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The newest version of Apple OS X is now available for developers to preview and will be available to the general public in the fall. As co-owner and Apple specialist at Geek Easy, I couldn’t resist writing on some of the up and coming features just to name this blog post the equivalent of “The captain on the captain.”

If you haven’t read anything about the new version of Mac OS, the name comes from a vertical rock formation inside Yosemite National Park. Apple’s announcement at their annual developer conference outright stated that the operating system update is a set of refinements to 10.10 Yosemite that was released last October.

Split Screen

By far the most useful feature I see in the list is the ability to have two full-screen apps side by side. My regular workflow on any computer usually involves split apps because I’m writing reports or other content with the relevant information\research\quote open next to it or managing PCs with my email open. Being able to do this will full-screen apps will be especially handy since it’s often a pain to manually drag and resize each window. The extra bit of screen real estate may also make up for websites that scale down poorly (optimized for mobile) in a half screen. Although that last one is probably just wishful thinking.

App Improvements

Spotlight, Apple’s built-in search, will still be searching web content in El Capitan, but the topics have been expanded. This feature from Yosemite is one Ubuntu and Windows 8 have had for years, but is often more annoying than useful on those systems. Hopefully the execution is as good as Siri on iOS and Google Now for Android.

Notes, the simple notepad app, is going to support more text formatting and multimedia. This is exciting for me, since I love simple text apps but have found Notes lacking. Hopefully the new version will land somewhere between Google Keep and Evernote in the simplicity vs. feature arena. I personally could never make the switch over to Evernote because of the clutter, but find Keep to be a very useful tool on my phone. Apple Mail and Safari are also getting a few changes, but as a multi-platform user (read as geek), I never developed a relationship with either program. The improvements here all seem to be part of the move by Apple to make the iOS and OS X experience as seamless or similar as possible and should be a welcome addition to The Captain.

Performance Improvements

Apple is really excited about the performance increases built into the new operating system, but I distinctly remember back in October all of the computers that were “slowed down” by Yosemite and needed upgrades. It will be great to see some slimming down of the resources needed to run the new version since 10.11 will still support some Macs made in 2007 which seems to me the longest they’ve gone in a while without sending 5+ year-old computers to the chopping block. But their claims of 1.4x-4x times as fast in certain circumstances definitely fall in the believe-it-when-we-see-it category.

En Conclusión

The features and performance upgrades will be a welcome addition to the Mac family overall, and there are a couple useful productivity enhancements that should make up for the slow computers and broken keychains that followed the release of Yosemite and Mavericks. Since El Capitan is more of an incremental upgrade, I’m hoping there won’t be as many issues as I’ve seen at release for the last 5 versions of Mac OS. With that being said, I would still caution users to wait a month or two after El Capitan hits the app store to see what potential complications might be in store (especially if you’re doing business with your Mac).

What are your thoughts on the new version of OS X? Share them with us below or catch up with us on social media. If you have any questions or needs, drop us a line.

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Nate Welling has been a technology hobbyist his entire life, spending summer vacations in his youth figuratively glued to computer screens. He has worked in computer services professionally for what seems like forever. He has more computing devices than anyone still able to speak and communicate effectively has any reason to use.