Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan release date and new features

Here are our top ten features coming in OS X El Capitan and How El Capitan compares to Yosemite

Now we can reveal even more aboout OS X El Capitan because the Public Beta has finally arrived. Find out how to install the beta version of the software, and whether you should, below.

If you'd like to hear the Macworld team discussing their favourite announcements from WWDC 2015, including Mac OS X El Capitan, check out this video:

Apple has confirmed that the new version of OS X will build on the strengths of Yosemite with "real refinements". What that really means is that with this release Apple is focusing on performance and introducing only a handful of new features.

That's not to say that there are no new features for Mac users to enjoy. There will be tweaks to the interface, new full-screen views, changes to the way you arrange all the windows on your desktop, a smarter Spotlight that can recognize natural language (and be moved around your desktop), and changes to the Mail, Safari, Notes and Photos apps.

Our favourite new feature might just be the new way to find your cursor - just shake your mouse, or wiggle your finger on the trackpad, as we all do, but doing so will now make the curser grow in size momentarily.

The performance improvements will mean that your Mac should feel faster, for example, opening your first email message will be two times faster, according to Apple, and PDFs will open four times faster.

That's a very quick summary of what to expect from OS X El Capitan. In this article we will look more closely at all of the new features and also how you can get hold of the beta of El Capitan now.

Here are our top ten features coming in OS X El Capitan

If you install El Capitan and then think you made a mistake, here's How to remove El Capitan and revert to Yosemite

If you are already convinced you want to run El Capitan and are wondering just how quickly you can get you hands on it you will be glad to hear that you won't be waiting for long - in fact if you aren't risk averse you can get it now.

OS X El Capitan will launch in the autumn and when it does it will be a free download from the Mac App Store. However, there are a couple of ways to get hold of El Capitan even sooner than that.

The OS X El Capitan beta was available for developers shortly after Apple's keynote finished on 8 June, if you are signed up to the Apple Developer Program you will be able it download it now. You can now join the OS X and iOS developer programs for a single fee of $99 (£64) a year, rather than joining the two programs for $99 each per year. Developing for the WatchOS is also included in that fee. To join the Apple Developer Program enroll here.

The great news is that you don't have to be a developer to get your hands on the beta of the new OS X. A public beta is now available for consumers as of 9 July. You can sign up for the Apple Beta Software Program here.

To join the program just sign in with your Apple ID and accept the Apple Beta Software Program Agreement.

Once you are registered for the Apple Beta Software Program you will need to enroll your Mac here in order to be able to get the updates from the Mac App Store.

You will find a download link and you redemption code on that page of Apple's website. Log on to receive it - you won't get an email.

You will also have to re-enroll your Mac if you had previously been a tester for Yosemite.

One you have signed up for the public beta and got your code you can redeem in the App Store. You can then install the software via the App Store just as if it was a normal update.

Before you sign up for that beware that you will be testing pre-release versions of OS X El Capitan (and iOS 9 which is also part of the same program). Running a pre-release version of the software means that you will experience bugs and performance issues, so you might not wish to install El Capitan on your main Mac for fear of losing data, or you might prefer to install is on a secondary partition of the Mac. We'd recommend a full back up before you install it.

Read: How to partiton your Mac | How to get on the OS X 10.11 El Capitan public beta | How to update to the new Mac software, how to download OS X El Capitan | Dual-boot Yosemite and El Capitan on a Mac

The public beta is not the same as the beta being released though the developer program. it is likely that developers will receive more frequent updates including new features not in the public beta.

The first public beta was the same as Developer Beta 3. That means it at least has fewer bugs and is slightly more stable than Developer Beta 1 was.

Compared to the original developer beta, the public beta included some improvements to the Photos app, including the ability to sort albums by date or title, and the ability to add location to images. In version 3 developers gained access to editing extensions. There was also a change to Two-Factor Authentication.

10 July: 24 hours after the El Capitan public beta became available Apple issued a small update that fixed a problem that was causing 32-bit applications to crash.

22 July: The second public beta just appears to include bug fixes.

29 July: Apple released the third public beta of El Capitan at the end of July.

4 August: Apple released the fourth public beta of El Capitan on 4 August. Apple hasn't revealed what is included in this latest beta update.

Expect there to be bugs and issues in the beta - the versions of El Capitan available through the Beta Software Program are not finished products, by installing it you are agreeing to become a tester.

