Apple OS X El Capitan Developer Preview
Apple OS X El Capitan Developer Preview
The real-world El Capitan has an almost vertical rock face that only the most expert climbers can conquer, but the operating-system El Capitan presents an almost-flat learning curve for anyone who already uses OS X. The only bumps on the trail are some new window-management features that take a few minutes to get used to, and even those bumps may get flattened by the time Apple releases a public beta in July. Note that this preview is based on an early developer beta that already runs smoothly and—as Apple claims—notably faster than Yosemite.
El Capitan’s enhancements can be divided into four main categories: an improved Spotlight search with Siri-like natural-language abilities; new window-management conveniences; a completely overhauled Notes app with flexible features like those in Evernote and Microsoft’s OneNote, and new features in Safari, Maps, and Mail (including iOS-like gestures in Mail); and enhanced performance. I’ll also mention some other subtler, changes that you might not notice at first, but that make the OS easier to work with.
VIEW ALL Spotlight on Spotlight
A few of the new features are still works in progress, and I wish Apple had changed some things that I think went wrong in Yosemite’s visual design, but overall the new version looks set to be another entry in Apple’s long string of OS X successes. The enhanced Spotlight now responds to queries like “documents created in November,” “Yankees roster” or “weather tomorrow.” The same natural-language smarts are built into Mail’s search box, so you can search for “messages I ignored from Dave” or “messages with attachments from Colin” or “messages I replied to from Sean” (though “messages from Sean that I answered” doesn’t currently work). Also, you can now drag Spotlight itself away from the center of the screen to anywhere you want it, which is a small but very handy modification.
Windows Management Enhancements
Until now, OS X has lagged behind Windows in window-management features like the ability to drag application windows to different edges of the screen to make them either fill the screen or snap into a split-screen layout. El Capitan adds these features, but in a way that’s less annoying than Windows’ habit of snapping windows into new configurations when you don’t want them to. For example, you can make an app full screen by dragging it to the top of the desktop, but—unlike Windows, where the app instantly opens in full screen even when you don’t want it to—you have to drag the cursor all the way to the top of the top-line menu and hold it there to show OS X that you really want to switch to full-screen mode.
Also, you can now open Mission Control (with a four-finger upward swipe or a function key) and drag application windows into the thumbnail images of one or more desktops in the “Spaces Bar” at the top of the Mission Control screen. Drag one app window, then a second app window, into a thumbnail, and you get a split-screen desktop containing both apps, with a drag-able border between them that lets you change their relative sizes. This feature (which resembles a new split-screen option coming to iOS 9) will presumably work more smoothly when the El Capitan public beta is released. Right now, it confusingly lets you drag windows into the Spaces Bar, but doesn’t let you drag them out again. Instead, to return an app from split screen to the normal desktop, you have to click on its green full-screen button.
Notable Notes
The new Notes app looks a lot like the old one, but works more like Evernote or OneNote. You can use the Export button on apps like Safari, Maps, or Keynote to save (for example) a map or Web page to a new note or an existing note. A thumbnail image gets created along with a link to the page. You can drag a message from Mail into a note and create a link that opens the message.
One useful feature lets you select some text, click on the Font button in the toolbar and convert the text into a checklist, with open circles next to each item; click on the circle when you’re ready to mark the item as done. A flower-like icon that looks like the icon for the Photos app opens a photo browser that lets you add a photo to a note. A toolbar button leads to a tabbed browser that displays all the photos, videos, sketches, maps, web links, audio, and documents that you’ve attached to your notes, so you don’t need to navigate to the right note to find the item you’re looking for—you just choose it from the browser.
Safari and Photos
Safari gets pinned tabs in El Capitan. A two-finger click on a tab opens a menu that lets you choose “Pin Tab.” and a small icon appears at the left of the tab bar so you can click on it in the future to open the page. Tabs that play sounds get a mute button (resembling a hidden feature in Chrome), and you can mute multiple tabs by clicking on a mute icon in the search bar. The AirPlay feature that sends music or video to an Apple TV box now works with HTML5 video in Web pages.
