On Tuesday, said its latest computer software, called OS X Mavericks, will be available as a download for Mac users for free.
In the past, Apple has charged existing Mac customers for major updates their computer operating system, as does Microsoft for PC users. “Today, spending hundreds of dollars for updating your computer is gone,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, at a press event.
With the update, which Apple first previewed during the summer, the company isn’t trying to rock the boat in how customers use its computers. Instead, it decided to make waves with an overhaul of its mobile operating system, iOS7.
Here’s a brief tour of what’s new on the Mac OS:
More Links With Mobile
While it hasn’t merged its mobile and PC operating system like MicrosoftMSFT -1.17%, Apple has been pushing more integration between the two. In 2010, the company unveiled the Mac App Store, using many of the technologies it built for the iOS App Store. The company has also integrated technology like “FaceTime” video calls and iMessage chat into its PC software.
In OS X Mavericks, Apple is introducing its iBooks and Maps apps to the desktop computer and laptop. Both of the programs look and function largely like they do on the iPad, and, of course, synchronize usage data between them. One party trick with the mapping app: Plan a trip on a Mac and then send it to your iPhone to act as a GPS on the road.
Apple is also tacking passwords with a new feature called “iCloud Keychain.” The idea, Apple says, is to make it easy for customers’ computers and mobile devices to remember credit card numbers, login information for websites, and more. Apple says the service is secure, and the data is regularly synchronized between all of a customer’s devices.
Refinements On Top, and Under the Hood
A lot of the work being done on OS X now is making it simply more efficient and nice to look at. In that vein, Apple has added some useful features, like the ability to respond to a text message without opening the iMessage application. Users can also now tag files with categories like “sports” or “important.”
The software also has advanced energy-saving techniques, Apple says, reducing the power drain of programs that run in the background. For example, if a customer is looking at a webpage with a lot of animations, and covers it up with an email, the computer stops working as hard on the animations until they look at that screen again.
The company says that installing Mavericks on the latest Macbook Air would provide users an extra hour of Web surfing and an hour and a half of video watching.
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