Apple Announces OS X El Capitan With Split View, Contextual Spotlight, Updated Apps and More, Launches in Fall

[chickenwingfly]

Well, weird name, will be fun to listen to the mispronunciation for a while tho'.
Didn't see that much of an improvement overall, guess time will tell.

 

[TechZeke]

Out of all things in California, really?

Really dumb name. I am going to stick with Mavericks until it is proven to not be a total f-up like Yosemite.

You guys clearly miss the point. El Capitan is related to Yosemite, just like how Snow Leopard was related to Leopard; or Lion to Mountain Lion. This is clearly meant to point to the fact that 10.11 is a refinement of experience and performance of Yosemite. We will get a totally new name/location for 10.12 since it will be the next major feature update.

 

[egan311]

How long are they gonna stick with "OS X"? Been what... 14 years now?

 

[patseguin]

Anyone else think this new version of OS X is kind of underwhelming? I'd hoped for maybe some UI refinements and other major new features, especially since MS had Windows 10 coming. I guess maybe desktop OS's don't have much more to advance.

Also, hoped for a surprise of AppleTV, but this wasn't a media event. I bet we'll see it announced in September with their streaming service.

Really excited about iOS 9, especially on my iPad Air 2.

 

[doelcm82]

We heard nothing of the rumoured ‘rootless’ security modes and generally there was surprisingly little mention of internals at all. What the showed was a few modifications to the GUI’s window manager, userland apps, and so forth. All of them very enticing, to be sure, but hardly the stuff “new OS releases” are made of. Or do you reckon that extensive OS upgrades worthy of the name occurred under the hood and have not been mentioned in a consumer-orientated media event?

 

[is1234]

Do you mean Windows 7? I've been using BetterTouch Tool for window snapping for years.

Agreed! One of the best/first 3rd party apps I install. Super helpful not only with the snapping, but for the multitouch features! Its a shame the developer isn't accepting donations, as it is well worth it!

 

[Agent-J]

W

Sweet! A new improved user interface with a mail program with new features that host even more impressive crashing when trying to use my google-based mail accounts.

"We've improved the crashing experience to make it the most personal ever. Only Apple could do this."

Pretty much of a "meh" from this end-user's perspective. I didn't see any really innovative UI/UX changes in there, but maybe programmers will like the new features. At the same time, I didn't see anything especially horrid, either. So, maybe, it wasn't so bad.

 

[LOLobo]

Snap "feature" was in many Linux distributions long before it came to Window.

 

[asiga]

El Capitan?! Seriously?

The main problem with the name is that it's half a joke. If you want a joke, make it a full joke: I'd prefer "El Gran Capitan". At least, that would be funny.

 

[Psyfuzz]

Anyone else think this new version of OS X is kind of underwhelming? I'd hoped for maybe some UI refinements and other major new features, especially since MS had Windows 10 coming. I guess maybe desktop OS's don't have much more to advance.

Also, hoped for a surprise of AppleTV, but this wasn't a media event. I bet we'll see it announced in September with their streaming service.

Really excited about iOS 9, especially on my iPad Air 2.

We'll see Apple reacting to Windows 10 more heavily in 10.12 - I expect they're wanting to see what aspects of W10 are the most useful and port them to OS X (I heavily suspect Siri to feature in 10.12 etc in response to Cortana).

Windows 10 ironically seems like Microsoft's way of catching up to many aspects of the Apple eco-system - mission control etc is pretty much ripped from OS X. Nothing wrong with that though, I like watching Apple and MS duke it out on the software front - MS hasn't really stepped up against OS X since 7 launched.

 

[tomnavratil]

I hope they have finally fixed the duplications with Outlook's IMAP email in Mail.app - that has been reported for a long time and Apple can't be bothered fixing it.

 

[JAQ]

I am not looking forward to a year of saying "Oh Ess Ten El Kap-Ee-Tan".
It's almost enough to make me nostalgic for "Mavericks".

 

[milo]

I stopped using Spotlight after they added Internet-wide searches to it - with no obvious way to turn it off.

You didn't try looking in the spotlight prefs (in System Prefs)?

