OS X 10.9 Mavericks Review

An anonymous reader writes "John Siracusa at Ars Technica has put together a comprehensive review of Apple's OS X 10.9 Mavericks. This is the first time a major OS X update has been free, and it works on any device that supports Mountain Lion. This suggests Apple is trying to boost adoption rates as high as possible. Siracusa says the following about Apple's move away from skeuomorphic design: 'Mavericks says enough is enough. The leather's gone, the fake pages are gone, the three panes are independently resizable (more or less), even the title bar is bone-stock, and it's boring?' On the other hand, he was a big fan of all the internal optimizations Apple has done, since the energy savings over Mountain Lion are significant. He found a 24% increase in his old MacBook Pro's battery life, and a 30% increase for his new MacBook Air. He also praised the long-needed improvements to multi-monitor support: ' Each attached display is now treated as a separate domain for full-screen windows. Mission Control gestures and keyboard shortcuts will now switch between the desktop and full-screen windows on the display that contains the cursor only, leaving all other displays untouched.' The 24-page review dives deeply into all the other changes in Mavericks, and is worth reading if you're deciding whether or not to upgrade."

Comments

Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has really fucked up big time on 10.9.

Basically, the sRGB spec is no longer sRGB, and colour managed applications that use ColorSync are completely hosed. Almost everything is more saturated then it should be. Towers of bug reports have been filed on this alone and absolutely nobody has received a response from Apple, which makes me think it's some retarded "stylistic choice" of theirs to literally try and make the OS "look better" (it doesn't).

So, basically, if you rely on OS X for colour accurate work, you're totally fucked.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[bob_super]

If they dont fix color issues and piss off the graphics/hollywood crowd, they'll lose the constant free advertising, and that's not going to help the bottom line. They'll need even more "Apple's CEO just sneezed, is that a hint at iTissue" journalism, and I don't know that it's actually possible.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Just Some Guy]

Have a link? I'm not readily finding anything but I'd be interested in reading more.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly think apple is moving away from design and production. Costs a lot of money to keep up with the pet peeves and special needs of professionals and I'd honesty be surprised if they're making any significant profits from those customers.

They make money hand over fist selling devices to people that could not care less about color profiles.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1651041
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1649988&highlight=saturation

You can actually see the difference in the Ars Technica article just from the screenshots (which likely means it's intentional, since you can screenshot the issue and clearly see it in the pixel colours). Look at the icons closely, and you'll notice that the majority of them seem darker and more saturated then normal. I'd link you to the ADF forum discussion about this exact same issue, but that's kinda pointless since you'll need an ADC account to view it.

We've got a whole bunch of ultra high end Eizo monitors in the office that do self calibration and colour correction inside the monitor itself. These units are all configured to accept a straight sRGB IEC-61966-2.1 colour space, and nothing else. Since the monitor ASIC handles the calibration & correction for the panel, there's no need to use ICC profiles if you don't want. We've found this to be an insane boon when you're targeting the sRGB colour space for mobile app development and graphics design (where sRGB is basically the safest space to target if you want it to look decent on any handheld).

Anyways, under 10.7 and 10.8- setting up OS X to use the sRGB IEC-61966-2.1 colour space resulted in a pretty perfect image on the monitor (which was configured for the sRGB colour space "mode" and self-calibrated). No problems there, or with any of the Cocoa APIs, or OpenGL stuff.

Under 10.9, everything is basically "fucking whacked" (according to our IT guy). About 60% of the Mac OS X UI doesn't adhere to the sRGB spec anymore in that if you have an ICNS file that was generated from sRGB source material, it is no longer displayed as straight sRGB in the Aqua UI- it's being tinkered around with by Apple's bug and/or design decision. A lot of stuff being displayed through NSImageView is totally hit and miss as far as the colours go, even with an sRGB monitor profile (this is even worse on Apple's own computers that use LCD panels which are somewhere in-between a wide gamut and sRGB... The colour variances I've seen on our office laptops running 10.8 and 10.9 side beside are unbelievable). Even OpenGL is hit and miss now- before everything seemed to be uncorrected (which was fine, applications could implement colour management themselves if they wanted), but in 10.9 it seems like some stuff is completely whack and other things almost look partially colour corrected depending on the monitor profile. We think this is due to the GPU drivers and brand, but nobody knows for sure.

In a nutshell, things are NOT as they should be.

1) Their Aqua UI should assume that input images are in the sRGB colour space, and display them as accurately as possible according to the monitor profile
2) NSImageView & friends should do the same thing for data sources that have no associated colour space
3) OpenGL should preferably be totally uncorrected, since anything else would be totally ambiguous and up to the manufacture

Our six 10.9 pilot systems were recently reverted to 10.8, which still has horribly broken colour management... BUT, at least on 10.8, if you tell it to output sRGB then that's precisely what it does (and this works well with our Eizo monitors). 10.9 seems to take this all one step further in that they fuck around with anything and everything at will, and it's just a complete nightmare to deal with as a user.

TLDR; it is very evident Apple has no clue what they're doing in regards to colour management. This is becoming more and more apparent with each release of OS X.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Alan Shutko]

All I can find is this in the Apple Dev Forums (login required). It seems that certain people in a workflow without a monitor color profile see differences without embedded profiles look differently. This does not appear to be a problem in a workflow where you regularly profile your monitor (and in fact, I don't see a problem).

So, if you depend on OS X for color accurate work, and if you are working exclusively with untagged images that are to be assumed to be sRGB, and if you have a monitor which does its own sRGB calibration and you're depending on the bits from the image being sent directly to the monitor without adjustment, then you might see problems. I don't know how big of a community that is.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

They also dropped off another x86 64bit arch

What the fuck are you blithering about? Mavericks supports all the hardware which Mountain Lion supported.

just as they did with the bullshit 32bit video bus driver bollock.

"32bit video bus driver bollock" is an amazing bit of word salad. Calm down, stop frothing.

Apple only release OS "updates" when they can kill an entire hardware release with the exception of their little cell phones stuck in a 2008 timeloop.

Can't tell if stupid or just trolling.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Siracusa's articles, though they mostly save reading the technical documents. He rewrites them and explains them, a valuable thing for a non-technical user. However, you won't find what you are talking about in one of his "reviews" because Apple is not telling him about it.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've tried this.

Our Eizo monitors support software calibration over USB via Colour Navigator. We tried multiple times to calibrate these units running 10.9 and couldn't get a good read at all. Colour Navigator completed successfully each time and the generated ICC profile was 100% valid, but alas this has absolutely no effect on the over saturation/darkening of icons and NSImageView content.

Whatever foolery Apple is engaging in, they're doing it before the ICC profile is taken into consideration- hence my original "probably a retarded stylistic choice" comment. If this was a monitor profile problem, you would **NOT** be able to screenshot it and compare the raw pixels between versions (ie, 10.8 versus 10.9) and see an obvious difference in the rendered pixels.

I guess you just don't see the importance in this issue. If you can't trust Apple to display pixels properly, how the hell can you trust the rest of the operating system to be colour accurate?

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the whole point of sRGB is that it's a lowest common denominator that looks passable on every medium whether calibrated or not, I suspect that it is a really really small list of users.

Anybody who cares about colour accuracy should at a minimum be using images with an attached profile.

Also, I suspect this is a matter of ye olde Mac Gamma vs PC Gamma...

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[nbritton]

What is so wrong with UI widgets not adhering to sRGB, so long as content is displayed pursuant to specification does it really matter?

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

For years? Really? Funny, I hear just the opposite. When FCP received the new GUI look, sure Apple took a hit on that. They heard the users and fixed a lot of the problems. FCP is a solid, professional-class package now (again).

Care to be more specific?

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[noh8rz10]

dude, i'm pretty sure this is your unique bone to pick here. OP describes it well.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source my ass, do they provide compilable code? Nope... So don't EVER call it open source!
Based on open source kernel AT BEST...

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[erikkemperman]

The broken colour management in OS X is still far better than anything on Linux. Linux can't even get decent font rendering due to "patent problems."

Hm, that's odd. I simply copied the active color profile used by OSX over and set it up on my Linux partition (dual boot MBP) and it works like a charm. I haven't actually measured scientifically though (I am not a graphic designer) but most images immediately looked much better.