For example, in the first public beta there are already issues with 32-bit apps that may quit. "Some 32-bit apps may quit unexpectedly. Affected apps include Scrivener, MacSOUP, Torch, Cisco Jabber, iBiz and others. An OS X Software Update that resolves this issue will be available soon," states the company.

There is a license agreement all beta testers must agree to and it specifies that the El Capitan beta is "Apple confidential information." If you accept Apple's terms - and you must in order to partake in the beta program - you agree not to discuss your use of the software with anyone who isn't also in the Beta Software Program.

So you can't "blog, post screen shots, tweet, or publicly post information about the public beta software."

However, you can discuss any information that Apple has publicly disclosed; the company says that information is no longer considered confidential.

Luckily you can always revert to an earlier version of OS X, though depending on how you back up, it's not necessarily a painless process.

Start by making sure the data on your drive is backed up, then erase the drive and install Yosemite. When you first startup Yosemite you can use the OS X Migration Assistant to import your data from the backup.

Here's a complete guide to reverting back to Yosemite if you have had enough of El Capitan.

If your Mac was able to run Mavericks or Yosemite it will be able to run El Capitan. Those supported Macs include:

iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) Xserve (Early 2009)

All of those Macs feature a 64-bit CPU. You'll also need GB of space to be available for the install.

Find out if your Mac is supported by clicking on the Apple logo in the top left of your screen, and selecting About this Mac > Overview. There you will see details of which Mac you have, and the year that model first appeared.

When Apple announced that El Capitan would have the same system requirements as Yosemite and Mavericks it confirmed that the next version of OS X would actually offer improved performance on the older hardware.

Because it's building on OS X Yosemite, Apple felt that the new operating system should take the name of something within the Yosemite National Park, so OS X 10.11 will be known as El Capitan.

This follows the convention started with Snow Leopard. When Snow Leopard was introduced, it was a successor to Leopard, with security enhancements and system fixes (sound familiar)

El Capitan is the name of a rock formation in the Yosemite National Park. Its sheer granite face is said to be one of the world's most challenging for rock climbers. El Capitn means the captain, or the chief and was a Spanish translation of the name the Native Americans had given the rocks. Rock climbers and base jumpers refer to the rock as 'El Cap'. We've already started referring to it colloquially as OS Cap Ten. The general consensus seems to be that it's an awkward name, it generated a lot of banter on Twitter when it was unveiled with many variants of the name being shared for comedy value. Still it's probably a better name for the next version of OS X than the other well known rock formation in Yosemite: Half Dome.

The name isn't as important as the ways in which the interface is changing in OS X El Capitan, though. While the interface changes in El Capitan are minor compared to the complete overhaul of Yosemite, there are some very notable tweaks.

The first thing you will probably notice when you start up El Capitan is that when you wiggling your finger on the trackpad, or shaking your mouse, as most of us do when we want to locate the curser the curser will make your curser jump out at you so you can see it clearly. It's one way that demonstrates that Apple is taking note of user behaviour when updating the operating system.

A significant change to the desktop view that Apple didn't demonstrate during the keynote is the fact that a new option in System Preferences > General allows users to "Automatically hide and show the menu bar" in a similar vein to the way that users can choose to hide the Dock. This will be especially beneficial to users of smaller laptops such as the 11-inch MacBook Air or the 12-inch MacBook where every pixel counts.

During the WWDC keynote Apple's vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federaghi showed off some new (and old) ways of managing your desktop. Currently when you have lots of things open you can use Mission Control (probably F3 on your Mac keyboard) to view a minimised version of all the documents and apps you have open along with any desktop Spaces (where users can gather particular programs). We're pleased to see that the older Expos behavior has returned to the Mission Control view - currently in Yosemite when you press F3 you see documents associated with apps all gathered together. We preferred the was Expos used to show you minimized views off all the documents you had open so you could see them - rather than having the Word document you were looking for hidden behind another. The old behavior will return in El Capitan: pressing F3 will show all your open apps making it easy to find the right document amidst the multiple documents you have open.

In addition, a new Spaces Bar will make it easier to create and manage multiple desktops - a + appears in the far right of the Spaces Bar, click on that to create a new desktop. This isn't new behavior, you can add new Desktops in Spaces currently by clicking on the desktop image poking out of the top right corner of the Mac, but the new way is a lot more intuitive and the new design take up a lot less space.

