Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan gets useful new features and thoughtful refinements (hands-on)

For the past week I’ve been using a demo version of Apple’s latest Mac OS, El Capitan, and so far, I like what I’ve seen. While the changes are mostly refinements to what we got in Yosemite, there are a few brand-new features I’ve taken a strong liking to. The split window addition in particular has me excited for the full release.

At its WWDC keynote Apple said El Capitan was about refining or streamlining features you had in Yosemite in order to make common actions easier. I’ve gone through each of the biggest feature tweaks, and while I think the tweaks will be appreciated by most users, there’s nothing here that’s going to completely change the way you use your Mac.

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If anything, El Capitan reaffirms its recent design consistency. The new Mac OS X still works closely with iOS devices, using iCloud Drive to sync all your most important info to whatever device you’re currently working on.

In this preview I’m only going to cover the biggest new features, but expect a full review when Mac OS X El Capitan is released this fall. It is, once again, a free upgrade for existing Mac users.

Managing windows and desktop spaces

Mac OS X has had some form of Mission Control since 2011, when Mac OS X Lion was released, letting you quickly see every window on your desktop so you can get to the window you want. It also lets you drag and drop windows onto their own desktops, and create work spaces with specific apps.

With El Capitan, Mission Control gets a facelift that Apple says streamlines the experience with a better layout, and will give you easier access to desktop Spaces and full-screen apps. In earlier versions, open windows would overlap by application, but now they are displayed separately to make individual windows easier to find. There is also a better interface around Spaces at the top of the screen, so you can click and drag windows onto a separate desktop and manage your full-screen apps.

Taking a page from from Microsoft Windows, with Mac OS X El Capitan you’ll now be able to put two apps automatically side by side in full screen. Once you click and hold the green full-screen button in the upper left corner of the window you can drag the window to either side of your desktop and it will snap into that half of the screen. Then, you can select another window from your desktop to occupy the other half. The two apps will now be in full-screen mode and you can use the standard three-fingered swipe on a trackpad to switch to other desktop spaces. You also can drag the divider in the middle to show more of one window or the other.

Microsoft introduced Windows snapping to the edges in Windows 7 and its arguably much easier to drag from the top of a window to the side of the screen. But even if it’s slightly more work, I’m still glad it’s coming to OS X.

Spotlight search casts a wider net

Spotlight search already gave you hard-drive results and added Web search to the mix in last year’s release of Yosemite. But in El Capitan, Spotlight searches more topics that include weather, stocks, sports, Web video and transit info (more on this later). Questions like “What’s the weather in Tokyo?” or “Steph Curry highlights in 2015” will return a forecast or list of videos (respectively) without leaving the Spotlight window.

You also will be able to perform a search using natural language. You can say things like, “Documents I worked on last Tuesday,” and Spotlight will only give you results that fit that criteria. It also will handle more complex queries such as “Numbers documents I worked on yesterday with the budget,” and you will get just the Numbers spreadsheets that contained the budget.

New features in core apps

There are also several tweaks — both major and minor — to many of the core apps that come with Mac OS X El Capitan.

The biggest changes come to Notes, the simple note-taking app that hasn’t seen much in the way of upgrades since it first appeared on Mac desktops. Notes now has options for formatting text from a drop-down menu at the top where you’ll be able to create larger text headings, outlines, bulleted lists, and check lists. The check lists are particularly useful, because you can highlight a list of items, then instantly add radio buttons to the left of each item so you can tick them off as you go.

You’ll also be able to drag and drop images, videos, PDF files and links. It’s really great to see Notes get more advanced options, because it’s probably one of the most used apps for Mac users besides Mail and Safari.

Speaking of Safari, there are a couple new worthwhile refinements in the browser that should please most Mac users. A new Pin feature lets you pin a Web page to the browser, resulting in a small tab with only the site icon that sits on the left side of your tab bar. Once pinned, these sites will stay even after a restart. While useful, this feature is nothing new, because you already have this functionality in third-party browsers like Firefox.

Safari also has a new way to mute the audio for an individual tab. We’ve all experienced a time when we have several tabs open and suddenly audio from a video on a Web page will start playing. Instead of going through each tab, Safari now displays a sound icon that you only need to click once to mute. Again, this hardly a game changer, but it’s a useful feature that is welcome on the new OS.

The Mail app got some small tweaks to make scheduling easier and that make it bit more like iOS Mail. For starters, when you get an event invite, Mail will automatically block out the time on your calendar without you having to do anything. Also, to speed up going through your inbox, you can now use a two-finger swipe gesture on individual emails to mark them as read or send them to the trash.

The Photos app took over as your main photo manager earlier this year, finally replacing iPhoto in the Mac OS. It has only been available since the spring of this year, but El Capitan adds some new features that photo buffs will appreciate.

New support for editing extensions let third-party photo editors embed their effects in the Photos app. This means you’ll be able to add filters and other tweaks from your favorite apps, without ever leaving the Photos app. You’ll also be able to combine effects from separate extensions. Managing photos will also be easier, because you’ll be able to edit image locations, batch change image titles and batch organize Faces features.

Finally, public transit directions

A major shortfall of Apple Maps since it was introduced was the lack of transit directions. Obviously, not everyone has a car, and if you live in a big city, public transportation is often the best way to avoid headaches.

With El Capitan, Transit directions are finally here. You can enter the location you want to get to, then pick the new Transit tab over on the left side of the screen. You’ll immediately see bus, train and light-rail maps, and the app will give you options for each so you can get to your destination how you want to. But what I like particularly is the ability to click on a train station or bus line, and Maps will show you what lines go through that station, and it will show you all the entrances and exits for the station to make it easy to get picked up, for example.

Transit directions are something that should have been added when the app was introduced, but I’m glad to see it’s finally here and it looks like Apple tried to go the extra mile to make them even more useful.

So far, a worthy upgrade

The early version I looked at had some minor bugs and some features were spotty, but that’s to be expected with an early developer release. Most of the new features worked great on the first try, and Apple pointed out that since it is still working on the back-end details, there would be periodic outages. I still was able to test every feature for this preview, and I liked what I saw.

But while all the new features will be useful, most are streamlining what you already had with Yosemite. As a mature OS, this is to be expected, but I’m just saying you shouldn’t assume that El Capitan is going to completely change the way you use your Mac. Instead, it’s refining features, making things easier, and adding in features we sorely needed (like transit directions).

Mac OS X El Capitan will be available sometime this fall as a free download, so while there’s nothing particularly ground-breaking here, it will be a welcome upgrade with useful additions for anyone who uses a Mac.