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Apple To Release OS X El Capitan Today
30 September 2015
With most of the morning gone, OS X El Capitan has still not made it to the App Store. Scheduled for release sometime today, the new operating system promises refined performance and a few perks while portending the obsolescence of some end-of-life software, too.
Today might not be the best day to update if you are in production, of course. Let those impatient pioneers get arrows in their backs. Indeed, Apple has already released El Capitan 10.11.1 beta to developers. So there are, as always, lingering issues to contend with.
When we feel it's safe to move ahead, we'll being the update process on our secondary system with a fresh backup. That slow things down an extra day right there.
We'll keep an eye out for printer and scanner driver issues. And we'll watch for any major application updates.
Derrick Story also recommends "making sure your iCloud account is up to date. This will simplify data transfer of Address Book, Calendar, Safari bookmarks, etc."
We'll be curious to see how well the new operating system performs on our secondary system. This would be the third major revision to the memory management scheme introduced, not entirely successfully, in Mavericks. We'll be particularly curious to see how long it takes to render a dialog box to open a file.
Then there's a long list of software applications to confirm play nicely with the new operating system.
Freedom, as the tune has it, is just another word for nothing left to lose. The update may be free, but those of us in production have a lot to lose, not the least of all being our time. It isn't really free for us.
But a good dose of patience, with a little vigilance, while testing on a secondary system will keep the cost of updating to a minimum.
OS X El Capitan Available as a Free Update Thursday
Refined Experience and Improved Performance Make Your Mac Better than Ever
CUPERTINO, Calif. -- Apple has announced that OS X El Capitan, the latest major release of the world's most advanced desktop operating system, will be available on Wednesday, Sept. 30 as a free update for Mac users. El Capitan builds on the groundbreaking features and beautiful design of OS X Yosemite, refining the Mac experience with updates to window management, built-in apps and Spotlight search and performance improvements to make everyday activities -- like launching and switching apps, opening PDFs and accessing email -- faster and more responsive.
"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."
Refinements to the Mac Experience
El Capitan gives you simpler and smarter ways to do the things you do most with your Mac. A streamlined Mission Control makes it easier to see and organize everything you have open on your Mac. With a single swipe, Mission Control arranges all your windows in a single layer so you can find the window you need even faster. When your desktop gets crowded, simply drag a window to the top of your screen to create a new Space and spread out your work. And the new Split View feature automatically positions two app windows side-by-side in full screen so you can work with both apps without distraction.
Spotlight gets even smarter in El Capitan. You can now use Spotlight to check stock prices, weather conditions and forecasts, sports scores, schedules and standings and even athlete information. You can also search with Spotlight to find a file using natural language. Simply type "email from Harrison in April" or "presentation I worked on yesterday" and Spotlight will help you find exactly what you are looking for. You can resize the Spotlight window to display more results or move it anywhere on your desktop.
OS X built-in apps are even better in El Capitan. Safari now features Pinned Sites to keep your favorite Web sites open and active and a new mute button to quickly silence browser audio from any tab. Mail introduces Smart Suggestions, which recognizes 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, just like in iOS and juggle multiple emails while Mail is in full screen. 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 favorite developers.
El Capitan features an 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. Easy-to-create checklists help you keep track of important to-do items and the new Attachments Browser organizes your attachments in one simple view, making it easy to find what you're looking for. With iCloud, your notes stay in sync so you can create notes on one device and edit them or check off items on your other devices.
Improvements to System Performance
OS X El Capitan improves system performance across your Mac, making many of the things you do everyday faster and more responsive. Metal", Apple's groundbreaking 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, resulting in faster graphics performance for everyday apps. Metal also takes full advantage of your CPU and GPU, delivering up to 10 times faster draw call performance for a richer, more fluid experience in games and pro apps.
El Capitan also features enhanced international language support, including a new Chinese system font for both Traditional and Simplified, with 50,000 beautifully designed characters for crisp on-screen readability. Chinese keyboard input methods now offer regularly updated vocabulary lists and a smarter candidate window. El Capitan makes entering Japanese text faster by automatically transforming Hiragana into written Japanese and reducing the need to individually select and confirm word conversions. You can now also select the perfect font for your documents using four new Japanese typefaces.
Pricing & Availability
OS X El Capitan is available as a free update starting Wednesday, Sept. 30 from the Mac App Store. El Capitan supports all Macs introduced in 2009 and later and some models introduced in 2007 and 2008.