Apple on Monday showed off several new features coming to OS X, the company’s desktop operating system. Here are some of the highlights for the free update, coming later this year:
- The new version of OS X will be called OS X: El Capitan, named after the rock formation at Yosemite National Park. The previous version was OS X Yosemite.
- When users shake the cursor in El Capitan, it gets bigger, helping to find it when it goes missing.
- Among the new gestures include swipes for the Mail app which let users more easily delete messages.
- Safari is adding “Pinned Sites,” a new form of live bookmark, as well as a feature that lets users easily mute music-playing tabs.
- Desktop search is getting new context-specific tools. Users can now search for something like “documents I worked on last June,” and OS X El Capitan’s Spotlight feature will find the applicable files.
- Spotlight will now search for information like weather and sports scores, features similar to those shown off by Microsoft as part of Windows 10.
- The “Split View” feature lets users easily position two apps side-by-side to multitask on one screen.
Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said 55% of current Mac users have already updated to OS X Yosemite, giving it what Apple claims to be the fastest adoption rate in history.
