Think of it like Continuity, but inside the computer instead of between devices.

All of those interconnections and digital conversations could subtly drive you to opt for Apple apps instead of whatever you might have been using before. Maps talks to Notes, Calendar talks to Mail, and all of them talk to Spotlight. Why would you choose Apple's solutions in El Capitan? Because they're all so tightly integrated. With El Capitan, Apple is beginning to make a case that you don't need to resort to those third-party options. Most power users find a suite of third-party apps to fill them in: maybe you use Evernote for enhanced notes, Dropbox for cloud storage, Google Maps for transit, and some kind of enhanced email app. Once you get beyond the basics of email and calendar, you run into gaps. There's a growing set of things that a modern user expects to be able to do on any platform - be it phone or tablet or laptop. And when you look at how Apple is updating them, you can detect a theme: they're getting way better at talking to each other. With El Capitan, we have the usual performance improvements and bug fixes, but there are also a lot of app updates. But inside those releases are signposts that point to the future direction of the OS. In the yearly cadence of OS releases, roughly every other one ends up being smaller - and El Capitan is the “small” one. It’s coming this fall, and there will be a public beta beginning sometime in July. At WWDC 2015 last week, Apple unveiled the next version of Mac OS X, El Capitan.

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