There are also better options for working with multiple apps at the same time coming thanks to an improved full-screen mode. Clicking and dragging the green window-resize button will activate a new Split View that fills the screen with two apps at once. Users can choose the amount of space given to each app.

Another change not mentioned by Apple during the keynote is the new system font. As anticipated, the new San Francisco font found on the Apple Watch will be making its way to OS X (and also iOS 9). Currently, the system font in iOS 8 and Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite is Helvetica Neue.

If you are wondering what the San Francisco font looks like, the typeface is very similar to Helvetica Neue but the capital R is less rounded. At least that's how we can tell the difference.

We've had heard that the new font may not look great on non-Retina screens, but we can confirm that it looks absolutely fine on the 12-inch MacBook screen. We haven't viewed it on a 17in Retina iMac yet though.

Spotlight search is gaining some longed for enhancements: namely the ability to move the new Spotlight window around the screen. In Yosemite the Spotlight window moved from the right hand side of the screen to take prominence in the centre, which is a problem if it is overlapping other applications you are working with. In OS X El Capitan the Spotlight window can now be dragged away from the screen center. You can also resize the results window.

Our other wish for Spotlight hasn't been fulfilled (yet) - the Spotlight window still disappears as soon as you click into another application. When using Spotlight to perform calculations or conversions it would be useful to be able to see the answer when you are trying to add it to the document you are working on.

Spotlight does gain a few other improvements, though. The most notable is probably the fact that Spotlight now lets us users write queries in natural language. Search for "documents I wrote last July" for example and Spotlight will find those documents. We think that this new intelligent Spotlight could hint that Siri is coming to the Mac since that is exactly the phraseology that a user would use to ask Siri the same question.

Spotlight also gains access to weather, stocks, sports, travel, and web video, so searches cover a wider variety of places.

Read: How to use Spotlight in Mac OS X El Capitan

Apple rolled out Photos for the Mac earlier this summer. It's a companion app to the iOS version so we weren't expecting a big change in OS X 10.11, however, there are some new features and enhancements to the editing options, including support for third-party editing tools and third-party image-editing extensions, which you will be able to download from the Mac App Store.

When El Capitan arrives geotagging will return - the ability to tag a location is absent in Photos currently, but was in iPhoto so it is missed by many. Users will also be able to sort albums by date as well as title, and batch-change titles. Photos will be better at handling Faces too.

You will also have the ability to edit image data both individually and in batches. You'll be able to add location information, batch-organise faces and batch-change title.

You'll also find more flexibility for sorting albums - currently it's date only, but you'll be able to search by date, title and more.

Apple spent some time showing off two new features in Safari during the WWDC keynote, first, the ability to pin your favourite sites, and second, the ability to spot audio playing in tabs. These features are both known to Chrome users, so they aren't exactly groundbreaking, but they are welcome.

Pinned sites are like tiny tabs. shortcuts to those sites you visit every day, like Facebook or YouTube. It struck us that this is yet another way to store our favourite sites - we already have Favourites and Top Sites which essentially do the same thing. Apple needs to decide which of those we should be using (I stick to Favourites since those come up when clicking the URL field).

Audio can be muted with a single click on its tab, which will be welcome to anyone who's had multiple web pages open only to suddenly hear audio blasting out of their Mac. The new version of Safari will make it obvious which of those tabs is responsible and you will be able to hit a mute button on that tab. If you have more than one audio stream open Safari will make it easier to manage that too - just click on the speaker icon in the address bar to see a list of all the tabs playing audio. You'll be able to shut down the audio on the tabs you wish from this view.

Not announced during the keynote, apparently the Safari Reader has four colour themes and eight typefaces, plus Safari's top hit will show now when you search in Spotlight.

Read more about Safari on the Mac here

Notes gets a much needed refresh on the Mac - that app has been far too limited to be useful other than as a way to share text between the Mac and iPhone quickly.

Now it can now handle media including photos and PDFs, URLs, and map locations as well as text. It will sync with other devices on the same account. And it will allow formatting of text.

There's also a new formatting option that will turn a list into a checklist. You will also be able to share to Notes from other Mac apps.

Also in Notes is a new attachments browser which you can flick through to fins all the media, websites and other attachments you have added to Notes, similar to how you can look at all the images sent to you in Messages.

