Apple’s OS X El Capitan has landed. The free update is now available free on the Mac App Store.
El Capitan builds on the features and design of OS X Yosemite and upgrades the Mac experience with updates to window management, built-in apps and Spotlight search, and performance improvements for faster and more responsive experience.
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.
Some of the new feature of El Capitan include a streamlined Mission Control that makes it easier to see and organise everything you have open on your Mac, the new Split View feature which automatically positions two app windows side-by-side in full screen, an updated Spotlight search feature capable to check stock prices, weather conditions and forecasts, sports scores, schedules and standings. You can also search with Spotlight to find a file using natural language. For instance, by typing “email from Harrison in April” or “presentation I worked on yesterday”, Spotlight will help you find exactly what you are looking for.
Safari now features Pinned Sites to keep your favourite websites open and active and a new mute button to quickly silence browser audio from any tab. Mail introduces Smart Suggestions, which recognises names or events in a Mail message and prompts you to add them to your contacts or calendar with a single click. You can also swipe to delete messages. In Photos, you can now edit locations, batch change descriptions, sort albums by date or title, and take editing to the next level with third-party editing extensions from your favourite developers. Also new to El Capitan, the all-new Notes app that lets you drag and drop photos, PDFs, videos and other files into a note, and add content directly from other apps, such as Safari web links or Maps locations, using the Share menu.
In addition to the new features, OS X El Capitan improves system performance across Mac, making things faster and more responsive. Metal, Apple’s graphics technology, accelerates Core Animation and Core Graphics to boost system-level rendering by up to 50 percent, and efficiency by up to 40 percent.
OS X El Capitan is available as a free update starting Wednesday, September 30 from the Mac App Store. El Capitan supports all Macs introduced in 2009 and later, and some models introduced in 2007 and 2008.