Also I find free TTF fonts look fine, which distro/version are you talking about?

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you load NSImage into an NSImageView, are they using the setPrefersColorMatch: method to ask it to display a colour accurate image?
Because of retina displays there is a lot of scaling of images involved, scaling with keeping colours intact is actually quite difficult. Maybe they have changed the algorithm to make the default faster, but when asking for colour matching uses the old accurate algorithm.

Do the images that are loaded into an NSImage have a colour profile (for many file format there is no official colour profile, maybe they have changed the default for those), try a PNG image with an explicit sRGB profile.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sort who'd care about colour, are very likely to care about the colour of the widgets too.

To designer types the widgets being off is probably as bad as not wearing matching socks.

Many nerds on the other hand won't care if their socks match or not - still functional after all.. ;).

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[serviscope_minor]

We've found this to be an insane boon when you're targeting the sRGB colour space for mobile app development and graphics design (where sRGB is basically the safest space to target if you want it to look decent on any handheld).

I hope this isn't a silly question, but why on earth do you care about accurate colour matching on mobile devices? Given that they have screens of very variable quality and no decent colour accuracy themselves it seems that putting much effort in will be wasted.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[tlhIngan]

I hope this isn't a silly question, but why on earth do you care about accurate colour matching on mobile devices? Given that they have screens of very variable quality and no decent colour accuracy themselves it seems that putting much effort in will be wasted.

Just because you use Android doesn't mean people don't care.

The iPhone 4s was about 90% sRGB (mostly due to a faulty blue filter that lets in a little green), the iPhone 5 (and 5s, 5c, and associated iPods) are actually a little over 99% sRGB. And Apple calibrates every display as they come off the line. tests done on the displays have shown excellent calibration with very little variability between devices.

While Androids have better screens, the AMOLED ones, especially Samsung Pentile variants tend to be far worse - the OLED display is nice but oversaturates for the most part. LCD Androids may or may not be calibrated as well - some devices exhibit such wide variations in color accuracy and error that they're effectively uncalibrated screens, while others do calibrated them to an extent during manufacturing (usually the flagships).

The modern smartphone and tablet display is a far cry from early mobile LCD displays - they're often very good (especially Apple displays - if you need color accuracy on a portable, you're pretty much limited to Apple) and people do expect their photos to be somewhat like reality.

If you want to see what crap looks like, check out a cheap digital photo frame, then look at a modern smartphone or tablet display and you'll find they're much nicer.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[balladeer]

When I opened contact app I almost cried then suddenly felt like kicking Ser Ivy's Royal Arse! Whatever..

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[phantomfive]

Well, after updating, I had three applications that no longer work. I'm not sure what they deprecated in the new OS, but it's getting annoying to lose applications after every OSX update.

Re: Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Loosing three apps only? :O Come to Windows country and watch a real horror movie instead.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Wescotte]

I think there were some legitimate gripes about FCPX at launch. Things like no XML support, no support for tape media, and no backwards compatibility with older projects. Third parties had to release applications solve most of these problems and they weren't available for quite some time.

However, I agree that people bitching about how FCPX is just iMovie on steriods because of the new UI probably are just overly resistant to change. From the little I've seen it has some very nice features and should make big mistakes harder to do as well as managing media significantly easier.

Re: Nothing about colour accuracy?

[macs4all]

But you conveniently fail to mention three very important facts: 1. Apple has brought back nearly all of the capabilities of FCP 7. There isn't a mass-exodus anymore (actually, ther never was. Most FCP 6 or 7 users simply continued to use those versions until FCPX matured), and many Pros have actually switched back. 2. Apple launched a campaign this March, specifically targeted at video professionals, effectively saying "Come on in. FCPX is ready" 3. The recent "paradigm-shift" update to Logic Pro, making it look more like FCPX, has been nearly universally Praised; PARTICULARLY for the fact that all, or nearly all, of the "old features" have been retained, along with the added benefit of the re-factored GUI. So, Apple DOES care about Pros and their Pro Apps, and Apple DOES learn from its mistakes. Now, here comes the ad Hominem attack based on my Username...

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG my colors are oversaturated by 1.3% on my PHONE. It's a freaking phone, who cares?!@#?!@3123

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there were some legitimate gripes about FCPX at launch. Things like no XML support, no support for tape media, and no backwards compatibility with older projects. Third parties had to release applications solve most of these problems and they weren't available for quite some time.

However, I agree that people bitching about how FCPX is just iMovie on steriods because of the new UI probably are just overly resistant to change. From the little I've seen it has some very nice features and should make big mistakes harder to do as well as managing media significantly easier.

You are obviously not aware of what puts FCP7 on par with Avid and other 'professional' editing programs, and why FCPX seems to be so backwards with its (lack of) implementation of these features. Most notably is the loss of the business license; every version of FCPX needed to be registered to an individual license making large scale render farms completely unfeasible due to the cost. They also destroyed a lot of the multi-machine editing and rendering functionality, ruining FCPX's potential as a contender to Avid and co. Tailoring a product to a market consisting of solo movie creators is fine, but if you're an amateur working alone you might as well run iMovie, and why ruin your product for a large part of your consumers? It's going to be a while before there is a lot of money in the small, independent and self creating movie business.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[jbolden]

10.6 -> 10.7 was much worse. Get used to it Apple is picking up the pace for developers not slowing it down.

Re:Nothing about colour accuracy?

[phantomfive]

Yeah, 10.6-10.7 is exactly when I started transitioning away from Macintosh, for that reason.

Enough already!

[mothlos]

Here we have Soulskill yet again trying to act like skeuomorphic artistic design is some sort of big, bad thing which we should be concerned about. This is not an important issue in human interface design. This seems to be some sort of pet peeve lens which Soulskill keeps bringing up. Skeuomorphism may bother designers who don't want to be tied down to designs based on mid-twentieth-century conventions of office life and people who demand every last pixel of their screen be useful for them. ell, it may even be the plastic teak dashboard of the 21st century, but its presence or lack thereof has such a tiny impact on usability for all but the most constrained interfaces that it is not worth /.'s concern. Please stop.

Re:Enough already!

[drinkypoo]

It is an important issue. It's not the end of the world, but it's dumb to waste screen real estate on gewgaws to make the interface look like something from yesteryear to which it is superior. And notably, the world already rejected these ideas back in the classic MacOS days.

Re:Enough already!

[phantomfive]

From what I've seen, the anti-skeumorphic hatred started with WinPhone 7 users desperate to find a way their phone was superior to iPhone. They tied it with the idea that WP7 was a unique UI (and it was nice, but not as nice as the Zune HD, and not amazingly original). After that some Android users jumped on the bandwagon, also wanting to feel superior. Some iPhone users started to feel bad about it.

Skeumorphism is just a thing, if done right it is great, if done poorly, it is bad.

Re:Enough already!

[UnknownSoldier]

> Skeumorphism is just a thing, if done right it is great, if done poorly, it is bad.

As a 3D, UI, & UX expert I concur 100%.

Skeumorphism is like spice. A little kicks it up a notch. Not having any is TOO plain; having too much and that is worse then not having any.

IMO the BIGGER problem is OSX 10.9 and iOS 7 completely desaturating and removing all 3d shading -- THAT is the hideous UI crime. The UI designers should be forced to use Windows 1.x for their stupidity.

Re:Enough already!

[steelfood]

I guess it depends on what your standpoint is. From a user standpoint, transitioning to a new technology via a familiar UI is better than doing it via an unfamiliar one. Once there however, the real test is how unintrusive and easy to use the UI actually is.

From a designer standpoint, again, when in transition, a familiar UI is easier to work with. However, once the transition period is over, it can be a limiting factor for improvements to the interface or to the functionality of the device.

Take the keyboard for example. We still use the same QWERTY layout of its predecessor, the typewriter. This was the natural course of evolution for typing as people transitioned away from typewriters to keyboards. But it is limiting, in that the key layout is not ideal for the typist, and the flat keyboard layout itself is not friendly to the hand at all.

