First Moments On OS X El Capitan

by Jonathan Currey

After performing an upgrade, as most users will when they upgrade to OS X El Capitan, I hadn’t noticed any changes. The only way I could tell the upgrade completed was when I had to fill out a few forms and enable a few features when you first log in - standard operating procedure for any apple upgrade.  I can’t say if I noticed the upgrade took any longer or shorter time than prior OS X releases, as I entered dream land shortly after entering my password to allow the upgrade.  The installer file was a little over 6 GB in size, and once the upgrade completed I did not notice any reduction in available drive space since before I started the download from the Mac App Store.

Nothing looked different at first glance.  I needed to go to Apple’s website and start poking around to look for new features.  What struck me as odd is that I couldn’t find anything about the new OS X release on the homepage.  Apple has been pretty quiet on this release since the WWDC keynote.  It seems all the attention is focused on iOS these days.

Apple touts the following new features for El Capitan - Photos, Notes, Maps With Transit, Spotlight Enhancements, Safari, Mail and Mission Control.  

Photos - I haven’t fully bought in to the Photos App and having everything on the iCloud.  Why?  Because I take a LOT of photos and the thought of my iCloud drive filling with all my photography experiments seems wasteful.  I still like working with my Aperture and iPhoto apps, despite their quirks - which I paid for years ago.  The thought of paying for iCloud storage monthly - i’m on a budget and I already pay Apple enough damnit!

Notes - I liked the upgrade from iOS9.  This is nearly identical  feature wise to its iOS cousin, although I would like to see handwriting through my trackpad (I know I can use it because I can type signatures within Preview). I think notes is awesome!

Maps - Maps hasn’t changed much, with the exception of adding Transit maps in many major cities.  Atlanta was left off this list. Im not surprised since Atlanta’s mass transit is subpar and is only useful to get you downtown or to the airport from the suburbs. I’ll use this as an excuse to make a trip up to NYC soon and try it out.  Apple says it will be adding more cities as it works with the cities and transit authorities.  MARTA, however doesn't strike me as an organization easy to get along with.

Spotlight - Check. It has smarter integration and can perform more functions.  I still want Siri on here.  It’s still a good improvement, and yes, it tells you the weather.

Safari - You can now pin websites to the safari tab bar. I used to live in this browser, but last year it seems harder to get to and utilize bookmarks.  Safari has been playing catch up to Chrome and Firefox on the speed and feature fronts for a while.  It’s still so much better than IE Microsoft Edge - but those don’t count here in this ecosystem.

Mail - Swipe Right!  It’s now easier to delete Spam! - and accidentally delete really important emails. I’ll try more out later.  Apple is trying to make the divide between Mac OS and iOS more and more transparent, and it is doing the job well.

Split View -  I absolutely love this!  I liked full screen view, but now that I can narrow my focus on just what I am working on and what I need to reference…. Thank You very very much!

Mission Control - I volunteer as Tribute!  Swipe a three finger salute up on your trackpad and quickly access other applications.  and Split View pairs you have open.  I’d take Mission Control over the Windows Task Bar any day, every day - if Windows weren't required to pay the bills.

As usual there are other features and enhancements used to help speed things up on your Mac and improve overall performance.  I cannot vouch for much considering i’ve only used this on a 4.5 year old MacBook Air - 11 inch - sporting a Core2duo and only 2gb of ram, integrated video and a spacious 64gb SSD.  It runs very well considering the age of this hardware.  Apple is continuing to crossbreed innovations - by introducing Metal to enhance graphics performance as it has in iOS.  This little laptop still has some life in it - Thanks Apple!

At first glance, this upgrade will be well worth it.  I see split view as a real productivity enhancer and the iOS feature hand me downs welcome.  Although I still haven’t quite gotten used to handoff and it is annoying that multiple devices start ringing when you get a phone call - things introduces in OS X Yosemite - I think this is a good upgrade!