Mac OS X El Capitan

Apple Operation System for Mac Computers

Although Apple released El Capital a while ago and the newest macOS is currently High Sierra, El Capitan remains available for devices that cannot upgrade to the freshest version. You might also want to have it if your ambition is creating your own Hackintosh.

Apple always recommends upgrading to the latest software available. However, El Captain has its devotees among owners of older models. It has some fancy features that were made with newer models in mind, but mostly, El Captain works fine for quite a bunch of old Macs, including iMacs and MacBooks from as early as the 2007 year of release.

El Captain is the twelfth revision of Mac OS X. The system builds on the features first introduced in OS X Yosemite but also offers some enhancements to overall performance and graphics – the latter thanks to the built-in Metal technology. It is not a feature, but rather a performance release. For example, developers claimed that it takes apps 40% less time to launch than in Yosemite.

El Captain had some performance issues with Macs freezing after the update and demanding hard reboot, but they were addressed since then.

There are some nice features that were first introduced in El Captain, such as multitouch gestures for Mail and Messages and split-screen snapping. Notes, Maps, Spotlight, and Safari also had some nice improvements.

Still, the majority of patches and fixes tackled security issues with various apps, files, and features. Some vulnerabilities might not manifest itself on most devices. Still, it is nice to know that the trouble has been taken care of.

All in all, El Captain is a polished edition of the previous OS X version that deepened the integration of Mac OS X with iOS.

Latest Updates (Version 10.11.6):

• apache_mod_php (security issues with prior PHP version fixed)
• Audio (null pointer dereference and out-of-bounds read by maliciously crafted files fixed)
• Bsdiff (integer overflow fixed)
• CFNetwork (web browser cookies permissions issue fixed)
• CoreGraphics (memory corruption and out-of-bounds read issues fixed)
• FaceTime (user interface inconsistencies fixed)
• Graphics Drivers (memory corruption fixed)
• ImageIO (multiple memory corruption issues and memory consumption issue fixed)
• Intel Graphics Driver (memory corruption issues fixed)
• IOHIDFamily (null pointer dereference fixed)
• IOSurface (use-after-free fixed)
• Kernel (null pointer dereference fixed)
• libc++abi (multiple memory corruption issues fixed)
• libexpat (multiple memory corruption issues fixed)
• LibreSSL (multiple issues in LibreSSL before 2.2.7. fixed)
• libxml2 (multiple memory corruption issues and access issue fixed)
• Libxslt (multiple memory corruption issues fixed)
• Login Window (type confusion, memory corruption, and memory initialization issues fixed)
• OpenSSL (multiple issues fixed)
• QuickTime (multiple memory corruption issues fixed)
• Safari Login AutoFill (Safari’s password auto-fill issue fixed)
• Sandbox Profiles (access issue fixed)

Price: Free

Developer: Apple Inc