On the other hand, look at the Segway. It has such a revolutionary interface that nobody really knows what to do with it. It probably would've gained far more traction had it looked closer to a bicycle. It could have eventually replaced all those motorized bikes with the 80cc engines, been legitimately the next revolution in transportation. Instead, it's now associated in my mind with being a fat slob, since the only people I've ever actually seen use one are mall security guards and the occasional beat cop.

Re:Enough already!

[Billly Gates]

Ask any art professor or academic?

No textures, shapes, or details other than a simple color is the wave of the future. You wont get good grades if you do not use these elements and I find no art professors saying skeuomorphism or extra details look very 20th century and dated compared to simplicity.

Google is a great example of this.

Re:Enough already!

[Billly Gates]

You would not pass any computer art class today with that attitude.

Every professor out there has been teaching this is the way to go and flunking out those who do these outdated 20th century things. Unfortunately, this trend is post impressionism which once became popular because herasy to do art any other way. These new students are landing jobs at companies like Apple and Microsoft. Simple color is it.

Re:Enough already!

[Bite The Pillow]

I'm not taking a side here, but I just don't see it. One article you linked mentions it, and I read this on Ars earlier and didn't see any skeuomorphic anything that really stood out.

I love railing on the ediots, but I'm clearly missing something here.

Re:Enough already!

[TheRaven64]

If you're asking an art professor about HCI, then you're doing it wrong. Try looking over in cognitive psychology for people who can give useful input.

Re:Enough already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its been around a LONG time in OS X circles, well before Windows Phone 7. Go back and see the flamewars over the initial appearance of brushed metal motif in Apple's apps.

Re:Enough already!

[fyngyrz]

Any "computer art professor" that teaches which style is "superior", as opposed to "how to do" any style you are tasked to implement, isn't worth the time spent with them.

The issue of replicating physical interfaces is not, and never will be, cut and dry. Some physical interfaces are highly refined and functional, and abandoning them leads to problems (look at a modern audio system as compared to, for instance, a late 1970's Marantz. Now try to turn up the midrange, or route one recording input to a recording output, assuming your modern hardware even has them.)

There are some excellent UI design guidelines out there. Like, don't constantly show and hide interface elements, it fouls up muscle memory. But "bury everything in menus" is a total newbie suck move, and "remove all familiarity" (which is what the rabid anti sku folk are saying, really) is also a suck move.

Change and so forth in moderation, see?

Re:Enough already!

[AmiMoJo]

and "remove all familiarity" (which is what the rabid anti sku folk are saying, really) is also a suck move.

The problem with skeuomorphism is that the familiarity is often misleading or at best limiting. People experience something like this when they go to a foreign country. Things look similar superficially, but are subtly different and disorienting.

For example a skeuomorphic address book would look like an actual book, but not really work like one. You can fold the corners of real pages down to act as bookmarks, then turn the book sideways to find them. You can't search a real book by entering search terms, so there has to be a non-skeuomorphic text entry box with a magnifying glass, a symbol that represents searching even though it is rarely used for that purpose. It's just a mess.

On top of that space is wasted on the graphical elements, which add clutter and distraction.

In short there is a reason why only Apple did skeuomorphism, and it wasn't that skeuomorphism is better. Rabit skeuomorphism nuts seem to think that ordinary users are complete morons who have never used a computer before and can't understand any information that isn't presenting in a way they are familiar with. I kind of wonder how they imagine people managed to understand the object the skeuomorphic design is based on in the first place.

Re:Enough already!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not an issue since the quality of user interfaces have detoriated so much on all platforms that nobody cares any longer. I'd like to see a platform on which you can define arbitrary menu shortcuts for any function in any program, including Emacs-style sequences of multiple keys, double and tripple taps and mouse gestures.That would be something useful, unlike the completely useless and unimportant things that seem to preoccupy GUI designers nowadays such "is it a 'flat' design or not" or "look at that fancy black and white color scheme".

Re:Enough already!

[aaaaaaargh!]

Brushed metal look was the beginning of Apple's long, painful end.

Re:Enough already!

[itsdapead]

Here we have Soulskill yet again trying to act like skeuomorphic artistic design is some sort of big, bad thing which we should be concerned about.

I think whaling on skeuomorphic design completely misses the point.

Good skeuomorphic design gives the user cues about how things work, what you can click, what you can slide etc.

Bad design (skeuomorphic or otherwise) paints a pretty picture on the screen for the hell of it. The form doesn't suggest function and well-established conventions from other software are ignored.

At worst, bad design creates false cues that misdirect users.

Unfortunately, recent versions of iOS and OS X have included several glaring examples of just plain bad design: As noted in TFA, iOS5/OSX 10.7 Calendar and Contacts are pin-up examples of how to misuse skeuomorphism (TL,DNR: if an app doesn't work like a book, don't make it look like a book). There are also more subtle issues - Dock icons that are all some variations on a blue circluar thingy (ISTR Apple used to recommend giving app icons a distinct silhouette) or advanced features buried in context menus (when - at least on Apple - established convention from the 1-button-mouse days was that context menus were only ever shortcuts to features available elsewhere).

One of the main advantages of GUIs, initially, was that a medley wildly different Visicalc-style, Wordstar-style, WordPerfect-style, Lotus-style, EMACS-style... interface conventions were swept away by a single set of convention. In recent years, there has been terrible backsliding to a world in which every app has a gratuitously different UI, sometimes for no better reason than to make it "patentable" (step up and take a bow, Microsoft Office Ribbon).

Re:Enough already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree 100% - I use the latest Windows Server, and it already has a "flat" UI - and it's terrible. I'm all for de-cluttering, but they've gone too far. Interesting to note that Apple is being credited with being "flat" when Windows did it at least 2 years ago.

"Flatness" should be on a sliding scale - much like the Nintendo 3D ( or whatever it's called ) - you can make things completely flat, slightly 3D, or very 3D ( think of shading on button and box borders.

It's ridiculous that we don't have more control over that.

Re:Enough already!

[mothlos]

bad design creates false cues that misdirect users

I don't think I could agree with this any more. I didn't intend to take sides in the pro/anti skeuomorphism debate; I'm simply annoyed to see /. consistently framing skeuomorphism as fundamentally flawed instead of something which newbs and the artistically inept (e.g. suits) will rely on too heavily and apply when inappropriate.

Re:Enough already!

[phantomfive]

It probably would've gained far more traction had it looked closer to a bicycle.

Or if it cost less than $8000USD

Re:Enough already!

[fyngyrz]

The problem with skeuomorphism is that the familiarity is often misleading or at best limiting

"often" is not "always", and that destroys the argument against skeuomorphism without even requiring you to prove your assertion of "often." Sorry, but it's BS and it's been BS all along. Familiarity can be a great thing, a significant assist into the how and why of something. Radio dials. The play, pause, rewind, record, FF, and dub interface of tape machines. The phase display of a radio-teletype scope. The hands and dial of a clock. The zoom, focus and objective controls of a microscope. The doors and windows of a home in the context of an alarm system. And so on, for a *really* long time. Even switches, buttons, knobs, meters and indicators fall into this cleanly.

The answer to "when is skeuomorphism not appropriate" is "when it isn't, otherwise, it is." It's not "never."

For example a skeuomorphic address book would look like an actual book, but not really work like one. You can fold the corners of real pages down to act as bookmarks, then turn the book sideways to find them.

Both of those could easily be software features. Pfft.

You can't search a real book by entering search terms, so there has to be a non-skeuomorphic text entry box with a magnifying glass, a symbol that represents searching even though it is rarely used for that purpose.

A magnifying glass represents looking closer for details otherwise not visible, something it is always used for and a very nice symbol for searching. "Find a specific word in all these words"... now with a magnifying glass, "find a detail in all these details."

It's just a mess.

No. It's not a mess. Your objections, full of holes and very weak, remind me of an interior decorator holding his hands to his cheeks while complaining that the coffee pot doesn't match the drapes. You have shown you are not qualified to judge these things; users can manage just fine. Also, it's REALLY annoying to have all this time spent on an absolute non functional set of changes when actual UI fails persist like lack of nested folders, inability for one app to work with another apps files, etc. The former is a flat out stupidity, the latter a UI design error putting security over functionality at the user's deep expense. THAT is a mess. Flat objects instead of the UI we already knew? That was just dysfunctional and stupid. Also, the new UI is ugly. Which I suppose we should have seen coming, given the bewilderment that led to the whole design change.

