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Inside OS X Mavericks

rjmarvin writes "Apple's era of naming OSs after big cats is over. The Mavericks wave is rolling in, and the first four developer previews have given an inside look at the cutting-edge OS. Users and developers have almost entirely positive things to say about Mavericks, from faster speed and improved stability to new features like iBooks and iCloud keychains. While some installation concerns and errors have arisen, developer preview have improved version by version, and Mavericks is looking good."

30 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. AirDrop by exomondo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anybody know is OSX Mavericks AirDrop compatible with iOS7 AirDrop? I know Mountain Lion's isn't.

    1. Re:AirDrop by exomondo · · Score: 4, Funny

      It seems strange that they have the same feature with the same name that essentially does the same thing on both platforms yet they are incompatible with eachother.

    2. Re:AirDrop by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As the previous poster said about Parallels,
      > They eventually found the bug and fixed it... in Parallels 3. Their solution to the problem of
      > selling me a product that was not fit for purpose was for me to give them more money

      And I'd bet they both learned this trick from the MSOffice team.

      Nope. Apple has known this forever. The Rev.1 B&W G3 macintosh had a UDMA data corruption error. Apple's "fix" was to either buy FWB toolkit and disable UDMA (and half a disk's performance!) or to buy a mac ATA card which, due to the mac tax, would cost literally four times as much as buying the same card for the PC, with a different ROM. When they rolled the old TechInfo Library (TIL) into the modern Apple Knowledge Base (KB) they imported articles before and after the one where they describe this problem, but they deleted the article on B&W G3 data corruption in an attempt to hide the fact that they told their customers that they had to spend more money because the product they purchased did not in fact meet specifications (didn't do ATA correctly.) Early Sun UltraSparc machines which I have used personally have the same chip and don't have the same bug.

      Nobody has anything to teach Apple about blaming the victim or hiding the evidence.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Spam nonsense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Alleged "article" is zero information and all noise. Read at your own risk of brain damage.

    1. Re:Spam nonsense by jeremyp · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here's my summary of TFA:

      1. Developer previews of Mavericks are available for developers to look at

      2. Each DP is more stable than the previous one.

      3. It feels faster than 10.8

      4. < List of Mavericks features that is less comprehensive and detailed than this list >

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
  3. If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iOS". by zedrdave · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From the article:

    > He concluded by mentioning that he hoped Mavericks would serve as the bridge between OS X and iOS, allowing his company to make Mac versions of its iOS titles.

    So basically this guy is happy that OS X is bridging closer to iOS (because his business stands to gain from this).

    How exactly is that supposed to warm my heart as a user who already thoroughly loath the very idea of the "Natural Scrolling(tm)" option on previous updates?

    Is it too much to ask for them simply not to break anything and leave me with the halfway-decent UI to a powerful *nix that I am happily using?

  4. OS X Upgrade Fear by TheModelEskimo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm still on Lion. I have a 2011 MBP and I'm thinking I might stay on Lion. I'll be handing it down to my wife and would consider the big version upgrade, but my recent experience with iOS upgrades was that the new OS was way more resource-intensive than the old, even though people told me it'd be so great and Apple doesn't do upgrades that slow your machine down, etc. Thoughts? Should I think about an upgrade to Mavericks?

    1. Re:OS X Upgrade Fear by smash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Performance definitely went backwards from 10.6 to 10.7. 10.7 is the Vista of OS X. A necessary architectural update, but with unfortunate consequences for compatibility and performance. Which was mostly fixed in the following release (and also later point releases for 10.7 - 10.7.4 is much faster than 10.7).

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  5. Ars by OptimalCynic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll wait for the Ars Technica review.

  6. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by OptimalCynic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's why I'm still on Snow Leopard. Sigh.

  7. Re:Apple press release by the_B0fh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Been using it since beta 1. What kind of problems did you see? I saw no issues other than the email sync issues.

  8. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by lxs · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yup. Apple is following Microsoft for a change. Not only in tabletifying their OS but also in their naming of it.
    I remember Jobs way back in the cat era poking fun at Vista's pre production name "Longhorn" and now they name their own OS "Mavericks" which as every QI watcher knows was originally a term describing unbranded cattle.

    So is this all a hidden homage to Tucows or a comment on how they see their customers?

  9. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why? What change have they introduced to improve iOS compatibility that you can't just ignore if you don't like it?

    The OS X desktop and interface have not changed much at all.

    The scrolling, which is a vast improvement for many, you can turn off. Autohide scrollbars, again a godsend for many users, you can turn off. Everything else, you can just not use.

  10. Re:Apple press release by Camembert · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Look, it can simply be interesting from a tech point of view, without resorting to hate or fanboyism.

  11. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by SJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hated... HATED... "Natural Scrolling" when it first came out. But I gave it a week. You push up on the trackpad... screen goes up. You push down, screen goes down. It just feels.. natural.

    Now when I use another computer the scrolling just feels weird.

