OS X El Capitan Review Roundup: Not Hugely Different From Yosemite, but Adds New Conveniences

[Kar98]

Not hugely different? It's a lot faster and much more polished than Yosemite will ever be.

 

[ksuyen]

I've never been so unexcited about an OS release for the Mac. Apart from Metal, the rest of the updates could have just been pushed as a minor software update for the OS and the respective apps.



That just sums up my excitement about the new Mac OS.

The name of El Capitan should gives you a clue already This version is more on stability and polishing. The next cycle will see major changes, similar with Snow Leopard after Leopard. Not coincidentally, Snow Leopard is the most satisfying MacOS X to date. And so will be El Capitan.

 

[Ed217]

Total loss for me so far, it rendered both bootable backup partitions as unbootable and useless.

 

[69650]

The "snap" feature was in Windows 7 but I still haven't figured out how to use it.

Was hoping for significantly improved Pages and Numbers to reduce my reliance on Office but sadly not.

 

[rssfed23]

"I haven't had Mail stop working yet and I'm a week into using it--that's a damn good sign"

This comment is a joke right?

 

[HenryDJP]

There's nothing wrong with Apple taking a "Snow Leopard 2" approach. It's nice to see a few valuable features added but most of the time spent on refining things and making the system operate smoothly. I'm sure they'll iron out the kinks as beta testing rolls on throughout the summer.

Not really snow leopard 2, but more like a Leopard to Snow Leopard approach. Yosemite to El Capitan is like Leopard to Snow Leopard.

 

[MikhailT]

"I haven't had Mail stop working yet and I'm a week into using it--that's a damn good sign"

This comment is a joke right?

Why is it a joke. Many folks reported that Mail would randomly stop syncing out of nowhere. I've seen it a few times. In fact, I got so pissed, I simply stopped using it and switched to a third party product that've worked more reliably than Apple could ever do.

 

[atari1356]

Under Yosemite, I have to reboot any time I want to check email or else Mail locks up. Very much looking forward to that being fixed!

 

[Kar98]

Under Yosemite, I have to reboot any time I want to check email or else Mail locks up. Very much looking forward to that being fixed!

I did not have that problem under Yos, and I don't have it in El Cap. You might want to look elsewhere for a solution.

 

[rssfed23]

Why is it a joke. Many folks reported that Mail would randomly stop syncing out of nowhere. I've seen it a few times. In fact, I got so pissed, I simply stopped using it and switched to a third party product that've worked more reliably than Apple could ever do.

I meant a joke at the reviewer being happy that the mail issues seem to be improving (not that they aren't improved).

It's not a damn good sign. It's a travesty that (some) people were content that a core functionality of a core app didn't work as advertised for a very long time.
But perhaps that's my pessimism at the positivity of his review comment/the lack of context. Naturally the fixes are of course welcome (if not unjustifiably overdue) for those that haven't switched to a more reliable app/webapp.

 

[adnbek]

So, it is snappier™?

From http://www.apple.com/osx/elcapitan-preview/







There's your answer.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

Not too many people seem to have noticed that something rather momentous just happened with El Capitan. For the first time ever in the history of Mac OS (as far as I know), there is an official option to automatically hide and show the menu bar, just like you can auto-hide the Dock. Look in System Preferences -> General. This option is definitely not present in Yosemite and is something I tried to do in various ways for several years after switching to OS X from a combination of Windows and Linux over a decade ago. There was an Unsanity APE haxie years ago called Menufela that was able to hide the menu bar, but it stopped working around the time Tiger came out. I had given up on ever achieving my dreams of minimizing unnecessary stuff being shown on my screen in OS X, but now it is possible. I even tried something called MenuShade for a while, that would overlay a black bar on the menu bar to "hide" it, but after a while that seemed sort of pointless.

