The changes in the version of Safari that arrive with El Capitan (Safari 9) aren’t as massive as those that arrived with Yosemite, but they have an immediate effect on the way you browse the web. Given that the most recent versions of OS X all maxed out with five updates, having four in the first few months strikes us as odd.
We’re now four months in from the launch of OS X, and we’ve already had three software updates, with a fourth (OS X 10.11.4) in beta testing and due to launch soon. What has surprised us is the speed and frequency of updates.
Many users have noted problems with OS X El Capitan, which we’ve come to expect from most major software updates (it’s always good advice to wait until the first update before upgrading critical work systems).
Mac OS X El Capitan review: Recent bug fixes and updates Pinned tabs continue to load in the background, but after pinning Macworld, Facebook and Google we found ourselves typically going to the Smart Search Field to websites as before. Another feature in Safari that we thought we’d use more than we do.
It seems that using floating windows, or using the four-finger gesture to flick between full screens, are more convenient options than dragging windows together.
IPad Pro we just forgot about in El Capitan. Oddly, this feature we frequently use on the One of the most vaunted features in OS X El Capitan was the ability to pin two screens side-by-side. We find the slicker interface little comfort and have learned to use diskutil in Terminal for more advanced features. Disk Utility no longer offers the ability to repair permissions, or repair disks, or create RAID disks, or burn CD/DVDs. While Disk Utility isn’t buggy, it does feel like the removal of many key features has been detrimental. Read:īest Mac OS X email clients on the App Store.ĭisk Utility. Apps such as Sparrow, Mailbox and – more recently – AirMail, keep pointing to a new approach with swipes, snoozes and social media-esque interfaces. We find Mail’s push sync erratic, sometimes leaving messages around and it frequently complains that we can’t move or delete messages.īeyond the bugs, new approaches to Mail keep appearing on the App Store. Apple seems to have made a lot of under the hood changed to Mail, such as moving the Downloads folder. Users report frequent bugs in Mail, from the app refusing to open or failing to import mailboxes to missing messages. Here are four areas of OS X 10.11 that we’re unhappy with: Mac OS X El Capitan review: Areas where it falls shortĪfter four months several areas of El Capitan still don’t feel up to scratch. We find the continued absence of windows that snap to edges and corners somewhat odd, but apps like Moom and BetterSnapTool replicate this much-loved Windows feature.
The ability to get previews of Windows (by pressing the Spacebar) is a neat feature. We find ourselves using, and enjoying Mission Control. Apple’s move away from overlapping windows in Mission Control has proved to be a good move. It was jarring at first, but now we’re used to it. For us, San Francisco is bolder and friendlier and more space-efficient. Moving from Helvetica to San Francisco was a big move for Apple (a system font replacement permutations throughout the whole system). The ability to add videos, audio and PDFs have helped transform Notes into a throwaway text tool and a useful app. The ability to create lists in Notes is a bonus, and we often use if for quick disposable lists of items (such as a shopping list). The update to Notes 4, in particular, has brought us to the app and away from rivals (such as Wunderlist or Evernote). Notes is much improved, as is Mission Control we like the new system font (a more significant change than that might sound) and the ‘shake to find’ cursor feature is brilliantly useful.Ī mixed bag, then, but overall the speed bump is the biggest thing we were looking for from this update, and El Capitan delivers in that regard. New features, as we said, are fairly thin on the ground, but there are some goodies in there. Disk Utility has lost some features that we will miss, such as the ability to repair permissions and create RAID disks. Spotlight remains – in our subjective experience – sluggish, as does the Mac App Store. (Still, our optimism here points to another pleasing development: the speed and frequency of updates we’ve seen since El Cap first launched.) El Capitan is certainly faster than Yosemite, but it’s dogged by reliability issues. We hoped that El Capitan would be a sort of modern Snow Leopard: an OS with relatively few new features but much faster and more reliable performance compared to its predecessor. Some features remain buggy and unreliable four months on.