  12. Re:How much by multiben · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So it would only be valid news if it put Apple in a negative light then? Or are we not allowed to hear about Apple at all?

    There are less conspiracies going on in the world than you think.

  13. Apple is taking a different path by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yup. Apple is following Microsoft for a change. Not only in tabletifying their OS but also in their naming of it.

    I don't think that's at all true.

    Microsoft decided the tablet and the PC were exactly identical, and made one the other at the cost of both.

    Apple however, has said a number of times that PC and tablet/mobile OS's are different things, with different needs (and that desktops do not need touch screens, just gestures). While OSX may borrow at times from iOS, and also share frameworks in some cases, the way you use them and the abilities they have remain pretty different.

    Just the aspect of Mavericks adding on a lot of welcome additions to multiple screen use including multiple menu bars (something very un-tablet like indeed) indicates a strong separation - for the better.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  14. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by jersey_emt · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can switch the mouse scrolling to normal in System Preferences.

    --
    My spoon is too big.
  15. Re:Mavericks eh? by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will Windows go for ShitPipe?

  16. Re:Apple press release by smash · · Score: 5, Informative

    Curring edge features: interrupt coalescing, memory compression, grand central dispatch, app nap. Amongst others. Having run it since DP1 on my main machine, the only minor issues I have had have been Wifi stability (which looks to be fixed now) and blanked out preference panels in the early DPs for features they were in the process of implementing. Battery life is more than 15% better than Mountain Lion (which is already a lot better than Windows), performance seems as fast or even faster.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  17. Re:Parallels by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I bought Parallels 2. It contained a bug in their handling of IPIs that caused host kernel panics on Core 2 processors (i.e. the processor that I'd bought to run it on). They eventually found the bug and fixed it... in Parallels 3. Their solution to the problem of selling me a product that was not fit for purpose was for me to give them more money. I switched to VirtualBox and will never give that company money again. VirtualBox lacks a few of the nice things in VMWare (in particular, it wires all of the VM's memory and doesn't do deduplication), but it's quite useable.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  18. Re:FuckinG NiggerS!! by mendax · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think this guy has managed to use the word "nigger" in his posting more times than it is used in Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn". While that is kind of an anti-achievement, I think he has also more than adequately demonstrated his lack of gray matter between his ears. He's probably depressed because it's still hard to get Twinkies.

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
  19. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by ecotax · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Same here.

    After being thoroughly conditioned to be used to think of scrolling as something you do by dragging the thumb of a scrollbar for many years, I decided to give this a chance nevertheless, knowing the brain can be pretty quick in 'rewiring' itself to changes like this. It's even possible to get used to seeing the world upside down within a few days: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/12/improbable-research-seeing-upside-down - or maybe right side up, as the image on the retina is normally inverted.

    I now think of scrolling like: finger drags content up or down. Simple. No inbetween stuff like screens, mouses, trackpads, scrollbars - just my finger moving around content.

    --
    "Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
  20. Re:Apple press release by Sorny · · Score: 5, Informative

    Quite unlikely to go from Panther to Mountain Lion, seeing as Panther was PPC only and Mountain Lion is Intel only...

    --
    OSX pwns.
  21. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by dfghjk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The scrolling, which is a vast improvement for many, ... Autohide scrollbars, again a godsend for many users,..."

    Ridiculous hyperbole and utterly false. Things worked the way they did for a reason. The changes suit an agenda, they aren't a "vast improvement" or a "godsend" to any user. They couldn't be regardless of merit.

  22. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by Dogtanian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I remember Jobs way back in the cat era poking fun at Vista's pre production name "Longhorn" and now they name their own OS "Mavericks" which as every QI watcher knows was originally a term describing unbranded cattle.

    They had no choice; if they'd kept up the feline naming scheme, the only one left was "OS X Domestic Cat".

    Which still would have been better than "Mavericks".

    --
    "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
  23. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by ImdatS · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why is that hyperbole? I used to work on HP machines a long time ago (when they were running some HP-owned BASIC) and I loved the natural scrolling. It took some time get used to used, but I preferred it over the "non-natural" on all other machines.

    Autohide scrollbars is also nice to have, though I'm not religious about that one - scrollbars just use up precious screen estate. Especially when using two-finger scrolling on touch pads, I don't really need to see the scrollbars all the time.

    No, not an Apple fanboy - there is enough to criticize and I usually criticize Apple a lot - but not for these features, that you can actually turn OFF.

  24. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by jbolden · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apple sees what Microsoft is going through with the XP transition. Why would they want that?

    That being said... 25% of the userbase holding back from Lion / Mountain Lion is an interestingly high number.

  25. Re:Apple press release by nine-times · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well that would explain why it got noticeably slower.

  26. Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO by Immerial · · Score: 3, Informative

    I bet most of those folks are using older machines that can't use 10.7+. There are a quite a number of Macs that don't make the minimum reqs. Mac OS 10.7 requires a 64-bit CPU. 10.6 was the last to support 32bit. I have a MacBook at home that is stuck at 10.6.