Re:Enough already!

[SpaceManFlip]

LOL that is stupid. Brushed metal was the best. Snow Leopard's UI is the peak of any operating system's design. All computers should look and work like Mac OS 10.6.8 from 2007 onward. I tried Lion and was like "bleh" and then I ended up having to use Mountain Lion to get new-enough GeForce drivers for my 560ti card, but I don't like its UI. Many tweaks and it's still not as good as Snow. So anything they can do to get back towards to impeccable usefulness of the Snow Leopard look, feel, and functions of Exposé and Spaces will be for the best.

Re:Enough already!

[AmiMoJo]

Radio dials. The play, pause, rewind, record, FF, and dub interface of tape machines.

Interesting examples. The play, rewind and FF buttons are of course simple arrows and a double bar symbol whose meaning can only be learned. Dials make sense on machines with linear tapes, but on computers it is usually possible to seek directly to where you want to go. Such interfaces were chosen largely because of the limits of technology and low cost manufacturing, rather than because they were good.

Hands on a clock are another excellent example of how skeudomorphism fails. They were developed because clocks used to be driven by springs and gears. It is slower to read than a digital display and less accurate. It isn't easy to set with the little knob either, and when implemented on a touch screen no-one ever re-creates the knob. You end up either clicking on the clock and getting a digital display, perhaps with weird rolling numbers, or you could perhaps drag the hands round and try to carefully position them with some kind of precision. It's a terrible interface, the only reason to use it is aesthetic.

Both of those could easily be software features. Pfft.

If you turn your phone on its side you can't see the screen.

A magnifying glass represents looking closer for details otherwise not visible, something it is always used for and a very nice symbol for searching.

It's not a microscope. It enlarges things that can already been seen to reveal more detail. The only reason people know it is for searching is computer tradition, no skeudomorphism. Talk about mixed metaphors. It's similar to other common computer items that were once kinda skeudomorphic, but because they never really worked in the first place they have taken on new meanings, such as the floppy disk (saving a file).

It was Steve Job's love of retro interfaces, nothing more. Back in the late 80s/early 90s that sort of thing was popular. In the 70s and 80s it was thought that computers would replace existing workflows by making them digital, but actually it created new ones and most people abandoned the idea of modelling them after the physical world. Apparently Jobs never gave up on that idea.

Re:Enough already!

[UnknownSoldier]

Off topic ...

Holy crap, I thought your .sig was a joke ... "const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)" but sure enough it is real.

https://silvermoon.svn.codeplex.com/svn/Silvermoon/Silvermoon/OpenGL/Texture.cs

const int one = 65536;

Sad that the noob programmer couldn't even use a descriptive name for texture coordinates in 16.16 fixed point format!
i.e.

private int[] textCoords = new int[] { one, 0, one, -one, 0, 0, 0, -one };

instead of using whitespace and columns for alignment to make it more readable ...

private float[] textCoords = new int[]
      { 1, 0 },
      { 1, -1 },
      { 0, 0 },
      { 0, -1 }
};

Nice find!

Why App Store and not software update?

[Joe_Dragon]

app store should not need it's own password/ login for free stuff.

also Software update seems better for OS stuff.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

App Store _is_ Software Update, now.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Darinbob]

Just like the broken Windows 8 model; no access to free stuff without signing up for an account. It's ridiculous. At least with current mac you can get software without going through a useless store.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where by personal information, you mean an arbitrary string of characters (log in name), and an arbitrary string of characters (password)?

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

even software update goes through the app store now, or at least certain components do.

i found myself unable to update (not upgrade) my OS when i discovered that my app store login had been disabled several months ago, when my CC got hacked (it was a leak at the issuing bank about which i could do nothing) and used to attempt to purchase several apps/songs. i had to schedule a telephone interview (!) to get my iTunes/appstore account re-enabled.

if Microsoft had tried this shit, they'd be pilloried i complained and they gave me evouchers for three free mp3s. i told them to keep their pathetic bribe.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[amiga3D]

I don't know what in hell you are talking about and apparently neither do you. There is no requirement for any info whatsoever to get security updates. I hit the apple in the top corner of the screen, scroll down to software update, it shows the updates and I hit go and it goes. My computer asks for my administrator login/password. That's pretty much it, a lot like updating my linux box. I get the idea you've never used an apple computer.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

And not so arbitrary credit card information. At least the last time I registered an account for an iPad. After some googling, you can apparently get a less invasive account by trying to buy a free item and registering from there... And you can then enter the credit card details later if you actually want to buy something...

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[fermion]

I have no issue with the Mac keeping the password. I don't plan to do auto update becasue the machine is simply more critical than my iPad.

Just a data point. All seems to be going well on my machine. About an hour to update, rebooting fine.

About the only thing I would complain about was the need to register my iCloud. I wish they would have kept the online password manager.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

I needed a password too, don't be such an abrasive prick.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Burz]

No it is not. It's the other way around. Apple does not allow you access to the upgrade program and security fixes unless you give them personal information. They want their computer hacked, or they wouldn't place this huge and unnecessary barrier to upgrades. They know most people buy a new Mac when their old one becomes unusable so by not allowing security upgrades, they greatly increased the stream of people that will stand in long lines to give them cash.

Its garbage like this, and Apple's willingness to let the NSA spy on their customers 24/7 that has turned me away from OS X. Apple have gotten WAY too controlling to the point of being a menace to society.

I haven't read the review yet, but I'm going to bet that the issue of privacy was not covered more than glancingly (and zero references to mass surveillance).

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, the OS updates are available for download on Apple's support web sites. (I never use those, as I've never had a problem with App Store based updates.)

Also...wouldn't creating a brand new Apple ID allow you to download free updates, even if the OS image was downloaded by another ID? After all, there is no DRM on OS X itself. (I don't know; I haven't tried this either.)

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your information is out of date. I'm running 10.8.5, and clicking on the Apple menu at the top left then "Software Update..." loads the App Store application. Apple then asks for your credit card number with three or four digit security code and your billing address and phone number.

It's a shame that Apple refuses to provide security updates unless you give them all of that information.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[antdude]

Apple wants control. I found out that Apple uses your ID account to inject your data into each downloaded app as DRM. Read https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5261 ... I was wondering why my downloaded 10.9 copy did not match others' with file sizes, CRC checksums, etc. :(

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has NEVER happened to me under 10.8 or 10.9 and I don't have an App Store account or any other Apple related account on the machine.

I would check if you are signed in to the app store and if so sign out and try software update again as it should work fine without an account for updates at least.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[aralin]

If you want be alarmist about something, at least get your facts straight. NSA is spying on people for Apple, not the other way around. Corporations are the citizens with votes, the government is in their service. The reason why there is outrage about the data sharing going the other way too is because Facebook does not want their data to be shared with Microsoft :)

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Anonymous Coward]

You only need to login for purchased (so, the free Mavericks download), but system updates themselves don't need a login â" even now as part of the new/pre-10.8 App Store interface.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[gnasher719]

Its garbage like this, and Apple's willingness to let the NSA spy on their customers 24/7 that has turned me away from OS X.

So what evidence is there that Apple has been willing to let the NSA spy on their customers _ever_?

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[nine-times]

You are correct. What people don't realize is that there are actually two different update mechanisms behind the "App Store" updates. When you check for updates, Apple displays the updates for applications purchased from the App Store along with updates for the OS-- but the fact that they're displayed together doesn't mean that they behave exactly the same way. The updates for App Store apps are downloaded from the App Store and require you to have an App Store account, but the system updates are downloaded from a different location, and no account is required.

I administer these things as part of my job. You definitely don't need an account to download system updates.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Burz]

Its garbage like this, and Apple's willingness to let the NSA spy on their customers 24/7 that has turned me away from OS X.

So what evidence is there that Apple has been willing to let the NSA spy on their customers _ever_?