In iOS 9 Notes synced with iOS via an IMAP mailbox, rather than using the iCloud infrastructure to sync, like every other app on your Apple devices. In El Capital Notes will get the full iCloud treatment.

Read: How to use Notes on the Mac

The big news as far as Maps is concerned is that it is gaining transit directions, so if you aren't walking or driving you will be able to find your route (presuming you live in London and are using the tube or bus - as yet trains are not included, and the data doesn't go beyond the M25).

You may be thinking that the update to Maps is more likely to make a difference to you when you are out and about with your iPhone, but it appears that the OS X Maps version includes detailed maps of tube stations so that you can plan which exit to use.

Apple's Mail app will also gain some new features, many of which are reminiscent of the iPhone and iPad versions of the app. For example, new gestures include swiping to delete an email, just like in iOS. You can also swipe right to mark as unread.

There's also an option to hide windows within the app without minimizing them - just click on the inbox to minimize the message you are composing to the bottom of the screen, a bar will indicate its presence. You can click on that bar to open the email again, but you may not need to: you can drag attachments into this minimized window to include them in the email you are composing.

Mail also gains better integration with calendar and contacts - this means that if you receive an email from someone who isn't in your contacts Mail will offer to add them. If a friend invites you to meet up Mail will offer to create a calendar event for you.

Other new features include tabbed windows to manage different email threads and natural-language search so you can search for "emails from Ashleigh including photographs" for example.

Data detectors mean Mail will offer to add events to your calendar and contacts to your address book. This isn't a new feature, but it is improved in El Capitan Mail. It will adds banners in between the address field and the body of the message with data Mail's detected and possible actions you might like to take.

IMAP support is also set to improve in Mail 9, thanks to a new engine that makes it twice as fast, according to Apple. Mail will change the say it downloads messages, prioritising the ones in the inbox you are viewing, so you shouldn't have to wait for Mail to synchronize your messages before you can read any of them.

There is one more significant change coming to OS X El Capitan, Metal, the graphics technology that was announced with iOS 8. Metal will bring improved game performance and improved performance in processor hungry apps.

Metal is a core graphics technology that gives apps near-direct access to the GPU. According to Apple, Metal will make graphics rendering 40 percent more efficient and games drawing performance is 10 times faster. Apple also claims better battery life because of a 40% reduction in the CPU require to do graphics.

Metal combines OpenCL and OpenGL into a single API, bypassing the OpenGL framework. OpenGL runs slowly on OS X, dragging professional Mac apps down in comparison to their Windows counterparts, so bypassing OpenGL and making apps run natively on top of Metal is good news.

Adobe has already committed to adopting Metal for its OS X apps and demonstrated how Metal has improved After Effects and Illustrator. During the presentation, Federighi claimed that Adobe has confirmed it is able to deliver eight times improvement in rendering in After Effects. Illustrator also offers "flawless interaction", apparently.

Autodesk and The Foundry have also committed to using Metal and it is thought that using Metal will also drastically speed up the likes of Autodesk's Maya.

Metal for OS X is also great news if you're a Mac gamer. According to Apple, thanks to Metal, users can expect up to ten times performance improvements in games.

Major game developers have already confirmed commitment to Metal, including Unity and Blizzard, as well as Feral and Aspyr who specialize in bringing Windows games to the Mac. Thanks to the update users should see accelerate graphics in high performance games - plus games will get direct access to underlying graphics hardware.

Apple says that Metal will pave the way for "new levels of realism and detail in games and other apps". This means faster and more efficient rendering performance across the system.

Along with the performance enhancements coming in El Capitan we expect Metal to have a real impact on processor intensive work.

Read more: Complete guide to Metal, and what it means for Mac gamers

On the following page you can read the rumours from before WWDC - many of which may still prove to be true...

In the rest of this article we have pulled together all the rumours and speculation about what Apple is planning for the next version of OS X, along with system requirements, and some insight into the new features that Apple is said to be developing for the next version of its operating system. We'll keep adding to this article as we here more about what to expect in OS X 10.11.

There are lots of rumours flying around the web suggesting that the latest OS X update will focus mainly on stability and security, but we are hearing there will be some new features that consumers should enjoy. What we do know for sure is that the new version of OS X will be an improvement on OS X 10.10, and given the various issues that have plagued OS X Yosemite, this has to be a good thing.

