[Osiris]

That's what I noticed as well. The upgrades are Siri, iMessage, iOS integrations, and iWatch integrations. I don't own an iPhone or iWatch.

The Photos upgrade doesn't matter to me since I use Lightroom on a more powerful PC rather than my Macbook.

I have noticed one small upgrade, clicking the speaker icon in the system tray now shows Output Devices by default rather than having to hold down OPTION.

Has anyone noticed any other small, but convenient, changes?

[nicky0]

You can use Siri and iMessage without owning an iPhone or Watch.

[tuxracer]

It's not very practical to use without an iPhone in many circumstances. If I use iMessage people will message me there asking to meet up, etc.. and actually I won't receive those messages until I get home and boot up my Mac. Most people spend the vast majority of their time at work, or out of their home for whatever reason. Using iMessage on a Mac without an iPhone is a bit like the messaging version of only having a landline phone.

[JustSomeNobody]

I've been able to iMessage my wife from my mac to her iPhone for some time without my needing an iPhone.

[glhaynes]

Window edges now snap to other windows' edges/display edges. (No doubt doable with a 3rd party component before, but not built-in.)

Also, tabs (like in a browser) are now available in most of the built-in apps and lots of 3rd party ones.

[spdustin]

El Capitan (I think) added a side-by-side snapping that's handy on widescreen devices. Drag a window close to the left edge and wait, and it'll visually indicate that it's ready to snap to the left half of the screen. Do the same on the right. Really handy to do this with, say, Sublime Text (or whatever terminal, something-vim, something-emacs, Atom, VSC, etc.) and a browser.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Naaah, it's some half-baked full-screen mode with two windows side by side. If you cmd-tab out of either of those apps to a third app you lose visibility of the two full-screen-side-by-side apps a-la Spaces (or whatever it's called this week). Such a let down.

The way Windows 7 does it is about a squillion times better, hold down super and use an arrow key to tell the window to snap to that edge of the screen. Works across multiple monitors too. Use this all the time at work, where I need to use propitiatory Windows-only software.

[eridius]

3rd party apps could reposition your windows for you, but I'm not aware of any that could do this sort of behavior in the middle of dragging a window.