Just like the rumors have predicted, OS X 10.11 El Capitan is short on major headline-grabbing features Apple fans have grown accustomed to.
Instead, the Snow Leopard-style update focuses on speeding up everyday computing with such enhancements as graphics acceleration through Metal, faster apps enabled by Swift 2, battery saving technologies, stronger security and much more.
That means you won’t have to break the bank to buy the latest and greatest hardware from Apple in order to run El Capitan because it will run just fine on most recent Macs, according to the official OS X 10.11 release notes that Ars Technica unearthed today.
If your Mac can run OS X Yosemite, or Mavericks or Mountain Lion for that matter, it’ll purr after upgrading to El Capitan.
The following Mac systems are currently supported by El Capitan:
- iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
- MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
- MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
- Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
- Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
- Xserve (Early 2009)
Of course, not all features of the upcoming OS X refresh will be supported on compatible Mac models. For instance, AirDrop and Handoff require a modern wireless networking card that supports Wi-Fi Direct.
Metal, a hardware-accelerated graphics framework that has leaped from iOS 8 onto the Mac, may require a modern GPU as well.
Keep in mind that these system requirements are for the first developer beta of El Capitan. With a few betas until the software’s public release this fall, there’s always a possibility, albeit small, that system specs could change between now and then.
Apple claims El Capitan enables some rather stark speed improvements across the board, with up to 1.4x faster launching of apps, up to two times faster app switching and displaying the first email messages when opening Mail and up to four times faster opening of PDFs in Preview.
OS X 10.11 El Capitan is available as a developer beta today. A public beta will become available next month ahead of the software’s public release in fall.
Will you be upgrading from Yosemite to El Capitan?
Source: Apple via Ars Technica