Here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/images/prism-slide-5.jpg ...from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[SpaceManFlip]

This is a disturbing trend. I also was figuratively puking when I tested Windows 8 and it was all "MICROSOFT ACCOUNT NOW YOU SIGN IN TO EVERYTHING 24/7 MOTHERFUCKER!!". I managed to get by without the account somehow though. There's almost always a way.

BTW if you want to sign up for a throwaway Apple ID with no payment method, do this:

Go to store.apple.com online wherever and "buy" a Free app. It will prompt for a sign-in, but only with Free Apps can you create a new account with the option for No Payment Method. Use that Apple ID for whatever.

Re:Why App Store and not software update?

[Macgrrl]

I recently managed to create a new account and download software for my mother without giving it a credit card, but by using a gift card only. I think I googled creating a AppleID with no credit card for the details on how to do it, it wasn't terribly hard.

initial impressions

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I'm so goddamn glad it's not named after a cat, you have no idea. Second, I'm also super pleased to see they got rid of the faux leather style. Lastly... I'm surprised and glad it's free. Makes up for the feeling of "buyers regret" regarding the previous updates. Just my .02

Re:initial impressions

[mrxak]

Yeah, unfortunately it's named after an obscure Californian inside joke, as if the whole world revolves around California. They should have just named it Sea Lion to hang a lampshade on this terrible chapter, then dropped cutesy nicknames entirely with OS 11+.

Maverick McCain

[narcc]

Finally! An OS suitable for Sarah Palin.

She's a real Maverick.

Re:Maverick McCain

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Slashdot is so topical lately! Where's the beef??

Re:Maverick McCain

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time to make the donuts!

Re:Maverick McCain

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this where you punch me in the face?

Re:Maverick McCain

[Anonymous Coward]

Obamacare can only sign up 50 000 a day so it is lucky that the population it is to serve is so small.

Re:Biased Ars Review of Apple Product

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone needs to counter-balance the horrendous anti-Apple bias found here on /.

Okay, there's the review...

[93 Escort Wagon]

So when can we expect the Review of Ars Technica's Review of OS X Mavericks?

Re:Okay, there's the review...

[Anonymous Coward]

Review sux !!

Re: Okay, there's the review...

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Re:Okay, there's the review...

[aaaaaaargh!]

Once they have received their payment from Apple, which is about NOW.

It IS a big deal

[bussdriver]

We use computers and mice, maybe a track pad. It is one thing to theme something with fluff and quite another to try to simulate historical metaphors while ignoring known methods of user input and popular conventions.

Making something look like a book is a nice touch that is a matter of opinion but making you do the motions of the real world to interact with a computer program using a mouse... that is just idiotic and should be a cause for concern.

Skeuomorphism is great if you are making something tor a target demo that understands some real world item well and would instantly "get it" while you could slowly migrate them to something better suited to the newer technology that is replacing it.

You might want to use VHS tape or film reels as metaphors when introducing video editing in the 90s... But as soon as people can adapt, those metaphors can be chucked for more modern or abstract ones; as Apple and others have done with digital video editing. Some terms like film and reels still remain despite this generation never using or even seeing actual film.

Re:It IS a big deal

[wild_quinine]

You might want to use VHS tape or film reels as metaphors when introducing video editing in the 90s...

But even back then, yes, even with technophobes, if you'd forced your users to rewind those tapes in real time you would have had a serious problem.

Re:It IS a big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

So when will Microsoft stop using a floppy disk as a save icon?

Re:It IS a big deal

[mosb1000]

I don't understand why in 2013 I still have to save things. It's not like they haven't figured out how to do it automatically.

Re:It IS a big deal

[jonbryce]

I don't think they will, and I don't think they should. The floppy disk icon is part of our language now. People understand that it means "save", even if they have never seen a real life physical floppy disk.

Re: It IS a big deal

[macs4all]

Haven't been watching OS X for the past three or 4 years, right?

I found this in about .5 secs on Google.

Install won't finish while you're reading.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was one of the slowest updates in recent years. However after install 10.9 appears just as fast as 10.8. I installed because I wanted the iBooks app and it was worth the effort.

Mavericks wasn't the only update made available today. iPhoto's update allows my computer to rapidly go through hundreds of 18 megapixel photos at full screen without the long pause that the previous version would sometimes cause. So that's good.

On the other hand, iMovie's update fucked up everything. I despise it. Its install keeping the previous version wasn't enough, my library was trashed. I'm going to have to rebuild from scratch. I'd recommend avoiding the new iMovie for the time being.

FINALLY

[dnaumov]

With the skeumorphism gone, the stock Calendar app finally became usable.

Re:FINALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

true! I had forgotten how much more I like Apple Calendar than the calendar in Microsoft Outlook. I'm switching to use Mail, Contacts and Calendar instead of Outlook if it works for the next week or so. fingers crossed.

Re:FINALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

With the skeumorphism gone, the stock Calendar app finally became usable.

Wrong! It is the only stock apple app that it NOT full-screen capable. Why in gods name not? Consistency is the lifeblood of a UI. (I'm looking at you windows 8/8.1)

Re: FINALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

You can full-screen stickies?

Re:FINALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you on about? Calendar runs in full-screen mode just fine, not that I ever use it but just for kicks I tried hitting the little "go to full-screen mode" arrows at the top right corner of the window and there it was, full-screen mode...

Re:FINALLY

[dnaumov]

With the skeumorphism gone, the stock Calendar app finally became usable.

Wrong! It is the only stock apple app that it NOT full-screen capable. Why in gods name not? Consistency is the lifeblood of a UI. (I'm looking at you windows 8/8.1)

Except is IS full-screen capable.

Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

With your "OMG, they must be fucktards" mentality and your openly bias "Linux before God" agenda have you ever stopped to consider for so much as a second that Apple's setup has some real value to ordinary consumers who just want shit to work?

Their closed garden approach may irritate the hell out of you information ought to be freers but good God, it makes certain my grandmother doesn't have to worry about viruses or malware. There is plenty of shit to be found on the app store, but a hell of a lot less than for Linux or Windows [or the Mac for that matter] on the wider Internet. You may prefer a over the antenna, torrenting or streaming approach - or just anything without DRM - but the movies, television shows, etc. provided by iTunes are of a reasonable, watchable quality and portable.

Besides, if you want to talk about the "brainwashed idiots" crowd - who are really not Apple fanbois, but instead the techno hypster - news flash, Linux is next for them. (Fuck, my bet is that you're one of them because you aren't stopping to really consider that OS X may provide all they need for a great many people. Fuck, Windows does.)

Re:Fuck You

[docmordin]

Mac is also not very stable with heavy applications like photoshop, after effects, 3dsmax, etc.

I chuckled heartily over this, especially considering that Autodesk hasn't released a native 3DS Max binary for OS X.

Re:Fuck You

[smash]

Lol. Windows 7 regularly crashes with my USB RS232 adapter. Just today, without the adapter plugged in, it black-screened and half-rebooted (elitebook 8570p) itself for no reason. Ivy bridge hardware, hardware diagnostics are all good.

I've been running beta versions of Mavericks on my main machine since DP1. I've yet to have a crash with it.

Re:Fuck You

[fyngyrz]

From my OSX shell, result of "uptime":

22:14 up 29 days, 18:22, 4 users, load averages: 0.15 0.15 0.10

Hardly even trying. Last reboot was probably a result of an upgrade from Apple. System crashes are so rare I can't even recall one. App crashes, yeah, sometimes, perhaps once every couple months or so. Depends on the app.

Re:Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point, people have to take some responsibility for learning how to use something effectively and efficiently. Wanting shit to "just work" is one thing, but this has resulted in walled gardens, locked-down hardware and laptops you can't even remove the HDD from (and even if you can, it has a proprietary connector which greatly hampers personal replacement of the disk), and in general people being taken advantage of by tech companies due to their ignorance.

People don't have any interest in learning. Yes, cheaper non-Mac laptops might have greater issues, and throwing Linux on them will present even more challenges, but being able to save money and take full control over your computing experience is much, much more important than this obsession over having things "just work" at the EXPENSE of freedom and being treated like a chump.

I accept that everyone's different and have different preferences for an OS. I just believe that most people are wrong, and their ignorance and inability to learn (or lack the will to learn) will result in greater levels of being locked down, not to mention aggregating fanboys who think isn't a great thing that they don't know shit about the tech they're using.

