OS X El Capitan (10.11) Public Beta - Minor update, good stuff

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Apple has recently released the Public Beta of the upcoming new OS X version, 10.11, better known as El Capitan, scheduled to be officially released by this Fall.

The name chosen seems indicative of a minor update, which tweaks and improves on top of Yosemite release (El Capitan is a vertical rock formation located inside Yosemite National Park).

However, El Capitan brings long-needed improvements and provides solutions to some annoying problems.

Installation

Thanks to VMware Fusion 7, I could install El Capitan in a virtual machine.

The current VMware version doesn't support El Capitan yet.

Therefore, I created a Yosemite virtual machine and upgraded it by using Install OS X El Capitan Public Beta.app, previously downloaded from App Store (6 GB).

The installation is slick and fast. I had some problems enabling the sound on the virtual machine, but I could solve them by using the drivers provided in this page. 

First impressions

The look of the new OS X has been revamped and improved, and so is its performance. 

Though using a virtual machine for my testing, I had sometimes the feeling El Capitan was even faster than my physical system.

New Features

Safari

1. Pin tabs: If you often visit a website, you can now pin it to Safari. In fact, when you open a new tab in Safari, you can right-click it and select Pin Tab. A small icon of the website will be shown on the left of the address bar. If you click it, you'll be quickly brought to the pinned website (in the figure, you can see LinkedIn, Quora and YouTube pinned to Safari).
2. Mute sound from a tab: El Capitan finally solves an annoying problem. If you have several open tabs, one of them may sometimes start playing sounds. If so, it can be hard to find the culprit, while you hear sound apparently coming from nowhere. With the new Safari version, a sound icon is displayed next to the tab causing the problem, so you can quickly mute it and save the day. 

System Features

1. Enhanced multitasking: El Capitan makes it much easier to snap two windows side by side in full screen, implementing the so called Split View. You can also drag and drop a window on a specific desktop in Mission Control.
2. Improved Spotlight search: Like I had anticipated in my previous post OS X - Spotlight as a search engine: overlooked feature or revolution? Spotlight's web search features have been enhanced, configuring it like a proper search engine. It's also possible to look for specific emails, filtered out by subject name, date, and more.
3. New Notes features:It's now possible to format text by changing the font, creating bulleted and numbered lists and checklists. You can as well drag and drop images, videos, PDF files and links.
4. Mail new features: If you're composing a new message and minimize it in the process, now you don't need to go to Drafts to resume from where you held off, but only to the bottom of the Mail window. You can also compose multiple message at the same time, by adding new tabs to your Mail window, when in full screen.

Improved performance

In El Capitan Apple has introduced a graphics technology already featured in iOS, called Metal, that causes applications to load 1.4 times faster.

This is a welcome enhancement and, even with older Macs, its impact is very remarkable.

Wrap up

Though OS X El Capitan Public Beta can be considered like a minor update (not introducing any remarkable overhaul), it brings important improvements to system performance and to numerous applications, making OS X yet more solid, reliable and user-friendly.

It's too soon to express a final judgment on the new Apple's operating system, but so far so good.

It's faster and more reliable than Yosemite and it felt quicker than my physical OS.

Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong but I'm reasonably sure this is a first step on the right track for Apple.