Apple Unveils OS X El Capitan: Better Performance, More Features

Apple kicked off the highly anticipated WWDC event today by announcing OS X El Capitan. Alongside more power, the new desktop operating system brings major enhancements to the apps customers use most. OS X El Capitan refinements begin with the new system font, San Francisco.

“OS X delivers unparalleled integration between Mac hardware, iOS devices, apps and online services, and has helped Mac sales outpace the PC industry every year for the last decade,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Customers loved last year’s landmark OS X Yosemite release and made it the fastest-adopted PC operating system ever. With El Capitan, we’re further refining the Mac experience with enhancements to window management, Spotlight and built-in apps, and improving performance so everyday activities — from launching apps to accessing email — are faster and more responsive.”

After opening the event, Tim Cook invited Craig Federighi on stage, who quickly demoed some of the new features OS X El Capitan brings. It’s much easier to find the cursor — it gets bigger to help users find it when waking a Mac.

The new Safari app allows sites to be pinned, and if a video is playing on any of the opened sites, it allows users to mute the sound in an instant. The all-new Notes app in El Capitan allows users to drag and drop photos, PDFs, videos and other files into notes, and add content directly from other apps, such as Safari or Maps, using the Share menu.

El Capitan comes with smarter search, includes the ability to split apps left and right of the screen, and adds Metal to OS X.

What makes Metal so special is that it provides more efficiency, better performance, and better battery life. It combines the computing power of OpenCL and the graphics power of OpenGL. To show off the power of Metal, Federighi invited the guys from Epic on stage for a demo. Besides them, Blizzard, Feral, Foundry, Autodesk, and Aspyr are said to be adopting Metal.

OS X El Capitan will be available as a developer beta today, as a public beta this summer, and will be available free for download this fall.