Earlier this month at WWDC, Apple’s annual developers conference – Craig Federighi unveiled that the Metal API which was announced last year at WWDC 2014 for iOS 8. Metal is a graphics API which works in tandem what OpenGL to improve the graphical capabilities of the device whist reducing CPU overhead and strain. With OS X El Capitan, Metal is coming to the Mac to help improve performance of games, graphical software and the core animation in OS X.
Apps such Adobe Photoshop and After Effects will be taking advantage of the technologies in Metal when OS X El Capitan launches this autumn. With Adobe After Effects, draw call is improved by ten times.
Which Macs are compatible?
Apple have said that Metal will work on any Macs after 2012, so any Macs before that won’t work with it. All of the late-2012 iMacs as well as the 2012 and 2013 Mac Pros and more.
- Late-2012 and later 21.5-inch iMac
- Late-2012 and later 27-inch iMac
- Late-2013 and later 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display
- Late-2012 and later Mac mini
- Mid-2012 Mac Pro
- Late-2013 Mac Pro
- Mid-2012 and later 11-inch MacBook Air
- Mid-2012 and later 13-inch MacBook Air
- Mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro
- Late-2012 and later 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display
- Mid-2012 15-inch MacBook Pro
- Mid-2012 and later 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display
- Early-2015 12-inch MacBook
What model is my Mac?
A lot of people don’t know what model of Mac they have, so finding out is pretty simple. Click on the Apple Logo in the top left hand corner of the screen, then About this Mac – the window will show you the model of Mac and the year it was introduced
El Capitan
The next big release of OS X is set to launch later this year, likely this October for any Mac which ran OS X Yosemite, which includes some models from 2007. Developers already have access to the beta with a public beta coming in July.
