OS X El Capitan to be released Wednesday, September 30th

El Capitan is a free upgrade and available on Wednesday.

Macworld calls El Capitan “solid as a rock”, noting improvements to features like Mission Control and the introduction of Split View as big positives.

El Capitan has upgrades affecting window management, includes Spotlight search and has better performance said Apple.

The user interface, for a start. There’s a so-called Attachment Browser in the app, which you can use to sort things by file type rather than in reverse-chronological order. If you find a problem using these tests, you may need to see a Genius at your local Apple Store. Suffice to say, my thoughts remains the same: While this is clearly not as big a release as last year’s update, all of the changes here are welcome, and a few were even overdue. The natural response is to wiggle the mouse in the hope it shows up.

There are other small but crucial tweaks that make life easier. If you have a MacBook or a trackpad mouse for desktop, a three-finger swipe up gives you a full view of all your open windows. Previously, if you had a bunch of documents open, they would sit piled up on each other. Mission Control’s new view helps you parse it all a lot faster than before. Now, the small versions of all the documents sit separately. Big changes happen on the surface every two years with the tick updates with the following year consolidating and refining.

Click and hold the green dot on top of a window.

Not only does it tell you which train station and entrance you need, but Maps also lets you schedule trips via mass transit for the future. The installer will delete itself when you install the operating system, but it can be re-downloaded if necessary. In each case, the search-results panel offers a tidy display of information on your query.

The best one may seem simple and silly, but it’s incredibly useful. Others, like System Integrity Protection, are merely iOS-inspired. It’s not dissimilar to the Helvetica that preceded it but looks elegant and familiar – it’s also used in iOS 9 and on the Apple Watch. Metal, Apple’s graphics-enhancing software suite that it created for iOS 8, now works on the Mac too-that means power-user apps like Adobe After Effects and any of the 12 decent games that support Macs can run better, but it also means developers will have an easier time moving their games from iOS to Mac and vice-versa. So opening a PDF, for instance, is noticeably faster. Again, this is something you notice when switching back to a machine without this feature.

The changes in Apple Maps are great, but the app still isn’t the best option for many until more cities get all the latest features.

Another handy feature is the ability to not just find, but also silence noisy tabs. Notes now lets you plonk photos and videos into notes as well as maps and URLs or even saved web pages.

Once Parallels is installed on your Mac and you connect a new external device, a phone say, you’ll have the option to “assign” the device to the Windows or the Mac side. This is very handy. It’s also easier to sift through Web links and attachments you’ve added. It also recognises content within messages like dates so you can them to you calendar. In particular, the site points out the exciting possibilities that will come from the addition of third-party extensions for Photos, allowing users to take advantage of the editing tools of other photo apps within Apple’s own Photos experience. For example, you can look up “messages sent from Henry Blodget yesterday” and get exactly that. You can go to full screen view but still switch from composing a message to checking details in another email by swiping a draft to the bottom of the screen. Tap on the tab to bring it back into view when you’re ready.

You’ll be able to search your mailbox for “messages ignored from …” for example, or search your files for “documents I worked on last June”. Or you can install a separate browser, such as Google’s Chrome, and play your Netflix or Hulu video there. In El Capitan, they’re no longer clumped by program; you can see them all spread out. Now, whenever audio is playing, a Mute button appears at the top of the Safari window. One click and all sites are muted.

Before you upgrade to El Capitan, it helps to perform a few tasks first. The Color Picker dialog box, a longstanding element of many visually oriented programs, has had a makeover, too.

The automatic recognition of contact information and events like “Let’s have dinner tonight at 7PM” are genuine improvements that save time and effort. It’s nearly surprising that Siri isn’t included in El Capitan, though leave it to Apple to be the last to decide talking to your computer is okay.