On 30 September Apple began distributing the final version of the new operating system for Mac computers — OS X El Capitan. The company has worked hard on the ergonomics and functionality OS: admirers “Apple” technicians will find in El Capitan a number of interesting features. However, to access some new knowledge of the Russian language will not be enough, and some of them do not work in Russia.
Edition Lenta has listed five new features that speak in favor of the transition to OS X Mavericks.
Window management
The most notable feature is the Split View, which allows automatically to have two apps on the same screen, fill in all the space. Long time Apple came from considerations that the user only needs one application, so texting in the messages window while watching the video, had to set their size.
The concept has changed! Apple has long been criticized users (and ridicule from competitors) is not possible in iOS. It seems that this year the company decided to close this question in a c iOS 9 on the iPad Pro and El Capitan on the Mac.
To run the Split View, you can long press the “Full screen” (green button in the top left corner of any app in OS X). Then the program goes to work at the moment, will occupy half of the screen, and the thumbnails of the other apps will appear in the second half. If you should choose one program, it will take up the second half of the screen.
The application Windows in the Split View can be the same size or have the size in the proportion of 1 to 2, but always in fullscreen mode. To return to normal desktop you can gesture swipe (sliding motion) on the touchpad.
A new feature may interact with virtual desktops Spaces. For example, on one desktop you can place an entertainment app, and the other workers. And app for pairs of Windows in SplitView you can select from any virtual desktop.
To create a new desktop, you need first to call Mission Control tool — to hold three fingers up on the touchpad, and then move the cursor to the top of the screen. Then there is the panel with the desktops and the “+” icon to create a new table. Conveniently, you can right from this screen drag the file or application to a particular desktop, however, when a large number of desktops it is easy to forget exactly where the needed file.
The window of the Mission Control looks more air — when looking at all open apps on one screen, they do not overlap each other. In addition, their location in this mode indicates which part of the desktop screen they are open.
Search
The ambitions of Apple in the sphere of search technologies come to the fore. Last year Apple started its reorientation of the search for direct answers to queries. In last year’s release of Yosemite, the Spotlight search engine to display relevant query results from Wikipedia and several other popular sites, maps, Bing, app stores and content Apple.
In El Capitan, the company announced new information sources for searching in natural language to Spotlight and smart search suggestions. However, here also lies the main disappointment for Russian users: while all of these capabilities in Russia and in Russian do not work. At the moment they are supported in seven languages — English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Japanese — in 15 countries.
In the Spotlight window you can now view online videos — the feature works for YouTube, Vimeo and Vevo. The search engine also allows you to plan your journey using public transport, showing nearby stops and routes. Users got the ability to find their own files not by name but by keywords and characteristics — for example, “photos uploaded in June” or “created last week presentation, which is the budget”. Smart search is available in the mail — you can search emails by time, sender, formulating a query in natural language. In English, the function works correctly, but Russian language, as already mentioned, not yet supported.
Browser
Safari has a ability to pin your favorite sites with Pinned Sites. Fixed so the websites are displayed as icons to the left of other tabs. It is noteworthy that Pinned Sites remain in place even when you close and reopen the browser — this is the main difference between this feature in Safari is similar to Google Chrome. However, you should note that pinned tabs work in the background until the user ukrepit them from the toolbar Safari.
In the browser, the Apple appeared and a new button — Mute, it allows you to muffle the sound coming from any tab. This is very useful when user have many tabs open and it is difficult to understand which one, for example, start a video autoprogram.
If you have Apple TV, it can watch videos from the browser on the TV using AirPlay. When the video is played on the big screen, you can simultaneously work with other applications on the computer without interrupting the video.
App
In El Capitan, the company updated a number of standard OS X applications in particular, maps, photo album, notes and Notes mail.
A major update of Apple maps became the public transport function, which for a long time there on Google Maps. To use it, you need to switch to Transit (conventional and complementary satellite maps), set the points of departure and destination. You can also set the desired time of departure or arrival, desired form of transport, to request a step-by-step navigation.
However, the feature is only available with online connection only in some cities — Berlin, London, Mexico city, new York, Toronto, San Francisco, Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and 300 cities in China. When public transport will be available for Russian cities, Apple did not specify.
Really high-quality processing undergone notes app Notes. Notes now support inserting additions of different formats — photographs, audio, videos, PDF documents, map fragments, and others. In addition, with the help of a special button you can insert in a note a list-the checklist. Note that when you insert the media content is uncompressed, so the shipment of such notes at a low-speed connection can be problematic.
The number of applications received the option of saving the content in the notes — among them, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, photo album and so on. When you select this option from the menu in the upper right corner of the app you can add content to an existing note or create a new one. To add a snippet of a web page from Safari, simply select it and drag to the note.
In the notes there is a new button Attachments Browser to search and view all supplements. Choose the right section, you can see all added photos and videos, sketches, maps, websites, audio clips and documents, which were kept in the notes. If you click on the attachment, right click, open the note to which it is added.
Notes can now be used as a text editor with options to format the text. In addition, the application allows you to create folders to organize your notes and synchronize notes through iCloud.
The Photos app allows you to add a location to one or multiple images, group them by name or date. Users can also download from the Mac App Store, third-party tools to edit images. To one shot you can apply tools from different developers. In addition, El Capitan is the only platform for Apple computers which will be supported by Live viewing Photos, pictures from video elements created using the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. In earlier versions of the system, these images will be displayed without any effect, only as static pictures. To test this function in action so far failed.
Mail at El Capitan has become more similar to the app in iOS to delete emails now you can also swipe gesture. Smart tips for mail allows one-click to add a contact or appointment letter from the appointment book or calendar. In the mail also has tabs through which you can create multiple letters at the same time and switch between them as between tabs in the browser.
Performance
Announcing El Capitan, Apple made it clear that the releases of OS X will now rather follow mobile developments, than to ask them a ton. For example, graphics technology Metal, which a year ago made his debut in iOS and provides a more smooth picture in games and intensive applications, only now added to OS X.
Theoretically Metal makes better use of the GPU, offloading the main processor for other tasks. However, check out this technology — and this is a major innovation for OS X — sorry, not possible: search in the Mac App Store, games or other applications that support Metal gave no results. At the same time, the speed of launching applications and switching between them really became higher, even if you are traditionally “heavy” programs — photo editors and games. Apparently, the OS is also optimized.
Conclusions
The release of OS X El Capitan has several important advantages. The platform extends the use of Force Touch and hardware technologies in new Mac models. New Split View mode and virtual desktops will allow more efficient use of the computer in work situations. In turn, Metal has a huge potential for gamers and designers. Additions to existing staff application — first of all, to the browser, notes and email — also add points to release.
At the same time, additions to maps and search technologies and even proved to be good when working in English need to be improved in terms of localization. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the claimed innovations works on a limited number of languages and in limited geographical framework. However, it is unlikely that these restrictions will stop the fans of Apple computers previous release of OS X Yosemite was installed on 55 per cent of devices by June 2015 — less than a year since the release.
Platform OS X El Capitan became available to download for free worldwide on September 30. Updated can the owners of the computers on platforms starting with the release of OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. Installation will require 8 GB of free space on your computer.
Operating system compatible with the MacBook (since 2009), MacBook Air (from 2008), MacBook Pro (from 2007), Mac mini (since 2009), iMac (from 2007) and Mac Pro (2008). Many features, including Handoff, AirDrop and Metal, will be supported only on later models.
