OS X Mavericks is the Next Feature-Packed Mac OS: Release Date Set for Fall

The next version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.9, is officially labeled as OS X Mavericks. Mavericks, named after an epic surfing spot in northern California, has a lot of new features, but also represents a change in naming conventions away from the familiar cat themes. In future versions of OS X will follow the same naming convention and all be named after inspirational places throughout California, where Apple is located.

OS X Mavericks Features

Many of the OS X Mavericks features are aimed at power users, some of the feature highlights include:

• Finder has tabs support with drag and drop, window merging, and full-screen support
• Tags come to the Mac for searching meta data, tags show up in the sidebar
• Multi-display enhancements: support for full screen, menus span multiple displays, Docks can be summoned from any display, spaces span independently across multiple monitors
• Significant performance improvements, including compressed memory, AppNap, Timer Coalescing, OpenGL 4, accelerated smoothed scrolling
• AppNap suspends and resumes background apps and processes on the fly, behind the scene (very similar to the command line tools we have discussed here, except automated)
• Safari 7 includes major under-the-hood improvements, and includes a social stream and link sharing feature that watches your social networks for interesting links
• iCloud keychain keeps track of all passwords and logins, stores them encrypted in iCloud and remembers all logins, Safari will auto-suggest ultra strong passwords
• Notification Center improvements, you can now respond directly to Notifications from the Notification Center without launching the specific apps, and iOS push notifications will arrive in OS X, they will also show up on the lock screen of OS X
• Apps automatically update in the background
• Skeumorphic interfaces are gone, missing from apps, from Calendar, Reminders, etc
• Calendar improvements provides suggestions, weather updates for location, travel expectations for time to arrival, and much more
• Maps come to OS X, can send directions from Mac Maps to iOS Maps
• iBooks arrives on OS X as a book reader, syncs with iOS devices, allows note annotation, includes built-in study cards based on notes

By the way, if you want that awesome new default background picture, you can grab the Mavericks wave wallpaper here.

OS X Mavericks Screen Shots

Finder in OS X Mavericks:

Tags in Finder:

Multi-monitor Support

Respond to Notifications directly from Notification Center, Notifications come to the Mac from your iOS devices:

Pictures captured from WWDC livestream and from Apple.com. Be sure to check out Apple’s official preview page for more information and walkthroughs.

OS X Mavericks release date is set for Fall 2013

Over 200 new features, enhancements, and improvements, makes Mavericks it an excellent update to the Mac operating system. Developers gain access to Mavericks preview today.