 

[doelcm82]

We heard nothing of the rumoured ‘rootless’ security modes and generally there was surprisingly little mention of internals at all. What the showed was a few modifications to the GUI’s window manager, userland apps, and so forth. All of them very enticing, to be sure, but hardly the stuff “new OS releases” are made of. Or do you reckon that extensive OS upgrades worthy of the name occurred under the hood and have not been mentioned in a consumer-orientated media event?

Worthy of the name? Absolutely! As others pointed out, this is "Mountain Yosemite". Mostly under the hood improvements to the Yosemite version. And the name "El Capitan" reflects that. If you don't think that these improvements are worth the price* of an upgrade, then just stick with what you currently have.

*That's a joke.

 

[Basic75]

WTF, Metal but no Vulkan? Are they throwing away next-generation 3D API cross-platform compatibility?

 

[Sym0]

LOL and the snap feature, snaptool has been providing that missing link for me since I jumped over to OSX from W7 and W8.1

 

[BJMRamage]

Photos editing stuff??

anyone have any info?

 

[Zarniwoop]

System requirements?

We'll find out soon. Before that, some clues.

On apple.com website it says:

"Metal speeds system-level graphics rendering by up to 50 percent (Footnote: Testing conducted by Apple in May 2015 using 2.7GHz Intel Core i5-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with 128GB of flash storage and 8GB of RAM. Tested with prerelease OS X v10.11. Not all features are available on all devices. Performance will vary based on system configuration, application workload, and other factors.)

...as well as making it up to 40 percent more efficient. (Footnote: Testing conducted by Apple in May 2015 using 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-based 15-inch MacBook Pro systems with 256GB of flash storage and 16GB of RAM. Tested with prerelease OS X v10.11. Not all features are available on all devices. Performance will vary based on system configuration, application workload, and other factors.)

...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 to 10x and paving the way for new levels of realism and detail. (Footnote: Testing conducted by Apple in May 2015 using 2.7GHz Intel Core i5-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with 128GB of flash storage and 8GB of RAM. Tested with prerelease OS X v10.11. Not all features are available on all devices. Performance will vary based on system configuration, application workload, and other factors.)

...UP TO 4x FASTER PDF OPENING IN PREVIEW (Footnote: Testing conducted by Apple in May 2015 using 2.7GHz Intel Core i5-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with 128GB of flash storage and 8GB of RAM. Tested with prerelease OS X v10.11 and shipping OS X v10.10.3. Not all features are available on all devices. Performance will vary based on system configuration, application workload, and other factors.)"

 

[asiga]

WTF, Metal but no Vulkan? Are they throwing away next-generation 3D API cross-platform compatibility?

Indeed. It seems Vulkan is dead: no major OSs support it, except perhaps Linux.

I also expect Apple to kill not only OpenGL, but also OpenCL. The years when Apple fought for helping stablish industry standards seem to be gone. They've chosen the Microsoft way: proprietary APIs as a way for being "competitive". Very sad to every good developer. Good developers prefer cross-vendor standards.

 

[Lolito]

name is bad indeed.

This will be more of a mountain yosemite than a white yosemite, unfortunately...

 

[Benjamin Frost]

How long are they gonna stick with "OS X"? Been what... 14 years now?

Indeed.

I'm always careful to give people the correct pronunciation : "Oh ess ecks."

 

[Renzatic]

Doubling down on Metal. Can someone explain in plain English what moving from OpenGL to Metal will do?

Basically, its a lo\w level API that allows developers to code more directly to the GPU, eeking far more performance and efficiency out of the same hardware.

Look up Mantle/Vulkan, and DX12 for a rough comparison. They all do about the same thing.

 

[AustinIllini]

How long are they gonna stick with "OS X"? Been what... 14 years now?

Forever. It's a valuable brand name.

 

[asiga]

name is bad indeed.

You know a name is bad when you smile thinking it's April the 1st, and then you realize it's June, so you then suspect you're sleeping and dreaming, but you hit your hand and it hurts...

 

[ikir]

Metal for Mac: my dream came true!