Apple Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi Introduces Apple's IOS X Yosemite operating system at the World Wide developers conference in San Francisco
Apple vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi introduces Apple's IOS X Yosemite operating system at the World Wide developers conference in San Francisco, California June 2, 2014. Reuters

The OS X Yosemite was unveiled during the World Wide Developers Conference in June 2014. The operating system was built with much care from scratch to give a new look and feel to all laptops and desktops.

The general public and developers took part in the beta process and the OS X Yosemite was finally released for all supported Macs a few days ago. However, the operating system with all its new features may not work on some Macs that support the new software. Some important features like the Continuity and Handoff which is the biggest feature of the operating system may not work on all Macs.

The OS X Yosemite can be installed on all Macs up to 2007, but they will not support all the new features that are included in the operating system. Only certain features will be supported by certain Macs. Some features like the Handoff and Hotspot will deliver only if installed on Macs that were manufactured in 2012 and later. This includes MacBook Air, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro and iMac configurations.

New features like the integration of all Apple devices cannot be used on some Mac computers. It was revealed by Apple to use the speaker phone for phone calls needs the iOS 8.0 on the iPhone and to use SMS and Hotspot users will require an iPhone with the iOS 8.1. Air Drop cannot be used on Macs that were manufactured before 2012. AirDrop to iOS devices requires an iPod, iPhone or iPad touch with a Lightning connector and iOS 7 or later and this is supported by Macs that are manufactured in 2008 or newer versions of the Mac.

AirPlay Mirroring requires an Apple TV that is second generation or later and is not supported by Macs that are later than 2011. Even peer to peer AirPlay requires Macs later than 2013 with OS X Yosemite and Apple TV third generation with the Apple TV software 7.0 or later.

These are just some of the features mentioned here more information about the upgrade is available on the Apple website.