As part of the announcements made during the WWDC keynote on Monday, Apple has unveiled both the name and focus of the next OS X version, 10.11, now known as “El Capitan.” As previously reported, the focus with the next update, scheduled for release this fall, will focus on improvements to the user experience as well as honing performance from the current 10.10, Yosemite. Although improvements are the focus, a few new features are also included.
As with Yosemite, software chief Craig Federighi noted that El Capitan will feature a public beta period, which will begin next month. Developers will be getting their hands on the new release today for testing. In a demo of some of the improvements, there were some notable “lifts” from iOS in Mail’s new support of trackpad gestures for trashing or marking unread certain emails. Mail also gains tabs, allowing users to work on multiple new outgoing emails at the same time.
Other improvements include a simpler-to-access Mission Control, and more intuitive control of spaces and placing applications in them, including making new full-screen app spaces on demand. The company has been optimizing the overall performance of the OS software, resulting in 1.4x faster app launching, switching to accounts and applications is now twice is fast, as is the retrieval of mail messages. Opening documents in Preview is now four times faster.