Re:Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

have you ever stopped to consider for so much as a second that Apple's setup has some real value to ordinary consumers who just want shit to work?

They want SHIT to work????

Re:Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

From my Windows 7 console

System Boot Time: 12/10/2013, 3:22:19 a.m.

Last reboot was a Windows update.

I also don't recall my last system crash. Chrome crashes all the time though because I'm using the dev version. Nothing else has crashed recently.

Re:Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

You never see Apple in a production environment? Oh AC, you're so funny. You need to get some schooling, junior.

Re:Fuck You

[thegarbz]

So what you're saying is you have a dodgy driver causing kernel related issues? What would you have the operating system do, chug along as if nothing is happening risking major data corruption? Set the hardware on fire? How about reach out and slap the user for not getting to the root of their problem and making the system more stable.

Windows 7 never crashes on its own accord. Users install buggy crap that makes it crash, or bodgy hardware causes it to crash.

Re:Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

Other then graphics/art type shops, can you cite some examples of where they are used in production?

I've been working in IT for 15 years and only saw them at a magazine house i worked at long ago.

Perhaps the AC is out of line as they do have a market (the arts) but they certainly are not common. If this is the case, should the schools focus on the majority or minority?

Re:Fuck You

[sh00z]

OEMs install buggy crap that makes it crash, or bodgy hardware causes it to crash.

FTFY.

Re:Fuck You

[thegarbz]

You didn't fix anything. You just passed on the blame for the user not caring enough to run a quick debug utility and google the error code of the memory dump caused during the crash.

The reality is it doesn't matter who or what is causing windows to crash, the point is the user has made no attempt to determine why and has declared the system a lost cause. Ultimately he won't be satisfied with any OS as in theory any OS can be brought down this way when the hardware plays up.

Re:Fuck You

[Reaperducer]

I know a company that recently completed a three-year project replacing about 20,000 Dells with Macs at about two dozen locations nationwide. And not just for visual things. For accounting, management, general office, etc... EVERYBODY is on a Mac now. And for the very few hyper-specific applications that don't have a Mac equivalent (things like transmitter monitoring, satellite aiming, etc...), they use Macs running BootCamp.

All you've done is show the world that you have very limited experience. You really shouldn't brag about it.

Re:Fuck You

[smash]

Oh no, i've repeatedly upgraded the driver. There is no stable driver that exists. Why a flaky USB peripheral should bring down the entire machine is also an issue.

Re:Fuck You

[thegarbz]

Why a flaky USB peripheral should bring down the entire machine is also an issue.

Is it really? The only way to prevent that is abstraction. That leads to problems driving hardware if you're unable to do it directly. Every OS on the market can be brought down by a dodgy driver. I can kernel panic my Linux box by modprobing a specific SATA controller driver. The more abstraction you have the nastier the hacks need to be to optimise your hardware.

Re:Fuck You

[smash]

SATA controller crashing the OS is a little different to a USB peripheral which by nature should be able to handle hot insertion/removal and is low performance. I'll also note that this adapter works perfectly fine in both OS X and Linux.

Re:Fuck You

[thegarbz]

What's the distinction between a SATA controller and a USB harddisk? One talks via the northbridge and the other via the host controller. Why put a different criteria on one but not the other? The only reason I mentioned it at all was because of the clear example of a driver causing a kernel panic simply by loading it in memory. It could have just as well been the TI USB Host controller, or any USB device. Linux treats them all as the same low level driver running with top privileges with direct access to the hardware (which is actually required by it's architecture since otherwise the access to the driver via /dev or /sys wouldn't be exposed in the first place).

Some idiot's ability to write drivers for one platform but not another is irrelevant to the discussion. The fact is you can make the Linux kernel oops quite easily from a driver. Linux developers being a bit more competent is beside the point :-).

I joke but it's unfortunately also not quite true. The state of ATI's drivers back when it was called ATI was atrocious and would frequently lead to a kernel panic as well if X did something the driver didn't like, so Linux developers aren't in the clear here either.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Fuck Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Tuppe666, is that you?

Step Away From The Kool Aid

[IHTFP]

Overall, Siracusa's review of OS X.9 is excellent but I got a chuckle out of this statement about the Sprite Kit: "All of this functionality is provided through a pleasantly abstracted Objective-C API that's a far cry from the typical low-level C/C++ game engine code." I understand the distinction he's trying to make between a pleasantly abstracted API and a typical low-level API, but Objective-C is a fright pig of immense proportions, not to mention overt vendor lock-in bullshit.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ArsTechnica, they don't exactly hide their lust for anything Apple.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

What vendor locking bullshit are you talking about here? There are multiple (both closed and open) objective-c runtimes, for multiple OSes, and multiple open source compilers for it on multiple platforms.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that C++ is not a fright pig of immense proportions?

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[smash]

Objective-C is available for anything clang runs on.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "overt vendor lock-in bullshit" is someone else's tools for their market. Who cares? Just go use some tools and make some stuff. If you don't want to be "locked in" then use something else and/or develop for another market. It sounds like you worry a bit about your own choices rather than someone else's.

And Objective-C can be really nice to work with. It makes more sense to me more often than c++ does.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[IHTFP]

99.9% of the code written in Objective-C uses proprietary Apple APIs. When almost every line of code is not portable to another platform, that's vendor lock-in bullshit. The Sprite Kit is just a 2D sprite library.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, vendor lock-in very nearly happened with Objective-C, but it is quite literally thanks to the GPL and the Free Software Foundation that that didn't happen (click to slides 8 to 11) back in 1989.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[fyngyrz]

Well, to be fair, Objective C is one thing, however Apple's related APIs are quite something else, and do represent potential vendor lock-in, particularly if you are careless about using them.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[IHTFP]

I wasn't telling anyone what to do. I was just stating some facts. If you enjoy that flavor of Kool Aid, drink up!

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[VortexCortex]

A fright pig of immense proportions is available for anything clang runs on.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[GrahamCox]

Objective-C is a fright pig of immense proportions

No, it isn't. I developed in C++ for 12 years before (initially reluctantly) moving to Objective-C about 10 years ago. After some orientation, I realised it was actually a breath of fresh air. The most productive language I've ever used, bar none.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[GrahamCox]

The Sprite Kit is just a 2D sprite library

There you go again. Have you used it? It's "just" a 2D sprite library that has the simplest API I've ever seen, and yet handles all the OpenGL stuff behind the scenes for you, has a full particles system AND a physics engine, all built in. The physics alone (which is not just basic collision detection but a full physics environment) is worth the price of admission, which is ummm, free.

As a test I piled sprites of about 100x100 pixels, all with attached particle emitters and each with a physics body into the system, moving randomly and interacting according to their 'natural' physics. On my 13" Macbook Pro Retina I only started to see the framerate dip below 60fps when I got to almost 3000 sprites. That's good performance actually.

2D games may be ho-hum to some, but with simple API, power and performance SK gives you, I look forward to seeing what cool stuff people come up with. Should be fun.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fright pig of immense proportions" is "stating some facts"? An interesting version of English you speak, aye.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the APIs, it actually allows you to make applications without having to write everything yourself.
If you want to port your application you can always write your own version of the APIs you use.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[gnasher719]

Well, to be fair, Objective C is one thing, however Apple's related APIs are quite something else, and do represent potential vendor lock-in, particularly if you are careless about using them.

That's of course exactly the opposite of Windows APIs, or Android APIs, which will run anywhere. Or do they?

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[AmiMoJo]

Sure, but have you actually tried to use it for anything serious on another platform? There is a reason you don't see many Linux or Windows apps written in Object-C.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

What are these... "facts"?

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[WilyCoder]

"If you want to port your application you can always write your own version of the APIs you use."

Yes, that's exactly what 'vendor lock in' is. Thank you captain obvious.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[smash]

Windows: because they went down the path of c++ and then c#. Linux: because the desktop environment guys are too busy trying to reimplement windows, rather than finish GNUstep.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sprite Kit is just a 2D sprite library

  As a test I piled sprites of about 100x100 pixels, all with attached particle emitters and each with a physics body into the system, moving randomly and interacting according to their 'natural' physics. On my 13" Macbook Pro Retina I only started to see the framerate dip below 60fps when I got to almost 3000 sprites. That's good performance actually.