Make sure you check out how to download the beta version of OS X 10.11, and also follow our guide to installing the new version of OS X. Also: Find out if your Mac will run OS X 10.11.

You can follow the news as it happens here:

One of the first things people are likely to complain about is the numbering of OS X 10.11, just as last year when people got into a debate about whether a release should be numbered OS X 10.10 or if that should roll over to OS X 11, or simply OS 11, given that the X is pronounced 10, as in Roman Numerals (you'd be surprised at how few people realize this). We imagine that when Apple named the operating system OS Ten all those years ago they didn't expect to eventually be talking about OS Ten, ten dot eleven. Perhaps this is why Apple now focuses on the operating system's more friendly name, either the Californian landmark (Yosemite or Mavericks) or big cat (Lion, Snow Leopard, and so on).

With iOS 9 soon to arrive, the true confusion of the numbering will really become apparent next year when Apple launches iOS 10 Maybe then the two operating systems will merge - otherwise the following year we would have iOS 11 and OS X 10.13 and that would just be silly.

So maybe Apple should drop the numbers altogether, in many ways it has, in all its marketing materials and all over the website Yosemite is never referred to as OS X 10.10. Just as OS X Yosemite. The only place you will see the numbers is on the Mac App Store when you go to download it and in About This Mac, when you check the version of the OS you are running.

There's another reason why Apple might not release OS X 10.11 as OS X 10.11. Microsoft has said that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows. This doesn't mean it won't ever update Windows again, just that it is changing it into a service that will see regular updates, rather than software that gets a massive update once a year. So, could OS X 10.11 be the last version of OS X with more minor updates happening regularly rather than once a year Apple already issues sequential updates throughout the year, but we don't think it will stop producing the more major, yearly update.

With all this in mind, the name Apple gives to OS X is what is important. We can't predict what the next version of OS X will be called, other than that it will be named after a famous Californian landmark or location. We have a few guesses here: 10 possible names for the next version of Apple's Mac OS X including Mojave, Sequoia and Tahoe, which we think are more likely names than Death Valley or Hollywood, but who knows

Our money is on Mojave, and since we know that Apple has already trademarked the names of a number of landmarks in California - including Mojave - that's probably a good bet. Apple has trademarked: Redwood, Mammoth, California, Big Sur, Pacific, Diablo, Miramar, Rincon, El Capitan, Redtail, Condor, Grizzly, Farallon, Tiburon, Monterey, Skyline, Shasta, Sierra, Mojave, Sequoia, Ventura, and Sonoma.

We don't actually know how to pronounce Mojave though, but for that matter we don't know how to pronounce Sequoia either. [Note: we've been told Mojave is pronounced Ma-harve and Sequoia is sec-oi-ha].

The name of the next version of OS X could also take a name from within Yosemite, following the convention started with Snow Leopard. When Snow Leopard was introduced, it was a successor to Leopard, with security enhancements and system fixes (sound familiar) Perhaps the next version of OS X could follow a similar theme, taking the name of one of the rocks, a river, or something else at Yosemite. For example, El Capitan or Half Dome.

One final thing to mention about OS X 10.11 is that its codename at Apple is Gala, not that this tells us anything about what it's final name will be - we certainly don't think that Apple is going to start naming the OS after apples. Last year OS X 10.10 was codenamed Syrah (which is a type of wine, like a Shiraz).

As we said at the start of this article, we are likely to see a preview of OS X 10.11 at Apple's WWDC, and there may be a demo version available shortly after for developers.

If the new OS X follows the same pattern as last year's Yosemite there will be the opportunity for members of the public to sign up to be part of the beta testing scheme, and a lucky few will be able to download a version of the beta later in the summer (in 2014 the beta was released to public testers on 24 July).

The final release of OS X 10.11 isn't likely to come until October, based on the past few years. Yosemite launched on 16 October 2014 at the same time as Apple announced new iPad, the Retina iMac and an updated Mac mini. That said, OS X could launch a month earlier, alongside iOS 9. It would make a lot of sense if the two operating systems were launched at the same time as many features rely on the other operating system to work - such as Yosemite's flagship Continuity features. If the new operating systems are even more unified it would be a shame if Apple makes the public wait a month to take advantage of half the features.

When Apple launched Mavericks it surprised everyone by making it free. Yosemite was also free, so we think it's a safe bet to presume that the next version of OS X will also be free.

