El Capitan

[apanacci]

Its on the horizon. Here we go again ! New OS

[mikehalloran]

Not this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1vPmC_CQQY

Frankly, the best announcement I saw was this one:

iOS 9 will give your iPhone up to 3 extra hours of battery life

http://mashable.com/2015/06/08/iphone-i ... ower-mode/

At WWDC 2015, Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi announced iOS 9 will extend battery life on iPhones by one hour. Another "Low Power Mode" will extend battery life up to three more hours on top of that.

SEE ALSO: 7 Ways to Preserve Your Battery Life on iOS 8
http://mashable.com/2014/10/01/how-to-s ... ery-ios-8/

Low Power Mode is indicated by a yellow battery life icon. Android smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy phones have had special power-savings modes for a while.

Federighi didn't specify what the extra three hours actually referred to. Three extra hours of talk time? On Wi-Fi? On a 4G LTE connection? We'll update as we find out.

With iOS 8, the iPhone 6's battery lasts up to 14 hours on 3G for talk time, up to 10 hours of 3G and 4G LTE Internet use, up to 11 hours on Wi-Fi. It gets up to 11 hours for HD video playback and up to 50 hours for music playback.

Update 6/9/15 10:27 a.m. ET: Low Power Mode limits network activity by switching the Mail app to fetching manually, disabling background app refresh and downloads, reducing motion and brightness, and reducing network speed.

[James Steele]

Last night I watched the WWDC video and got a crazy notion to make an image of my boot drive and install the beta (I have a developer account) of El Capitan just to see if all hell breaks loose. But then I thought about all the potential reauthorizing of plugs I'd have to do, even after restoring my boot drive from the image I made, and figured I'd pass. (Another reason I like iLok.)

[nk_e]

I thankfully didn't see a whole lot of new whiz bang features. If they are focusing on refining the OS and quashing bugs and rectifying mistakes (discoveryd anyone?), then I will be happy.

[James Steele]

I thankfully didn't see a whole lot of new whiz bang features. If they are focusing on refining the OS and quashing bugs and rectifying mistakes (discoveryd anyone?), then I will be happy.

Well, ONE thing that look interesting was Metal, which is supposed to make graphics tasks much less taxing... like orders of magnitude improvements. It would make video editing apps and other apps that render video or 3-D modeling, much faster and pleasant to work with. Made me wonder if it would make DP more responsive as well. But I imagine Final Cut Pro X will eventually be vasty improved when it's updated for Metal in El Capitan.

[nk_e]

Agreed. It wasn't clear to me if "legacy" video cards can take advantage of this however.

[HCMarkus]

Agreed. It wasn't clear to me if "legacy" video cards can take advantage of this however.

A concern, indeed.

[billf]

Agreed. It wasn't clear to me if "legacy" video cards can take advantage of this however.

Probably not all of them.

BTW, is it true that the new OS won't EOL any Macs that are currently supported? If so, that is quite good.

[James Steele]

Agreed. It wasn't clear to me if "legacy" video cards can take advantage of this however.

I couldn't tell. It seemed from what I could try and decipher, it was just more efficient and you might not need a completely new graphics card for this. That would be nice. Still, it might be worth upgrading graphics cards.

[Shooshie]

One fix in El Capitan appears to be the removal of discoveryd. That's a networking process which originally replaced mDNSresponder in Mavericks or Yosemite, I'm not sure which one. It has a bug for which nobody seem absolutely sure of the causes or the fixes, though there's been much written about it, including some incredibly complicated (as well as some simple) approaches to temporarily fixing it.

One of the symptoms of this bug is a network process which suddenly consumes 100% of your CPU, and which doesn't respond to any normal maintenance or repair procedures. Even when you know a terminal script which fixes it, if there are any other nodes on the network where it could have poisoned the well, so to speak, you have to go to each one and run the script, delete prefs or whatever it takes to reset them. Once the demon is loose, it doesn't go back in the cage easily.

I first experienced it when my daughter's boyfriend of the time would log on to our WiFi. I didn't know he was the source until hindsight, but it took a full day to get things under control, and I wasn't even sure how it got reset. Then it happened again and again, and I realized that each time it happened right after he arrived and logged on. He was using an Android phone.

Though it has been discussed endlessly, Apple has been suspiciously silent about it. Now, the El Capitan beta contains mDNSresponder in place of discoveryd, which may be a step backward in Apple's secret networking plans, but it at least fixes the problem, which apparently has been a nightmare in large LANs where Apple understandably doesn't want to damage its reputation.

Nobody knows if the final product will contain mDNSresponder or something else, but it appears for now that Apple at least will be addressing the problem.

Shooshie

[HCMarkus]

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/12/os- ... im-support

Apple could certainly make changes as development on OS X El Capitan continue, but given the built-in trimforce tool it certainly appears the company intends to allow TRIM to run on third-party SSDs.

NOW we're talking!

[Morpheo]

Agreed. It wasn't clear to me if "legacy" video cards can take advantage of this however.

I tested it today. I installed El Capitan on my 5,1 Mac Pro (separate partition), and the 5770 is NOT Metal compatible. Kinda sucks, however the OS runs just fine. Which means my 1,1 will be able to run El Capitan just fine as well... Upgrading the graphic card to get Metal on a 5,1 is no biggie, however on a 1,1 it might be more difficult, as these older Mac Pros need 32bit EFI.

[mikehalloran]

BTW, is it true that the new OS won't EOL any Macs that are currently supported? If so, that is quite good.

Perhaps. Certainly not any i5 and i7 Macs, i3 is probably safe, too. Any beta testers on Core 2 Duo Macs? Since they can also boot into the 64bit kernel, it would surprise me if that is no longer supported. Not all features of Lion–on are supported on the Core 2 Duo but they run fine on Yosemite otherwise.

Core Duo and Core Solo Macs were made obsolete by the 64bit Kernel. 10.7.5 was the last OS those could run in 32bit mode only. Hmmm... I am not recalling any Core Solo past the first gen Intel Mini.

[mikehalloran]

Agreed. It wasn't clear to me if "legacy" video cards can take advantage of this however.

Probably not all of them.

A legitimate concern since nearly all the ATi cards found in Mac Pros and iMacs between 2009-2012 have a firmware bug that Apple never fixed.

[James Steele]

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/12/os- ... im-support

Apple could certainly make changes as development on OS X El Capitan continue, but given the built-in trimforce tool it certainly appears the company intends to allow TRIM to run on third-party SSDs.

NOW we're talking!

Indeed. About time, Apple.