the iPhone requires video be encoded as MPEG-4, a Mac (or Windows machine) can play most any video file type available. And with Mountain Lion and an Apple TV, it can shoot this content to a big-screen TV completely wirelessly.

While the ability to attach a computer to a TV is nothing new, it's usually involved physically attaching a bulky computer to a TV's VGA or HDMI port – something the average consumer won't do, if only because it puts the computer in an inaccessible position for general, keyboard-controlled computing. But AirPlay's wireless data-flow is incredibly easy to set up and use. "Sending video to AirPlay is a no-brainer that will appeal to a lot of people," McGuire said.

So is the Mountain Lion/Apple TV combo really the killer platform that will invade the living rooms of the nation? For now, probably not. It's a killer cord-cutting platform, but we think it will remain a tool for only hardcore tech enthusiasts for the immediate future. While Apple is quick to boast that it sold 4 million Apple TVs so far in this fiscal year, the Apple TV is still a hobby for the company. Plus, while Apple computers have a larger market share than they did 10 years ago, Windows is still the dominant desktop platform. And, of course, in order to use AirPlay Mirroring, any Mac needs to have Mountain Lion installed.

That said, where Apple innovates, the industry follows. AirPlay for Mountain Lion is a great method for beaming any desktop content straight to your HDTV, and this includes streaming video from web pages, computer games, and, yes, even illegal videos collected from BitTorrent. And if the greater tech industry takes more bold steps toward changing how video is delivered, the future is going to be rough for cable and satellite providers. Something has to give.