At the on-going Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2015), Apple just took the curtains off its latest Mac OS X called El Capitan. It has an improved Spotlight that is now a lot more useful than before, new Split View capability, better Windows Management and more.
First up, the latest OS X El Capitan now features a much more intelligent search on Spotlight. Similar to Facebook’s Graph Search, you can now use natural language to search for things like “document I worked on last night”, or “mails I ignored from Brian”.
According to Craig Federighi, you can search for things like the weather and sports scores using your own words. Spotlight has also been given a slight redesign, allowing users to resize Spotlight panel, and move it around.
Next up, Split View. For those who work on multiple tasks at one go, El Capitan makes things a whole lot easier for you with a new Split View feature. Similar to Snap View on Windows, you can easily pin different apps to either side of your windows so you can work on two things at one go, side by side.
As for better windows management, the Space Bar makes it easier to manage your work, giving you more room to work on. You can easily create multiple desktops, switch between tasks and such.
One of the most interesting changes to El Capitan would definitely have to be the performance. Apple boasts that El Capitan is a whole lot faster than previous OS X versions like 1.4x faster app launch, 2x faster app switching and such.
On top of that, thanks to Metal on Mac, playing (and developing, of course) games on OS X has never been smoother. Metal is a core graphics technology that gives apps near-direct access to GPU, which means faster and more efficient rendering performance across the system. Apple says that the biggest names in games and pro apps have been using Metal for Mac to make their apps even better.
Another El Capitan feature mentioned on stage includes an improved Safari app that lets you pin apps, and easily mute any audio. To pin a tab, simply click on the tab and swipe left, the tab will be pinned to the left-most side of the tabs bar so you can access it anytime, anywhere. Even if you close Safari, the pins will remain.
If you’ve ever been shocked by auto-play videos and audio clips on websites, the updated Safari on El Capitan makes it easier for you to find out which tab is making the noise, allowing you to mute it with just a click of a button. Take that auto-play audio! It’s nothing innovative, but it fixes up a major problem a lot of people are facing.
Mac OS X El Capitan is available for developers starting today, while the rest of us will have to keep waiting. Let’s hope that Apple will release a public beta testing version in the near future.
