El Capitan mountain in Yosemite National Park. Photo via Shutterstock
At its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple announced the latest version of its desktop operating system, Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
The consumer tech giant’s senior vice president Craig Federighi took to the stage to demonstrate the update, focusing on a few upgrades to Mail, Safari, Mission Control and Spotlight.
OS X El Capitan refinements begin with the new system font, San Francisco. Additions to the Mac OS experience include the ability to swipe to delete messages in the Mail app, as you would on iOS. Also being introduced is Smart Suggestions, which recognises names or events in a Mail message and prompts users to add them to contacts or calendar with a single click.
Spotlight search has been improved, allowing for more natural language queries, and, really handily, Safari now gives users the ability to instantly mute annoying autoplay videos, as well as pointing to exactly what tab the audio is coming from. In addition, Mission Control, the fastest way to view all open windows, has a cleaner design, and users can now juggle windows more easily by snapping them side-by-side, or by creating split-screen views.
Click below to watch Federighi’s demonstration via Gizmodo.
OS X El Capitan will also likely improve system performance. Metal, Apple’s latest graphics technology, accelerates Core Animation and Core Graphics to boost system-level rendering by up to 50pc and efficiency by up to 40pc, resulting in faster graphics performance for everyday apps. Metal can also deliver up to 10 times faster draw-call performance for a richer, more fluid experience in games and pro apps.
El Capitan is available to developers from today, while a public beta begins in July. The system will be available to all Mac users in the autumn.