It seems likely that the system requirements will be the same as OS X 10.9 Mavericks and OS X 10.10 Yosemite. For those systems users required 2GB of RAM, 8GB of available storage, and needed OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) or later. You need Snow Leopard because without that you won't have access to the Mac App Store, which you need to download the new version. Luckily Apple still sells DVDs of Snow Leopard for this purpose - find out how to get one here: How to get Snow Leopard.

As for which Macs will be supported, OS X 10.9 and OS X 10.10 were able to run on the following Mac models, dating back to mid-2007:

iMac (Mid-2007 or later)

MacBook (13-inch Aluminium, 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)

While these Macs were classed as supported, they didn't support every new feature of Yosemite. There were a number of the Continuity features, which enabled better communication between iPhone, iPad and Mac, that didn't work on older Macs due to lacking newer Bluetooth support. There is a workaround though, read about how to get Continuity features such as HandOff and AirDrop working on an older Mac.

Given that Yosemite was a massive design change, we aren't expecting a major upheaval in the new version. What we may see are a few system-wide interface tweaks. For example, there are rumours that the new San Francisco font found on the Apple Watch will be making its way to OS X as well as iOS 9. Currently, the system font in iOS 8 and Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite is Helvetica Neue. However, we've heard that the new font may not look great on non-Retina screens - after all this font has presumably been chosen because it is clear on a small inch wide screen, why should that same font be used on a 27in display

We also think that changing the system font could be a massive job - Apple and developers would have to redesign their apps to use the new font and given that they only did that last year with the introduction of Helvetica Neue we think it would be a big ask.

If you are wondering what the San Francisco font looks like, apparently the typeface is similar to Open Sans or Arial.

If the popularity of the new Dark Mode provided in Yosemite is anything to go by, Mac users would love to have more customisation options. In fact there have been calls for more Dark Mode choices, suggesting there is a real hunger for this kind of customisation.

Another suggestion is that certain interface elements could be tweaked, for example, those who don't like the fact that the green 'traffic light' in an application's menu now switches you to full screen could revert to the previous action of enlarging the window.

As we have already mentioned, the rumour is that OS X 10.11 will focus on stability rather than flash new features. This suggests that OS X 10.11 will have a lot in common with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which bought bug fixes, optimization and security enhancements. Apple called it Snow Leopard because it was building on its predecessor Leopard.

Following the numerous bugs that plagued the launch of OS X Yosemite this should go down well with developers and consumers alike, but this focus on quality assurance is likely to mean Apple will hold back some new features for the next iteration of OS X - indeed, there are rumours that suggest that Apple is doing exactly that in order to focus on ironing out the issues.

Yosemite has been plagued by WiFi and networking issues and this appears to be one area that Apple is looking to fix, more on that below.

After the WiFi issues that dogged Yosemite when it launched, we are hoping that the new OS X will be better equipped.

Apple has just released an beta of the next update to Yosemite (version OS X 10.10.4) and reports are suggesting that this update has dropped discoveryd, following network issues. Instead of discoveryd, when the update lands, OS X Yosemite will switch from discoveryd to the process used by older versions of OS X. About eight months after Apple introduce Yosemite this change will hopefully address some of Yosemite's networking issues. There are questions of why Apple used discoveryd in the first place, the most likely suggestion is that it was or is tied to AirDrop and Handoff, features that also didn't work very well when Yosemite launched.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the next version of OS X will ship without discoveryd, it may simply be that Apple has removed it from the current version and will re implement it in OS X 10.11, once it has fixed all the issues.

We hope that Mac users will not experience the same issues with WiFi that plagued the release of Yosemite. Users found that they couldn't connect to wireless networks after the update, and while Apple released a fix this couldn't be downloaded on Macs that were dependent on WiFi, like the MacBook Air. We had to resort to downloading a system update via a cellular connection. We sincerely hope Apple doesn't launch the next version of the operating system with such an unacceptable error.

Staying with the WiFi theme for a moment longer, there's said to be a new feature called Trusted WiFi coming in OS X 10.11.

Apparently Apple is working on a Trusted WiFi feature that will allow Macs and iOS devices to connect to trusted routers without requiring security measures. On the other hand, if you connect to a non-trusted routers data will be heavily encrypted. Apple is said to be testing its own apps and third-party apps to make sure that they still work when this feature is enabled.

