In a rather surprising turn of events, Apple has now officially launched the latest version of its Mac operating OS X system, the OS X Mavericks. In a rather surprising move, for Apple at least, OS X Mavericks will be available for free.

While all previous OS X major updates where priced at anywhere between US $19.99 and US $29.99, Apple has decided that OS X Mavericks will be available for free to those that are running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and above. The new Mavericks OS X will bring over 200 new features and functions as well as additional integration with iOS.

The more surprising is the fact that OS X Mavericks will also bring some "hardware" improvements or, to be precise, better use of hardware and thus much better battery life on some devices including MacBook Air. Focused on integrated graphics, aka. IGPs, the new OS X uses so called Compressed Memory function that will provide more available system memory and thus more memory for IGPs, resulting in up to 1.8X more performance in some cases. It will also bring OpenCL to IGPs.

The new Apple OS X Mavericks will also bring a new Safari browser updates with better notifications, better multi-display support and much more as well as more features for Mail app, new Calendar app and a new Map app.

The new OS X Mavericks is currently available for download (5.29GB heavy one) via Mac App Store in the US and Canada while other countries are expected to follow shortly.



Source: Apple.com/OSX