Apple’s OS X El Capitan Finally Catches Up To Windows’ Full Screen Apps

Apple’s OS X El Capitan Finally Catches Up To Windows’ Full Screen Apps

Apple has announced their new OS X: El Capitan. Yes, El Capitan is that famous mountain in Yosemite National Park. The best features? New smarter Spotlight and the (elegant) new way they manage full screen apps now — taking a page (read: lifting) from Microsoft’s Windows user experience.

Here’s the full demo of the new features:

The emphasis, as you might’ve guessed, isn’t on a new look. It’s more of an upgrade to the feel of OS X. This means a lot more gesture control, continuing the tradition of making OS X feel more like iOS. For instance, El Capitan lets you swipe two fingers across the trackpad to delete a message. You can also kill unwanted autoplay music with a single tap. And you can also pull up Mission Control with a three-finger swipe. This kind of stuff is largely reminiscent of Windows 10, and the list of little improvements goes on. Among them are some new, more natural ways to search your email and some more versatility with the Spolight window.

One of the coolest new features announced include the ability to do “split view.” This lets you use multiple apps in full-screen mode. You can also toggle through those apps with a new control bar on the top of the screen. (The user interface, pictured above, sort of looks like the mode you use to switch apps in iOS.)

Developers and gamers will also be pleased to know that El Capitan will support Metal, the programming language that Apple released for graphics on iOS 8. This is ostensibly so that developers can take advantage of this gaming engine and so that gamers can enjoy better performance. Considered with the rest of the details, El Capitan doesn’t seem like the most exciting OS X upgrade we’ve ever seen, but since Yosemite was so dramatic, some improvements in performance are certainly welcome.

El Capitan is available to all developers today. A public beta begins July and everyone can get OS X El Capitan this spring in Australia.


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