In an unexpected move today, Apple departed from the usual cat naming scheme, and announced the newest version of OS X, titled Mavericks, in honor of California. It boasts some impressive new features, the most important of which were demoed in the keynote.
Finder
Finder now supports tabs, which can easily be merged from multiple windows, and is reportedly a great app to take fullscreen. Apple has also added ‘tagging’ to files and filders in Finder, which allows you to categorize all of the items in your filesystem into easily accessible areas in Finder. Each document can have multiple tags, and it will appear in each area.
Multiple Displays
Apple has done a lot of work with multiple displays to improve the experience. The two displays now act almost completely independently, with the dock and spaces acting separately on each display.
You will be able to transfer fullscreen apps easily between displays, and Apple TV mirroring will create a fully independent display wherever your Apple TV is plugged in.
Battery Life
A big topic in the presentation was how Mavericks will help you save power and reduce the load on the CPU. Timer coalescing will enable the computer to coordinate work when the computer is active, so that it doesn’t have to go through the transition from idle to active, an expensive operation.
Memory compressing is another new feature that enables the computer to compress the RAM space, so that the computer does not have to write inactive memory to the disk, allowing it to perform better under stress.
Safari
Safari has been revamped to use minimal memory and CPU. App Nap is a feature that is system wide, but was specifically demoed on Safari, that stops apps from using excessive CPU when they are in the background, which will dramatically save battery life. The top sites screen has also been revamped, with a great new interface that incorporates bookmarks, reading list, and a new feature called shared links.
Shared links allows you to see all the links being shared on social networking sites right in Safari, and visit all of them without ever leaving the app.
iCloud Keychain, Calendar, Notifications
Mavericks now introduces Keychain to the cloud, and it will save your passwords (encrypted, of course!) and sync across your iCloud account.
Additionally, Apple has revamped Calendar, with no more skeuomorphism. It can integrate with Maps to predict locations and travel time, and supports continuous scrolling across the entire calendar.
Notifications have been extended, and now allow you to do things such a respond without answering a FaceTime call, view notifications without having a specific app open, and much more.
New Apps
Some apps that people have been missing from Mac OS X are finally arriving to the platform, most notably Maps and iBooks.
The somewhat infamous Apple Maps has finally made its way to the Mac, and it looks pretty awesome. Not only does it support everything on iOS, but you can also bring up turn by turn directions, which can be sent directly to your phone when it is time to go.
iBooks is on the Mac now too, and it works seamlessly with iCloud, so that it can remember what page you were on last, whatever device you pick it up on. It also supports Apple’s textbooks, with flashcards and notes too.
Mavericks will be coming this fall to the public, but members of the Mac Developer Program will be able to pick up the developer preview starting today. Stay tuned for more from WWDC.
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