I can now hide both the menu bar and the Dock and stretch my windows (if I so choose) to fill all available physical screen space. The menu bar and Dock will pop up and overlap the window, then disappear. This is fabulous on a small screen, but very nice even on a 17" MacBook Pro screen or a 27" iMac. You might think, oh, just go fullscreen, but you'd be missing the point. Fullscreen apps outside of the tablet/smartphone context are mostly a joke to me, because there is a only a single app (Screen Sharing) that I ever really want to use on the screen all by itself. It's a bad paradigm for most apps, as evidenced by the fact that Apple are now shoehorning a tabbed multi-window interface back into the fullscreen mode of Apple Mail, because obviously people found a single overlayed compose window in fullscreen Mail to be too constricting in practical usage. Fullscreen on the desktop is pointless except for things like gaming or Screen Sharing where you really only want to see that one task on screen without any distractions. Even a split-screen view with two fullscreen apps is just not that great. It forces you into a completely different way of interacting with the windows on the screen.

I frequently just want to work with a single window or a couple of different windows in different apps at the same time, but minimize visual distractions on the screen without necessarily filling the screen with the app window. To help me with that, I have an app called Isolator that will overlay any color you choose at any opacity level on everything behind the application that's in focus. It's pretty old but still works with Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan. Just google "download isolator willmore" to find it. The remaining thing that helps me size windows the way I want is the SizeWell SIMBL plugin, which amazingly still works with Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan also.

But really the final piece of the puzzle was being able to hide the menu bar, and now that is possible without any hacks. These tools, plus the four-finger swipe up and down on the trackpad for Exposé functions, are transforming the way I'm using my MacBook Pro, and this is a computer I've been using daily for several years, so that's really saying something.

From my personal perspective, the ability to auto-hide the menu bar is one of the defining features of El Capitan, and it was never even demonstrated or mentioned anywhere. I ended up stumbling upon it accidentally while trying to remember where to set "Reduce Transparency". It was like opening my sock drawer one sleepy morning and suddenly finding that while I was sleeping someone had lined it with 24 karat gold foil and filled it with live puppies, kittens, unicorns and rainbows, and at the end of the rainbows was a magical pot containing not just solid gold coins but also an endless supply of chocolate-chip cookies and chewy fudge brownies.

But that's just me. Apparently nobody else finds the sudden appearance of this long sought-after option to be a big deal.

Entertaining post.

But I like full-screen, which hides the menu bar anyway. And with split screen, I can now work with neat window snapping.

 

[atari1356]

I did not have that problem under Yos, and I don't have it in El Cap. You might want to look elsewhere for a solution.

I've spent hours looking for a solution, but found nothing. I don't have time to spend on it any more (especially since it sounds like El Capitan may finally fix the problem anyways)... and I don't want to switch to another email client.

 

[xSeaside]

I've never been so unexcited about an OS release for the Mac. Apart from Metal, the rest of the updates could have just been pushed as a minor software update for the OS and the respective apps.



That just sums up my excitement about the new Mac OS.

So, which features are you missing then?

I like this new approach. I'd rather fewer features without bugs than more features with a lot of bugs.

 

[MikhailT]

The "snap" feature was in Windows 7 but I still haven't figured out how to use it.

Was hoping for significantly improved Pages and Numbers to reduce my reliance on Office but sadly not.

iWork updates are almost always separate, not part of OS X. You should see iWork near or the same day on El Cap via MAS.

I meant a joke at the reviewer being happy that the mail issues seem to be improving (not that they aren't improved).

It's not a damn good sign. It's a travesty that (some) people were content that a core functionality of a core app didn't work as advertised for a very long time.
But perhaps that's my pessimism at the positivity of his review comment/the lack of context. Naturally the fixes are of course welcome (if not unjustifiably overdue) for those that haven't switched to a more reliable app/webapp.

Oh, sorry. I misunderstood. Yea, what Apple have done with Mail for the past 4 years has been unacceptable. I think the reviewer meant that he hasn't seen any problem in the first week, which is a good sign because every Mail.app problems I've seen were obvious on day 1 and worse later as more emails coming in. I am now seeing more issues in Safari 8.1 on El Cap as I continue to use it, so that's definitely not a good sign.

MailMate is my email client but the UI is just horribly outdated. If Apple fixes the problem, I'd be happy to switch back.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Apparently nobody else finds the sudden appearance of this long sought-after option to be a big deal.

