OS X Yosemite Available Today, Free

The roughly four-month-long OS X Yosemite beta period is over! Apple’s (perhaps least ambitious?) whole number desktop operating system update in years is here. While short on big new functionality, there are plenty of nice new features to tempt upgrades, especially those with multiple Macs and iThings.

• OS X Yosemite Upgrade Now (MAS, free)

— Today view in Notification Center — Gives you quick access to informative widgets for Calendar, Weather, Stocks, Reminders, World Clock and social networks. You can also add widgets like Yahoo! Sports from the Mac App Store to customize your Today view

— Spotlight — Delivers rich information right to your desktop from Wikipedia, Maps, Bing, App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks Store, top websites, news and movie showtimes

— iCloud Drive — Store files of any type in iCloud, organize them any way you like, and access them from your Mac, iPhone, iPad or even a Windows PC

— Safari 8 — Delivers the fastest performance, as well as the longest battery life for web browsing and Netflix HD video streaming on the Mac

— Mail 8 — Includes Markup for quickly filling out and signing forms and PDFs right within Mail, plus Mail Drop, which makes it easy to send large attachments up to 5GB for free

— Messages — Enhanced so now you can add participants to your ongoing group conversations, see their locations on a map, quickly access attachments and even mute notifications

— iTunes 12.0.1 — Has a sleek new look, is fast and simple to use, and makes it easier to switch between browsing your music library and discovering new music on the iTunes Store. A new Recents view makes it easy to access the media you just purchased or recently played

— Family Sharing — Family members can now browse and download each other’s iTunes, iBooks® or Mac App Store purchases.

And, to take advantage of the the new Mac + iThing features, like Hand Off and Continuity, your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch will need to be running iOS 8.

Is OS X Yosemite available where you are? Friends on all sides of the planet have written the Fairer Platform to say that OS X Yosemite isn’t available in their region yet.

For example, Fairer Platform readers in the US, Holland, Taiwan, SA or Serbia are all reporting OS X Yosemite isn’t available in those places — and you?

Have you been able to download OS X Yosemite yet — yes, no, how’s the speed?