Everything you need to know about the new Apple OS X Yosemite

OS X Yosemite, announced earlier this year, has been redesigned with a fresh, modern look, while maintaining the power and familiarity users expect from a Mac.

These are the prominent new features:

• Today view in Notification Center, giving quick access to informative widgets for Calendar, Weather, Stocks, Reminders, World Clock and social networks. Users can also add widgets like Yahoo! Sports from the Mac App Store to customise your Today view.

• A new Spotlight, delivering rich information right to the desktop from Wikipedia, Maps, Bing, App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks Store, top websites, news and movie showtimes.

• iCloud Drive can store files of any type in iCloud, organise them any way you like, and access them from your Mac, iPhone, iPad or even a Windows PC.

• A streamlined new Safari that delivers the fastest performance, as well as the longest battery life for web browsing and Netflix HD video streaming on the Mac.

• An updated version of Mail, which includes Markup for quickly filling out and signing forms and PDFs right within Mail, plus Mail Drop, which makes it easy to send large attachments up to 5GB for free.

• Enhanced Messages that lets users add participants to ongoing group conversations, see their locations on a map, quickly access attachments and even mute notifications;

• iTunes 12 that makes it easier to switch between browsing music library and discovering new music on the iTunes Store. A new Recents view makes it easy to access the media you just purchased or recently played.

• Family Sharing that lets family members browse and download each other’s iTunes, iBooks or Mac App Store purchases.

Pricing & Availability: Yosemite supports all Macs introduced in 2009 or later, and some models introduced in 2007 and 2008. Continuity features require iOS 8.1, which is available as a free upgrade starting October 20. OS X Server 4.0 requires Yosemite and is available from the Mac App Store for Rs 1,200.