At its annual World Wide Developer's Conference back in June Apple unveiled a slew of new developments to get people excited including the now extremely popular iOS 7 and a lineup of new MacBook Air devices. Although these were all very exciting developments, Mac users were perhaps most interested in an update to their existing hardware, the update to the Mac operating system OS X Mavericks.
Today, at a major press event to unveil the new iPad 5 and iPad mini 2, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, finally took the wraps off of the new operating system and told the crowd gathered at Apple's press event that not only would the new operating system be launching Tuesday, but it will also be free.
When Federighi took to the stage, he told the crowd that one of the company's main missions was to "fundamentally change the hardware of Macs." According to him, if you take the 13-inch MacBook Air and simply install the new operating system, you instantly receive up to one hour of additional battery life for web browsing. This translates to about an additional half hour of video streaming.
The main mantra behind OS X Mavericks seems to be saving battery life. In a demo of the new software, done by Federighi, he showed the different functions of the device that help save battery life. If you are doing something that is really text heavy but has graphics that you're not using or even looking at, the software will understand and not devote a lot of memory and processing speed to the graphics that you aren't even seeing.
In addition, he showed off some of the new functions like notifications. During his demo a badge popped up in the top right corner of the screen from Federighi's wife complaining that his shirt was not tucked in on stage. Although it was likely a contrived moment, it made the audience laugh as well as give him a chance to show off the new ability to respond to notifications from websites or apps without having to actually open said app. This is a good way to keep up on what you're extensions without ruining your productivity or putting more strain on your device than necessary.
OS X Mavericks will be available later on Tuesday as a free download for all OS devices. If you're wondering if your out-of-date device will be able to download it even if you're several operating systems behind - you can still upgrade to the latest version with just one download.
