Apple on Monday took the stage at their Worldwide Developers Conference to debut OS X El Capitan, their upcoming new version of OS X. El Capitan includes enhancements to window management, new versions of built-in apps, enhanced Spotlight search, and more.
Apple has integrated Metal, their iOS graphic technology introduced in iOS 8 to the Mac, delivering system-wide performance gains and allowing programmers to tap into Mac graphics coprocessors, accelerating Core Animation and Core Graphics to boost system-level rendering by up to 50 percent, and efficiency by up to 40 percent.
El Capitan sports a new system font, San Francisco, an easy-to-read typeface. Apple says the new font looks especially good on a Retina display.
Also introduced in El Capitan is a new design for Mission Control, allowing users to find windows faster when they have multiple windows open on the desktop. Users can drag a window to the top of the screen, accessing the new Spaces Bar, allowing them to create a new Space for the app. Also debuting in El Capitan is a new Split View feature, allowing apps to automatically position side-by-side in the full screen view, allowing users to work on both apps without distractions.
Safari gains new features in El Capitan, including Pinned sites to keep your favorite sites open and active in your tab bar, as well as a mute button to allow muting of browser audio from any tab.
The Mail app will offer Smart Suggestions, which can recognize a name or event in a Mail message, prompting you to add them to your Contacts or Calendar with one click. Also new are swipe gestures to delete emails.
Photos for OS X now allows adding locations to a single image, or an entire “Moment.” Albums can be sorted by date or title. Users will also be able to download third-party editing extensions form the Mac App Store and access them from within the Photos app.
The new Notes app in El Capitan allows you to drag and drop photos, PDFs, and other types of files directly into a note, and allows adding content from other apps, such as Maps, via the Share Menu. All notes sync cross all your iCloud-enabled iOS devices and Macs.
Spotlight is enhanced in El Capitan, offering results for more topics, including weather, stocks, sports, transit and web video. The Spotlight window can now be resized. Users can use natural language enquiries to find documents and files on their Mac.
Apple says the developers preview of El Capitan is now available to members of the Mac Developer Program, and a public beta will be available in July. The final version will be available free, via the Mac App Store this Fall. Customers interested in signing up for the public beta can visit www.apple.com/osx/elcapitan-preview/ for more details.
