Apple promises a refined experience, better graphics and lots of handy new tools in OS X El Capitan, out 30 September 2015 as a free update.
Apple’s latest desktop operating system OS X El Capitan will be available tomorrow (Wednesday 30 September) as a free update for Mac users.
The new operating system builds on the design of OS X Yosemite but adds new features like built-in apps, Spotlight search, performance improvements and updates to window management.
The new OS is also claimed to be faster and more responsive and improves activities like launching and switching apps, accessing email and opening PDFs.
A refined experience in El Capitan
Mission Control has been streamlined to see and organise everything on your Mac, keeping all windows in a single layer.
A new Split View feature automatically positions two app windows side-by-side.
Spotlight has been updated to present additional information such as stock prices, weather, sports scores, schedules and even athlete information.
New features in Safari include Pinned Sites, which keeps favourite websites open, and a mute button to silence browser audio in any tab.
Mail comes with a new Smart Suggestions feature that recognises names or events and allows you to add them to contacts or calendar in one click.
Photos has also been updated to edit locations, sort albums and even enable third party editing.
A new Notes app lets users drag and drop photos, PDFs and other files into a note.
El Capitan also improves system performance with Metal, a new graphics technology that accelerates animation and graphics to boost system level rendering by up to 50pc.
It also enables 10 times faster draw call performance from CPUs and GPUs to boost games and app experiences.
“People love using their Macs, and one of the biggest reasons is the power and ease-of-use of OS X,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
“El Capitan refines the Mac experience and improves performance in a lot of little ways that make a very big difference. Feedback from our OS X beta program has been incredibly positive and we think customers are going to love their Macs even more with El Capitan.”
