While much of the excitement has been surrounding the arrival of iOS 8 for iPhone and iPad, Apple also pleasantly surprised us this afternoon with a more-than-impressive update to its OS X software. First and foremost, the company delivered upon the name OS X Yosemite that most bloggers figured out after a mountain from Yosemite National Park appeared on a WWDC banner at Moscone West. Now let’s dive into all of its features…Â
General
- Redesigned user interface, including a cleaner dock
- Redesigned stock apps, including Safari, Mail and Messages
- Translucent menu bar, toolbars and windows
- Initiate a text message by clicking a phone number in Safari, Contacts, or Calendar
- Photos in OS X coming early next year — see Photos in iOS 8
- Widgets in Notification Center
- Today view in Notification Center
- Share menu extensions — including app-specific share sheets
- Smarter controls and buttons
- Custom actions
- New systemwide fonts
- Redesigned Spotlight, front and center with interactive previews and search results
- Family Sharing
Continuity
- Send and receive calls on your iPhone using your Mac
- Handoff — start a task on one device and finish it on another
- Instant Hotspot
Safari
- Private Mode — private web browsing like incognito mode on Chrome
- Streamlined toolbar, including a Tab View button
- The top-left green button is now for entering full-screen mode
- Improved and faster Nitro JavaScript engine
- Favorites view — a drop-down menu in the smart search bar
- Tab view — shows all of your tabs on one page
- Search tabs by URL or a term in the article name
- Spotlight Suggestions — based on Wikipedia, Maps, news, search engines and other sources
- DuckDuckGo search engine support
- Support for the latest web standards, including WebGL
- Improved social sharing options
- Mail Drop — for sending large attachments up to 5 GB per message
- Mark up attachments within the app, such as PDFs or forms
- Streamlined toolbar
Messages
- Record and send audio clip messages
- Send and receive SMS and MMS messages when your iPhone is nearby your Mac
- Name group conversations
- Add or remove participants to group conversations
- Leave a group conversation
Finder
- iCloud Drive
- AirDrop between iOS and Mac
- Streamlined toolbar
Developer Tools
- Swift programming language
- Xcode 6
- SpriteKit
- SceneKit
- CloudKit
- Improved game controller support
- Shared frameworks between OS X and iOS
Apple seeded the first beta of OS X Yosemite to developers earlier this afternoon, while a public release will follow in the Fall. There is also a public beta program for OS X Yosemite, although it is limited to the first million applicants. If you are interested in learning more about this latest OS X version, keep it locked on our OS X Yosemite section and look at the complete overview posted on the Apple website.