OS X 10.11 El Capitan
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OUR VERDICT
OS X El Capitan takes the foundation set in place by Yosemite and builds
upon it ever so slightly. There are no revolutionary new features or
redesigns to be found here, but the tweaks and polish make it a solid update
worth grabbing..
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Pros
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Multitasking
improvements
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Refreshed
Notes app
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Snappier
performance
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Cons
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Clumsy Split View controls
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Modest app updates
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It's much better to
think of El Capitan as an OS X update that adds some spit and polish to its
predecessor, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, while also providing some convenient tweaks
and features. And despite some minor pain points, Apple has succeeded in that
respect. If you're wondering whether you should make the leap from Yosemite to
OS X 10.11 El Capitan, the answer is ostensibly yes. That being said, let's
take a deeper look at Apple's latest, including its highs and lows, to see why
you should consider the upgrade.
Latest news
With
OS X 10.11.6 purportedly the last update for El Capitan, you may have expected
macOS Sierra to have left it in the dust when it arrived on September 20, and
you'd be right if Apple has anything to say about it.
In early October, the
company started seeding macOS Sierra as an automatic download, though you can
go into your settings and hang onto OS X El Capitan – if you so prefer. Among
the benefits of upgrading is the Photos app, overhauled to keep your memories
better organized, while Siri has been added to challenge Microsoft's own
virtual assistant. Unfortunately, Mac sales are down along with the
overwhelming majority of the PC market. This is due in part to a lack of
refreshed hardware including the MacBook Air 2016 and MacBook Pro 2016 models
expected to be announced later this month in line with macOS Sierra’s 10.12.1
update.
Interface
Upon first booting
your Mac back up after installing OS X El Capitan, you're not going to notice
many visually apparent changes. El Capitan largely carries over the same flat,
iOS 7-inspired design cues that arrived with Yosemite, and, frankly, that's a
good thing. You are likely to see to changes if you're astute and do a little
poking around. The first, and most aesthetically pleasing change is the
adoption of a new system font. Yes, after initially switching to Helvetica Neue
in Yosemite, Apple has once again switched things up with its own, specially
designed font called San Francisco that also appears in iOS 9 and on the Apple
Watch. Overall, this is a welcome change that only further unifies the Apple
ecosystem. The second main interface element change you're likely to notice
also happens to be one of convenience. Now, if you're struggling to find your
mouse cursor, simply wiggling the mouse back and forth will cause the cursor to
temporarily inflate in size. It's an extremely minor detail, but it's a nice
change that keeps with Apple's focus on the little things in El Capitan.
Split View and Mission Control
General interface
sameness notwithstanding, Apple has managed to bring some pretty major changes
to multitasking in El Capitan. On the minor side of things, the new Mission
Control features few tweaks that clean things up a bit.
Now, when you swipe
up with three fingers on your trackpad, you'll notice that Mission Control's
overall view of your open windows is more spread out. The multitasking feature
no longer overlaps windows, which could make it a bit easier to spot the window
you want at a glance. Meanwhile, the Space Bar at the top of Mission Control
now features labels, rather than thumbnails by default. Thumbnails aren't
totally gone, however, as hovering over the labels will give you a peek at the
thumbnails. And as an added bonus, you can now drag windows up to the Space Bar
to create new desktops. None of the Mission Control changes are what I'd
consider essential, but they aren't off-putting either. Where multitasking has
really taken off, however, is with the new Split View. Anyone who has used a
Windows PC in the last half-decade will be familiar with Split View. The
feature essentially lets you more easily manage side-by-side windows on your
desktop with a couple of clicks, rather than going through the cumbersome
process of manually resizing each window. There are a couple of different
methods for accessing Split View. The first involves clicking and holding on
the green full-screen icon in the upper-left corner of a window. One side of
your screen will then turn blue and you can then drop the windows on that side.
After that's done, OS X will show you other open Split View-compatible apps
that you can then drop on the other half of the screen.
The second method
involves the Space Bar in Mission Control. If you have an app already expanded
to full screen, you can swipe with three fingers to open Mission Control. From
there, you can drag a compatible app up to that desktop in Space Bar to add it
in Split View. Overall, Split View is a fantastic step forward for multitasking
on OS X. However, already being familiar with Microsoft's implementation of
Snap in Windows, I do have one misgiving about Apple's methods. Just getting
apps into Split View feels like it takes too many clicks, and I would have
liked to see Apple move more towards a "drag-and-snap" method. That
being said, it's still a great feeling to know I don't have to manually fiddle
with a window's size and position to work on two things at once.
Spotlight
Another area
receiving some big love in El Capitan is the improved Spotlight Search. We saw
Spotlight get a touch-up in Yosemite, but El Capitan works to bring it in-line
with its counterpart on iOS. Spotlight in El Capitan can now pull from more
sources for data, bringing you weather, stock, and sports information directly
to the Spotlight Search box with a click on the menu bar. Perhaps the largest
change to Spotlight, however, is the addition of natural language recognition.
Essentially, this means you can ping Spotlight with complex queries like "emails
from Bill in June" or "documents I edited last week." This also
extends to Spotlight's new web sources, allowing you to enter phrases like
"what's the weather in Cupertino."
There's no doubt that
the Spotlight Search's new smarts are a vast improvement over its previous
iterations, but I found the natural language input to be a bit finicky with how
I worded things at times. Additionally, while Apple has brought Spotlight a
little bit closer to its iOS counterpart in El Capitan, I can't help but feel
it's high time to go all-in and bring Siri to the desktop. After all, what's
more natural than simply asking a question with your voice?
Notes
The diminutive Notes
app has perhaps seen some of the biggest changes of any stock app in El
Capitan. Whereas Notes was previously a pretty barebones affair, it is now
expanded with the ability to add new types of content, more ways to format your
notes, and more. Users now have the option to add videos, PDFs, and Maps
locations to notes, making it that much easier to flesh out your ideas. In
tandem, Apple has expanded Notes to be an option in the Share Sheet across many
of its own apps – something developers also have access to – so pulling that
content in is a smooth as a couple of clicks.
To keep track of
these elements, the Notes app now includes an attachments browser, which
provides a running list of media elements you've attached over time. Combine
that with the ability to finally add proper checklists (as in, you can actually
check items off), as well as the addition of a third "categories"
pane, and it's hard to complain about this update. Some users will still flock
to third-party solutions like Evernote and Wunderlist for their needs, but the
stock Notes app is now much more viable.
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