2D games may be ho-hum to some, but with simple API, power and performance SK gives you, I look forward to seeing what cool stuff people come up with. Should be fun.

I'm someone just starting to try and learn Objective-C would you mind sharing your sprite code/Source files? I'd love to see some simple examples I could use to play around with.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[IHTFP]

There you go again. Have you used it?

Graham, I didn't say that it was a bad library. Being a fantastic 2D sprite library doesn't make it more than a 2D sprite library. I was making a point about Apple intentionally using Objective-C and proprietary APIs to make it very difficult to reuse software written for Apple platforms on non-Apple platforms. Your response was a non sequitur. You gave me random shit for no reason. That makes me sad.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Bogtha]

I wouldn't say the most productive language, but it's certainly the most productive language at that level. Higher-level languages like Python will always beat lower-level languages like Objective-C for productivity.

I find that practically everybody who talks about how awful Objective-C is has turned their nose up at it without trying to use it for any substantial period of time. Yes, it can look weird and verbose when you first start using it, but once you catch on to the patterns, it's a very pleasant language to use. It also helps that the system frameworks are really well designed. It's verbose, sure, but it's also very regular and self-documenting too.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Dixie_Flatline]

The Objective-C spec (absent of the Apple APIs) is much, much smaller than the C++ spec, and it's a proper superset of standard C. Any ANSI C program will compile as an objective C program.

C++ has a massive spec and even when you know what you're doing, you're pretty likely to shoot yourself in the foot at some point. A friend of mine recently joked that the motto of C++ should be, "Yes, well, don't." As in: "I can do this amazing thing in C++ and it's totally legal!" "Yes, well, don't." Pretty much every C++ programmer I know got a chuckle out of that.

I've been programming in C++ on a daily basis for well over 10 years, and there's just so much to hate. The Objective-C syntax is a bit weird, but it's straight forward once you get used to it. C# is possibly a cleaner syntactic representation of similar principals, but C++ is the only fright pig in the room here.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[GrahamCox]

What do you expect them to do? Honestly, Sprite KIt runs on Mac and iOS with an identical API (it even provides macros to get around a few differences, such as UIColor/NSColor). Apple don't care about Android, or some other OS, why should they? They're making it easy to write games for their own platforms, that's a nice thing in and of itself, if you're an Apple dev. If the API wasn't in Objective-C, it wouldn't be as easy to use; it's a nice library precisely because of that.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[GrahamCox]

It's about five lines of code. Getting started with SK doesn't require much hand-holding - read the headers and documentation and it's obvious, even to a newbie.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[IHTFP]

If the API wasn't in Objective-C, it wouldn't be as easy to use

That statement is absurd. I have to go do something more productive...

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

fright pig of immense proportions

Awesome

overt vendor lock-in bullshit.

How so?

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, but at that point, the argument becomes "oh my god, apple released an API... Vendor lock in!" Which is frankly, retarded.

Re:Step Away From The Kool Aid

[shutdown -p now]

C++ has changed a lot since 10 years ago - more so than Obj-C, I dare say.

Frankly, in 2013, a programming language that has only recently got any form of automated memory management, and still doesn't have any namespacing facilities, is outright embarrassing.

And if you found Obj-C to be "the most productive language you've ever used", especially 10 years ago, then I think that you didn't really explore many other options.

for about impact for unix command line devs?

[Anonymous Coward]

10.6 to 10.8 was a pretty difficult transition. different X, command line compiler tools hidden in a couple of directories underneath
XCode, signed applications, grudging support for java, different open source package manager.

as someone who should probably be running linux, how difficult is this going to make my life?

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[Guy Harris]

10.6 to 10.8 was a pretty difficult transition. different X, command line compiler tools hidden in a couple of directories underneath XCode, signed applications, grudging support for java, different open source package manager.

as someone who should probably be running linux, how difficult is this going to make my life?

X: just like 10.8, you need XQuartz. At least it's not different from 10.8.

Command-line compiler tools: if, for example, you just type "gcc" at the command line just for the lulz, it'll pop up a window (so your command line had better be in a Terminal window on the machine on which you're running your shell) asking whether you want Full Frontal Xcode or just the command-line tools. If you select the latter, it'll plop them in an obscure directory under /Library but will plant stuff in /usr/bin that runs those commands. If you select the former, I suspect it'll plop them under /Applications/Xcode.app but will plant stuff in /usr/bin that runs those commands. (Having installed the command-line tools on my Mavericks VM, and then installed Xcode, I don't know what happens if you start by installing Xcode. I do know that if you do both, you get two count 'em two separate copies of, at minimum, the clang program.)

Signed applications, Java: not much, if anything, has changed there from 10.8.

Open source package manager: OS X doesn't come with one, so no change.

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[Anonymous Coward]

But just to be precise (and this precision matters if you are building some piece of software that relies on the leniency of the GNU compiler collection), gcc (as well as g++) has been a symbolic link to clang for quite some time. You don't get the real gcc with Mac OS X out of the box. This is not the worst move because clang has superior error reporting (even making suggestions that are actually helpful), but some pieces of software just do things in their code that clang (at least in the version that ships with Xcode 5 and higher) will not stand for. I'm not holding my breath for Apple to address this issue. Their attitude seems to be that if you are the developer you should know what you're doing, especially if you are not building Apple specific software.

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[itsdapead]

Open source package manager: OS X doesn't come with one, so no change.

...which means it is probably wise to wait for Macports and/or Fink to support Mavericks (I'm sure they're working on it, but currently their websites stop at 10.8)

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[Guy Harris]

But just to be precise (and this precision matters if you are building some piece of software that relies on the leniency of the GNU compiler collection), gcc (as well as g++) has been a symbolic link to clang for quite some time.

That was not true until Xcode 5.

You don't get the real gcc with Mac OS X out of the box. This is not the worst move because clang has superior error reporting (even making suggestions that are actually helpful)

What you got as "gcc", prior to Xcode 4.2, was GCC. What you got, from Xcode 4.2 to 4.6.3, was llvm-gcc, which had GCC's front end and an LLVM-based back end, so it wasn't fully the real GCC but it also didn't use clang as the front end and didn't give clang's error reporting. What you got, starting with GCC 5.0, was clang.

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[unixisc]

Does OS X still include GCC, or have they - like FBSD 10 completely deprecated it in favor of LLVM/Clang? Also, does OS-X include X at all - I thought that one advantage that they'd have is that they wouldn't be undergoing the X => Wayland/Mir transition? I also thought it would have something to just provide terminal & unix shell services if needed. Incidentally, which shell does OS X come w/?

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[Guy Harris]

Does OS X still include GCC, or have they - like FBSD 10 completely deprecated it in favor of LLVM/Clang?

Well, I'm not sure more recent versions of OS X "include" a compiler in the sense that you have the compiler available on the machine as delivered, but, in Mavericks, if you try to run a developer command-line tool, it pops up a window asking if you want to install Xcode or just the command-line developer tools. As of the current version of Xcode (5), they have nothing using GCC's front end, just clang. Xcode 4.2 through 4.6.x included only llvm-gcc (GCC front end, LLVM back end) and clang.

Also, does OS-X include X at all

As of Mountain Lion, no, although if, for example, you try to run xterm from the command line, it pops up a window telling you that you need to install X and offering to open up the Xquartz Web site to download and install it.

I thought that one advantage that they'd have is that they wouldn't be undergoing the X => Wayland/Mir transition?

If you mean an advantage of not basing their GUI on X (it isn't, in fact, based on X; the X server runs on top of the native GUI), yes, that would be an advantage.

I also thought it would have something to just provide terminal & unix shell services if needed.

Presumably something other than a terminal emulator window (which is provided with Terminal.app). You can ssh in if you've enabled it, and, at least on some versions of OS X, you can log in at the login screen with a user name of ">console", at which point it shuts down the window system and puts you at a getty prompt on the system console. No virtual terminals, however.

Incidentally, which shell does OS X come w/?