I saw the option a few days ago, turned it on, saw that it worked, didn't like it being hidden, then turned it back off. Whereas the dock takes up over 100 pixels of space along the bottom of the screen and is rarely ever useful (it's good for checking if a program is running, hidden, or not running, and for launching programs, and not much else), the menu bar is full of useful stuff. Various indicators about my computer, accessories, the day and time... it's a reliable way to check which application currently has focus... etc. Plus it only takes up 20 pixels of space.

I'm glad you can have it your way. But I don't want it that way. I wouldn't be too surprised if Apple removes the features from System Preferences before the final release of El Capitan... but if they do that, they'll probably leave in the system files so that you can enable it via Terminal or through Tinker Tool.

 

[rols]

"I haven't had Mail stop working yet and I'm a week into using it--that's a damn good sign"

This comment is a joke right?

Not a joke at all unfortunately. Mail doesn't do sleep/wake very well in Yosemite, nor did it in Mavericks and before that I don't really remember. I must get the warning 'mail cannot connect to blah blah' several times a day. Of course it can connect, the servers are up, the network is working, it's just got hung up somewhere. Kill all the tasks, perhaps kill and restart mail, all fine again.

Mail also doesn't deal well with IMAP server connection limits. Many mail servers have a max IMAP persistent connection limit and when you have a laptop, or two, and a phone and an iPad all connected and occasionally trying to download mail, you can hit the limit, either you don't get a connection or one you had before gets closed, that's throws mail for a loop on OSX, iOS deals with it much better. This is true even of Apple's own @icloud.com service.

Just about every beta for the last 2 years has specified 'Mail improvements'. Perhaps with the death of discoveryd and the resurrection of mdnsResponder, and some work, I hope they have it this time.

 

[Traverse]

Really like Yosemite. Best OS X to date, as far as I'm concerned. Glad El Capitan is building upon this experience in a good way!

Yosemite's been the worst for me and I don't mean because of UI. Completely barring the UI, I've had graphical glitches, Mail glitches, boot failures, system freezes, etc. The worst OS X experience ever.

And I waited until 10.10.3 to install and did 2 clean installs. The problems persist.

 

[steve333]

I'm getting so tired of not being able to only delete history without deleting all website data. I don't know why Apple has not fixed this stupid design issue.
Someone suggested going into show history and doing it there but this way also deletes everything.
Come on, Apple, you're really slipping when it comes to user experience

 

[lobeyonekenobi]

There's nothing wrong with Apple taking a "Snow Leopard 2" approach. It's nice to see a few valuable features added but most of the time spent on refining things and making the system operate smoothly. I'm sure they'll iron out the kinks as beta testing rolls on throughout the summer.

I loved Snow Leopard as plenty of others did too, at the same time with the exception of Lion, I never had any problems with any OS and don't mind these incremental updates.

 

[freediverx]

to be honest, I'm not crazy about San Fransisco on the Mac so far, don't have that problem with iOS. Hard to explain.

Legibility or aesthetics?

 

[allanfries]

Yea

Yosemite's been the worst for me and I don't mean because of UI. Completely barring the UI, I've had graphical glitches, Mail glitches, boot failures, system freezes, etc. The worst OS X experience ever.

And I waited until 10.10.3 to install and did 2 clean installs. The problems persist.

Yeah crazy, I've had really nothing for issues. Safari unexpectedly quit 3 times since fall for me, and a few bugs during daily startup and reboots. I can't complain, but know many who do.

 

[Traverse]

Yea



Yeah crazy, I've had really nothing for issues. Safari unexpectedly quit 3 times since fall for me, and a few bugs during daily startup and reboots. I can't complain, but know many who do.

The worst bug for me is sometimes I restart my system and it doesn't come back on.

It's in a book arc stand with dozens of cables. I have to unhook it and boot it up and them re hook everything and my windows have to be resized.

 

[dannyyankou]

So, it is snappier™?

Yes, it's quite snappy.

 

[Dargoth]

Since http://hypercritical.co/2015/04/15/os-x-reviewed

I'll definitely miss his reviews. He really went in-depth, more so than anyone else.

You're not kidding. Ars Technica usually delivers fairly in-depth reviews, but his were by far the best. The review they currently have up on OS X El Capitan pales in comparison to any of his reviews. Quite a shame...