Apple Unveils OS X Yosemite

(RTTNews) - Apple Inc. (AAPL) on Monday unveiled OS X Yosemite, a powerful new version of OS X redesigned and refined with a fresh, modern look, powerful new apps and amazing new continuity features that make working across Mac® and iOS devices more fluid than ever.

With Yosemite, OS X has been redesigned and refined with a fresh modern look where controls are clearer, smarter and easier to understand, and streamlined toolbars put the focus on your content without compromising functionality, Apple said.

Translucent elements reveal additional content in app window, provide a hint at what's hidden behind and take on the look of one's desktop. App icons have a clean, consistent design and an updated system font improves readability.

The new Today view in Notification Center gives one a quick look at everything he/she needs to know with widgets for Calendar, Weather, Stocks, Reminders, World Clock and social networks. Spotlight® now appears front and center on the desktop and adds new categories of results, so one can view rich suggestions from Wikipedia, Maps, Bing, App Store, iTunes Store®, iBooks Store, top websites, news and movie showtimes.

Built right into the Finder, iCloud Drive stores files of any type in iCloud. With iCloud Drive, one can access all his/her files in iCloud from his/her Mac, iPhone, iPad® or even a Windows PC.

Safari has a new streamlined design that puts the most important controls at one's fingertips. A new Favorites view gives quick access to one's favorite websites, and a powerful new Tabs view displays thumbnails of all open web pages in one window. Safari also gives more control over privacy, with separate Private Browsing windows and built-in support for DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn't track users.

Mail makes editing and sending attachments easier than ever. With Markup one can quickly fill out and sign forms and even annotate images and PDFs from within Mail. Mail Drop allows to easily send large videos, images or files up to 5GB from the Mail app to any email address. Messages has a new look and delivers even more options for communicating with friends and family.

Continuity features in Yosemite make Mac and iOS device perfect companions. When an iPhone or iPad is near the Mac, Handoff lets one start an activity on one device and pass it to the other. Instant Hotspot makes using iPhone's hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network. Now the SMS and MMS messages that previously only appeared on iPhone appear in Messages on all one's devices. One can even send SMS or MMS messages directly from his/her Mac and make or receive iPhone calls using his/her Mac as a speakerphone.

The developer preview of Yosemite is available to Mac Developer Program members starting Monday. To help make OS X even better, Apple is introducing the OS X Beta Program, which gives customers early access to Yosemite. Mac users can participate in the OS X Beta Program for Yosemite this summer and download the final version for free from the Mac App Store this fall.