Apple's OS X El Capitan, the latest major release of its desktop operating system, will be available on Wednesday, September 30 as a free update for Mac users. El Capitan builds on the features and design of OS X Yosemite. It brings updates to window management, built-in apps and Spotlight search, and performance improvements.

A streamlined Mission Control makes it easier to see and organize everything you have open on your Mac. With a single swipe, Mission Control arranges all your windows in a single layer so you can find the window you need even faster. When your desktop gets crowded, simply drag a window to the top of your screen to create a new Space and spread out your work. And the new Split View feature automatically positions two app windows side-by-side in full screen so you can work with both apps without distraction.

You can now use Spotlight to check stock prices, weather conditions and forecasts, sports scores, schedules and standings, and even athlete information. You can also search with Spotlight to find a file using natural language. Simply type "email from Harrison in April" and Spotlight will help you find what you are looking for. You can resize the Spotlight window to display more results or move it anywhere on your desktop.

Safari now features Pinned Sites to keep your favorite websites open and active and a new mute button to silence browser audio from any tab. Mail introduces Smart Suggestions, which recognizes names or events in a Mail message and prompts you to add them to your contacts or calendar with a single click. You can also swipe to delete messages, just like in iOS, and juggle multiple emails while Mail is in full screen. In Photos, you can now edit locations, batch change descriptions, sort albums by date or title, and take editing to the next level with third-party editing extensions from your favorite developers.

El Capitan features a new Notes app that lets you drag and drop photos, PDFs, videos and other files into a note, and add content directly from other apps, such as Safari web links or Maps locations, using the Share menu. Checklists help you keep track of important to-do items, and the new Attachments Browser organizes your attachments in one simple view, making it easy to find what you’re looking for. With iCloud, your notes stay in sync so you can create notes on one device and edit them or check off items on your other devices.

OS X El Capitan improves system performance across your Mac. Metal, Apple’s graphics technology, accelerates Core Animation and Core Graphics to boost system-level rendering by up to 50 percent, and efficiency by up to 40 percent. Metal also takes full advantage of your CPU and GPU, delivering up to 10 times faster draw call performance.

El Capitan also features enhanced international language support, including a new Chinese system font for both Traditional and Simplified, with 50,000 beautifully designed characters for on-screen readability. Chinese keyboard input methods now offer regularly updated vocabulary lists and a smarter candidate window. El Capitan makes entering Japanese text faster by automatically transforming Hiragana into written Japanese and reducing the need to individually select and confirm word conversions.

OS X El Capitan is available as a free update starting Wednesday, September 30 from the Mac App Store. The new OS supports all Macs introduced in 2009 and later, and some models introduced in 2007 and 2008.