OS X El Capitan announced at WWDC 2015
At WWDC 2015 event yesterday, Apple has announced OS X El Capitan (10.11) version of the popular operating system for Macs. While OS X Yosemite made a complete overhaul of OS X, El Capitan is about polishing and refining OS X. Enhancements include better window management, better spotlight search, faster and more responsive applications. El Capitan is now available as a developer preview to developers and will be available as public beta in July and the final version will be available in fall’15. Those who want to try the public beta can check www.apple.com/osx/elcapitan-preview/.
“OS X delivers unparalleled integration between Mac hardware, iOS devices, apps and online services, and has helped Mac sales outpace the PC industry every year for the last decade,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Customers loved last year’s landmark OS X Yosemite release and made it the fastest-adopted PC operating system ever. With El Capitan, we’re further refining the Mac experience with enhancements to window management, Spotlight and built-in apps, and improving performance so everyday activities — from launching apps to accessing email — are faster and more responsive.”
OS X El Capitan comes with a new font, San Francisco that is easier to read than previous (default) fonts and the gap is wider on a retina display. Mission Control got new features like drag window to the top to maximize, windows OS like split screen (snap on) feature etc. The build in applications are optimized and streamlined. Safari can now have pinned sites to help users open their most used sites faster, with one click. You can also play video from a web page to TV using Apple TV.
Mail application comes with ‘Smart Suggestions’ feature that recognizes names and/or events in an email message and you can use spotlight search to locate such mails by using simple phrases (like : mail from Naresh that contains Drupal upgrade slides). OS X mail application also supports gestures (swipe left to delete mail, juggle multiple emails in full screen etc, swipe right to mark an email read or unread etc). When one sends an email to an ID that is not in contacts, he/she can add the id to contacts with a single click. Maps application now includes public transportation maps, directions and schedules. Maps will now offer best routes with walking, subway, train , bus and ferry directions and you can send the route to iPhone with one click.
Users can now attach photos, PDFs, videos and other files to notes using notes application. Users can also add content directly from other native apps. Users can create checklists and to-dos and the new attachment browser can organize attachments in simple view.
In Photos application, users can also add locations to images or to Moment, sort albums by date or title. Third party editing extensions from Mac App Store can be downloaded and access directly from the Photos application. Spotlight can now perform much wider search. Users can search about weather, stocks, transit, web video, sports etc. The spotlight window can be resized to see more results and can also be moved around the desktop. Coming to the performance, El Capitan improves system level graphics rendering up to 50% and efficiency up to 40%. Metal is a new graphics core technology that gives games and apps near-direct access to the graphics processor on your Mac, delivering enhanced performance and a richer graphical experience. Metal speeds system-level graphics rendering by up to 50 percent,4 as well as making it up to 40 percent more efficient.5 Metal allows the main processor and graphics processor to work more effectively together, boosting high-performance apps. And Metal is designed to be great for games, improving draw call performance by up to10x and paving the way for new levels of realism and detail.