Apple is also said to be developing a new security system called Rootless for the next version of OS X and iOS. This new kernel-level feature should prevent malware as well as protect user data. It will prevent access to certain protected files on the Mac, even from the admin-level. We hear that on iOS Rootless will scupper jailbreakers.

Apple is also said to be re-architecturing iCloud Drive file encryption for apps. We'll discuss this in the next section.

According to reports, Apple is moving a number of IMAP-based apps over to iCloud Drive. IMAP-based apps include Notes, Reminders, and Calendar and currently they use an IMAP-based back end for syncing content, this could be iCloud, Gmail, or even Yahoo. By moving them all to iCloud Drive Apple will be able to improve communication and offer faster syncing between the apps as well as improving security because it will be able to offer end-to-end encryption for the data. The transition from IMAP to iCloud Drive is likely to be simple for users, reports suggest users will just see a dialogue box offering to import the data.

Apple is also said to be upgrading its iCloud Drive servers in order to sustain the anticipated increase in usage.

A dedicated iCloud Drive app to view files is also said to be in the pipeline. This would be useful for iPhone and iPad users, who currently have no way of accessing iCloud Drive content other than via apps. It would be nice to be able to open the iCloud Drive app, find a file and have it open in the relevant app, akin to the way we work on our Macs. On the Mac the iCloud Drive is easily found via the Finder.

Below we will assess some of the rumoured features, and some of the features that Mac users are hoping to see in the next version of OS X.

Control Center was a feature that many expected to see in OS X Yosemite - it even showed up in an early beta of that software. However, when Yosemite launched it was nowhere to be seen. We hope that Control Centre may find its way into the next version of OS X.

We expect Control Centre to be similar to the Control Centre in iOS. It is likely to include music controls, access to Do Not Disturb, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. In fact reports suggest it will include many of the controls offered by the Mac's Menu Bar, so that could include Spotlight and Notifications, as well as Sleep, Shut down and Force Quit.

It is thought that these controls will move from Menu Bar to a pane that slides out from the left side of the Mac's display.

We don't expect the Finder-based file system to change in the next version of OS X, however, we have one request: when viewing Finder in column view it would be ideal if we could change the width so we can read a whole file name without having to switch to the list view.

Speaking of Spotlight, there have been many calls for the Spotlight window to not be locked to the middle of the screen. Currently the Spotlight search window appears in the centre of the screen when you click on the magnifying glass in the top right corner, or press cmd + space bar, this tends to mean it is always in the way, apart from when you actually need the data you have searched for, because as soon as you click away from the Spotlight window it will disappear. Anyone who has used Spotlight to convert currency will know the frustration of having to memorise the result when you click back into the app you required the data for.

We expect to see a number of new features that will benefit those with a Force Touch enabled Mac, there may also be an SDK released that will allow third-party developers to add Force Touch features to their apps. Read about Force Touch on the new MacBook here.

Following are some features that first made an appearance in iOS and are expected to make their way to OS X, or have already arrived on OS X but are expected to be improved in the next iteration of the Mac operating system.

Now that Microsoft has added Cortana into Windows 10 there are calls for Apple to do the same and add Siri to OS X. Siri could be used to set reminders, for example, or add calendar appointments, or it could notify the user about incoming emails. However, we wonder how useful Siri on the Mac would be in a noisy office environment, and whether people really use Siri on the iPhone, other than to set timers.

Currently Handoff in Yosemite lets users start something on their iPhone or iPad and then hand it over to their Mac. This could be an email, or it could be a webpage you are browsing in Safari. You can read more about Handoff here: Everything you need to know about Handoff, Phone Calls, Text Messages, and Instant Hotspot.

Now Mac users are calling for more apps to work with Handoff. iTunes, for example, is just crying out for Handoff integration so that you could switch from listening to your tunes on your iPhone to your Mac mid song. This same integration could potentially allow a movie to be handed off from the Apple TV to an iPad to watch on the go.

The Instant Hotspot feature was introduced in Yosemite and makes it easy to share the connection from your iPhone to your Mac, using your iPhone as a hotspot. Unfortunately it doesn't always work as planned, currently, so we are hoping for improvements in OS X 10.11. Read: How to turn your phone into a hotspot.