The Photos app—notably faster than the initial OS X version recently added to Yosemite—gets the ability to edit image locations and lets third-party developers create filters and other extensions that plug directly into the app.
Mail and Maps
Mail gets message-management via swipes to delete a message or mark it unread, as in iOS, and, if you use Mail full-screen, you can now compose multiple messages in a tabbed interface. Improved intelligence in the message-reading window now lets you click a button to create a calendar event when a message mentions a meeting, flight, dinner, or anything else that looks like an event that you might want to schedule. One welcome innovation changes the way large messages are downloaded and listed in the message list, so you won’t be annoyed (as I often am) by clicking on a message header and then waiting for the content to appear.
Maps gets transit information that’s better-presented than similar information in Google Maps, but limited to a small number of cities in the western hemisphere—though 300 cities in China are already included. I’m very impressed with the New York transit features, which show exactly where to find subway entrances and elevators. When you click on a subway station, an information card pops up showing other transit lines accessible from that station. Directions (in New York City, at least) are clear and concise, and it you’ll be able to easily send them to an iPhone, too.
Pedal to the Metal
Apple claims to have enhanced El Capitan’s speed, and the results were obvious in my limited hands-on testing. Apps like Mail and Photos snap open far more quickly than before, and PDFs display without annoying delays. In addition, Apple is talking about a new software technology called Metal that will make more efficient use of GPU processing power for faster drawing and more detailed games, though you won’t see the effects until developers incorporate Metal into their software. While all computers that can run Yosemite will also be able to run El Capitan, the extent which your computer experiences a speed bump will depend to some extent on the hardware you’re running; my understanding is that El Capitan will deliver the greatest speed increases to systems using SSDs.
There are some changes on the purely aesthetic side, too. Yosemite and iOS 8 changed the system font from the long-established Lucida Grande font to a typeface called Helvetica Neue that suffers from a kind of hipster cool that makes it boring and characterless to look at to look at. El Capitan replaces Helvetica Neue with a livelier font called San Francisco (no relation to the ransom-note-style font with the same name that came with the oldest Macs), first seen on the Apple Watch. This font has some impressive built-in smarts. For example, when it displays the time (as in 10:23), the colon is raised slightly so it’s vertically centered between the two numbers, but when the same font displays text, the colon takes its normal position on the same baseline with letters. It’s a subtle effect, but typical of Apple’s typographic care.
Other small but nifty improvements include an option to hide the menubar automatically until you move the cursor to the top of the screen—just like the long-established option to autohide the Dock. The context menu for files finally gets a Rename item. And, for expert users, the Disk Utility now shows a disk-usage chart like the one in iTunes that shows what’s on your iPhone or iPad disk.
My Recommended Tweaks
El Capitan, like Yosemite, is more garish-looking than I like. The first thing I do after installing El Capitan and Yosemite is go to System Preferences, open the General tab, and, next to Appearance, replace Blue with Graphite. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the blinding blue color of the Finder’s folder icons to something easier to look at. Fortunately, you can download my own muted versions of the default folder icons, with installation instructions, on a page I posted here. And maybe someday Apple will tone down that blinding blue and make the folder icons look as good as everything else in OS X.
Still the Best?
El Capitan is available only to registered developers, not to the public. A free public beta will begin in July. If it’s anything like the public beta of Yosemite last year, it should be stable enough for moderately fearless users to install on their working machines. When El Capitan is released in the fall, it will be offered as a free upgrade in the OS X App Store.
As for the competition, Windows 10—now only a few weeks away from its public release—makes massive improvements on Windows 8.1, restoring the Start Menu and toning down the “Metro” apps that filled the screen when you didn’t want them to.
Both operating systems are still in beta, but, based on the existing code, OS X remains the most convenient and cohesive of all consumer-level operating systems, and the best integrated with its corresponding mobile OS. We’ll be back with further reports on El Capitan (and Windows 10), but, in the meantime, we’re glad to see a release that adds real improvements to what was already the best-designed OS available.
malikmuddser