Last year at the WWDC, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) released “Mountain Lion” its OS that saw more than 3 million downloads in the first four days that it was made available. That number ultimately reached 28 million according to Tim Cook in his speech at the WWDC today. The 28 million figure represents 35 percent of the Macs in use, a number that reached 72 million this year, up 100% from five years ago. While that may not seem a huge number, if you compare it to PC growth, it is staggering. The PC market, by contrast, was up only 18 percent, although granted 18 percent growth on a much larger market share.
Despite the success of Mountain Lion, today saw Tim Cook unveil OS X 10.9 Mavericks. The first Apple operating system to not be named after a big cat in quite some time. Presumably, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) didn’t run out of cats but rather is using the newly unveiled OS to suggest something different is on the way. It is indeed, and the OS will be shipping in the fall.
Apple OS X to Have 200 New Features
All said and done, Mavericks will include more than 200 new features including tabbed finder windows. Tag support will also be added for easier organization of documents. Tag support is wholly new and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) promises that users will fall in love immediately.
The company came under scrutiny for its full-screen apps in both OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Lion. Many users switched to multiple screen displays and found the aforementioned OS versions lacking. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has consequently focused some of its OS engineering in order to address this problem.
New Mavericks OS X Drop Skeumorphic Design
Safari will also receive a make-over that will include a new bookmark bar but its performance is what is being touted. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is claiming that the new Safari will use far less energy than Chrome and hopes to put an end to Firefox use on its products through improved performance.
The new iCloud Keychain hopes to make password management issues a problem of the past. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) intends to securely store login details, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data and sync them across devices.
Visually, Mavericks will largely resemble past OS versions, though they will be getting rid of the oft criticized skeuomorphic design elements present in Mountain Lion.
Finally, iBooks and Maps will be receiving dedicated apps next fall with the release of Mavericks.
While both price and the exact date of release remain a mystery, Cook did tell those in attendance that Mavericks will be made available by digital download.