We'd love to see our notifications in sync across all our devices. Rather than getting inundated with the day's notifications (which we have already seen) when we open our Mac at home in the evening we'd like Notifications on the Mac to take a leaf out of the Apple Watch's book and only show us new Notifications.

Speaking of the Apple Watch, we'd like to see a message flash up on the screen of our Mac telling us that we should stand up and take a break, a little like the hourly reminders on the Watch. Read: Tips for using Notification Centre on a Mac

The Apple Maps app is as scuppered on OS X as it is on iOS by its lack of transit directions. Hopefully the Maps app will get transit directions in the next version. Maps is another app that could benefit from Handoff integration - users can currently send directions from a Mac to an iPhone or Apple Watch before heading out, but Handoff would simplify that process.

Since Yosemite launched we have been able to answer calls to our iPhone via our Macs. We'd like to see improvements to this feature, for example, audio quality is generally quite poor, and placing a call directly from the Mac requires FaceTime as a workaround. We're also hoping to be able to access visual voice mail on the Mac.

An iOS feature we'd love to see make its way to the Mac is QuickType. TextEdit already implements a 'suggested text' features that's reminiscent of QuickType and older auto-correct features in iOS: write a word, tap Esc and you get a list of suggestions. It would convenient if this was applied system-wide, not to mention easier to get used to. (Needless to say, we'd want there to be an option to turn it off system-wide, too.)

We would like to be able to use touch ID on a iPhone or an Apple Watch to unlock our Mac rather than enter a password.

Another feature we'd love to see is the option to copy something on one device and then paste it on to another. A shared pasteboard, hosted in iCloud, would be very useful.

There is more to apple's operating system than the file structure and design. There are a number of applications that ship as part of OS X, and in 2014 Apple updated a number of these. Can we expect the Apple apps to get the same attention this year

We're all desperate to see an update to iTunes. Last year's iTunes 12 might have offered a new look, but many Mac users found it less intuitive and there weren't many new features. Given that iTunes is the portal through which the iPhone and iPad communicate to the Mac, the way we manage our media, and our means to buy music, video and apps, it really needs an overhaul. In some ways it tries to do too much, in other ways it's bloatware.

We really hope to see usability improvements in the next version. Read: 15 iTunes tips and tricks.

One iTunes related thing we expect to see is the launch of the Beats-powered music streaming service from Apple. This should be a successor to iTunes Radio, which only launched in the US, so perhaps this time the new service will be available here in the UK too. Read: Beats-based music streaming service Apple Music to launch in June

It took almost a year, but Apple has finally released Photos for Mac, the companion app to the Photos for iOS. We don't expect to see much in the way of change in the next version of OS X, given that it was so recently launched. Read: How to use Photos for OS X and How to set up Photos for OS X.

Searching the Mac App Store could use some improvement. We find it frustrating that the search results often seem to return copycat apps rather than the obvious one you are looking for. Modern search engines have largely outgrown this problem by using algorithms that rate a source's credibility, but Apple's system has not. We hope that this improves on the iOS App Store too. Read: How to find the best apps on the Mac App Store.

Safari had a big revamp in Yosemite, with lots of new features. Our main criticism is that the Top Sites view and Favourites view are essentially the same thing, so we don't really need both. And the Tabs across the top of the window are nightmarish if you have a lot open, they get consertinered towards the right and left of the screen and that makes selecting one nigh on impossible. Luckily there is another way to view open tabs. Find out more about using Safari in Yosemite here.

Like Safari, Mail had a massive overhaul in Yosemite. Gaining features like Mail Drop and Markup. Read: Email tips for Yosemite, use Mail's new features. However, there are still a few things on our wishlist for Mail. For example, we'd like to be able to make it so that only only be for VIP emails would appear in Notifications. Speaking of VIPs we'd love if there could be more than 100. We'd also like there to be better spam and malware email management.

One final thing to mention, Apple's said to be updating its programming language that it introduced at WWDC in 2014. Swift is apparently going to reach "Application Binary Interface (ABI) stability," and its code libraries will therefore be pre-installed within the new iOS and Mac operating systems. This means Swift applications will require less space and consume less data - especially useful if downloaded over a cellular connection.

Apple will apparently not be shipping Swift versions of its own applications this year though, but the company will be converting its own apps to Swift in 2016 we hear.

We'll keep adding to this article as we here more about what to expect in OS X 10.11. Come back again soon.

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(www.macworld.co.uk)