Shells, plural - bash, tcsh, ksh (starting in, I think, Tiger), zsh. I think bash is the default; it might have been tcsh in earlier releases.

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You realise that Chris Lattener wrote Clang as his day job at Apple right? Clang is Apple's compiler project, it just happens that they BSDed it too.

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[unixisc]

Thanks - I had forgotten about Terminal.app, which was there in NEXTSTEP back in the day. I had forgotten that such a thing wouldn't actually require X to run. Also, if Apple is deprecating all GPL3 software that they have, be it GCC, Samba, then why are they offering bash?

Re:for about impact for unix command line devs?

[Guy Harris]

Also, if Apple is deprecating all GPL3 software that they have, be it GCC, Samba, then why are they offering bash?

mavericks.local$ sw_vers
ProductName: Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.9
BuildVersion: 13A603
mavericks.local$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.51(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin13)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

And that version is GPLv2.

Whoah! Battery life

[timeOday]

Are others confirming a 25-30% battery life increase? That is a stunning increase. (If performance, screen brightness, etc. are maintained). Surely that was not achieved just by trimming eye candy. I am really curious what power optimizations were done?

Re:Whoah! Battery life

[Anonymous Coward]

I am really curious what power optimizations were done?

You are in luck. An article about that is the topic under discussion.

mine does too

[the_fat_kid]

and one of those updates offered to me is 10.9

don't mind the ass-hat trolls

Linux Mint

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is broken and everything you do can potentially break the system.

Actually, Linux Mint is quite nice.
In my humble opinion, it's the best Windows XP that you can download.

If you're of the opinion that Win 8, Mavericks, or Unity are a clunky mistake, you owe it to yourself to try Linux Mint.
My non-tech family members (who want the computer to "just work") absolutely love it.

Wordy blowhard

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire first page of the article contained no information and was simply a rather confusing analogy between the life cycle of an operating system and a living organism with an afterlife? Doesn't give me any confidence that the rest of the article will convey any useful information and I actually was curious because I do own two macs.

It's free. Why does App Store need a credit card?

[myvirtualid]

I don't use iTunes or iBooks or any other Apple media apps. I've only had my Air for a few months, and I do love it so, but.... If Mavericks is free, why does the App Store need a credit card in order for me to download it?

I do not plan on purchasing anything through iTunes. Never say never, sure, but I don't. Ever.

Guess I can't have Mavericks.

Even though it's free.

Kudos, Apple, you've given me my first reason to feel less than happy about a hardware purchase I reveled in.

(Originally posted in wrong discussion, mea culpa; since then, I've discovered one can bootstrap iTunes/AppStore integration without a CC, but it requires attempting to download a free app and entering tombstone info - still too much for a free OS update, IMHO, but better in a kludgey, hackish way.)

Re:APPLE SUX !!

[VortexCortex]

Hahhaha. Wat? As someone who's installed Linux since you had to write over the MBR manually, you sound ridiculous man. You know, Linus cranked out the simplest and most hacky POS kernel in a few days, bare minimums to get a shell up, using a shit ton of GNU software -- Ever write a compiler or editor? (Man, yeah, that's the real engineering feat). Linus then immediately got help from lots of folks who wanted to have Unix on their home PCs. If anything Linux is the epitome of the Bazaar approach vs the Cathedral (HURD) approach -- The EXACT OPPOSITE of know-how vs lots of hackers incrementally tinkering. Folks who had time to waste had home PCs, Linux was a kernel for 386 for home PCs. Blam. Win win.

Linux wasn't some major genius of engineering feat -- Remember when he didn't think real programmers needed an init? He admitted himself somewhat recently that was stupid before giving the finger to Nvidia. To this day Linus's best decisions were in project management. He was in the right place at the right time, and can manage a project like nobody's business. That's why Linux beats HURD -- that and HURD has some deep design issues, with FS nodes supplying their own "..", for example. In otherwords, there are not just BAD engineering choices in Linux -- The whole thing is full of them! We work them out over time to get by -- Read a mailing list, man. This project has a head of steam, and that's why it's awesome; Really has nothing to do with "common sense" (NO INIT?!) or "understanding of reality" (Programming the IO directly?! NO HDD driver?!) -- It has everything to do with tons of folks not wanting to run Windows.

Look, up through Win 95 I booted to the DOS terminal, and typed "win" to lose my shell if I needed some windows GUI program. I was not alone. When MS killed the terminal in 98, Linux was there for us to regain it, if we were crazy enough to do the highly impractical, nonsensical, detached from reality thing, and Install Linux -- A Work In Progress, instead of Windows.

Re:It's free. Why does App Store need a credit car

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think this is intentional?

Multiple Monitors

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of it is just "meh" to me, but the multiple monitor support is SO much better now. Independent "spaces" in mission control, full screen that actually works like you'd expect, etc...

Re:Multiple Monitors

[SpzToid]

Yes, and a tabbed folder manager too. What will they get around to next?

Ah, you noticed it too!

[neoshroom]

That's one of the first things I noticed. The strange thing is I noticed the same process in reverse when I switched to Mac's back in like 2003. Mac's color balance had a more white look and Windows was more contrasty.

After I upgraded at first I assumed it deleted the calibration profile and ended up going through the whole monitor calibration process only to end up with something close, but not exactly like what I started with and neither like how it looked under Mountain Lion. It doesn't really bug me that much, since I'm doing mostly coding and when I have graphical work I'm mostly previewing it on a mobile or a Mac anyway. You must be working in print. Blame paper. ;)

In all seriousness I hope they fix this and any other minor things. It was a much smoother upgrade than the last one though for me.

Re:Ah, you noticed it too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple changed gamma to 2.2 in OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" in 2009, from 1.8 of past Macs.

That would've been what you saw in 2003; lower gamma by default.

Re:It's free. Why does App Store need a credit car

[Anonymous Coward]

My Apple Account had a CC simply because there was something in the App store that I wanted to buy.
That Card has since not only expired but I've closed the account. Yet strangely enough I could bypass the screen that asked me to update it and carry on with the download.
There are also reports that you can bypass it totally so why not try for yourself and see what happens. Then you can report back here with actual facts.... Those rare things on /.

Your perspective is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no need to spend the time to get it working a different way if it'll just work out of the box in the manner you need it to. You see, the rest of the world - aka the non /. crowd - don't want to spend unnecessary [and it is unnecessary] time getting just the perfect drivers - if they exist at all (http://xkcd.com/644/), etc. A fair number of these people also tend to have a little money to afford the machine without much impact, so why the hell not?

As for "full control". This emphasizes just how out of touch you are. Just what level of control do you think the average user should seek that they do not get in OS X?

On a personal note life got a hell of a lot more interesting when I stopped caring about what OS I was using and just focused on doing stuff. I now just use what fits. Refurbish an old Mac for my grandmother, setup Windows Home Server for my brother, put Ubuntu on a netbook for my sister, etc.

What's wrong with that? You want to tell me?

Re:Whoah! Battery life

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you don't want to read the 28 page article.

Timers of all programs are synchronised so they are fired right after each other so that there are longer periods processing and longer periods of idle. This means that frequency throttling up and down happens a lot less often.

Also for invisible and inaudible applications (obscured, or minimised, and not producing or recording audio) they reduce the rate of the timers, so less screen redraws and other things are done.

When showing the battery menu it will show power using/abusing applications, this will probably yield calls to support for those application developers hopefully pushing them to make their applications more power efficient.

This is all done by default on old applications, as a user you can opt-out on a per application basis.

If the developer uses the new SDK the user can no longer opt-out, because they expect the developer to know what is going on. The new SDK includes changes to the timer API to set not only the period but also the accuracy of the tick. For developers they show the power usage of your application during debugging.

During the WWDC they had many sessions about how to reduce the power of your app. This includes letting your application work more bursty, using all the cores for a short while. Using the performance math APIs, and grand central dispatch.

Found it!

[Taantric]

I think we might have just found Patient Zero of the iSheep iCult.

10.1 was also a free upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

10.1 was also released as a free upgrade for 10.0 users. So this is not the first time that it happened.

-nyxgeek

Some Tips : no CC required - no other upgrade

[advid.net]

Let me share those tips I've found:

No credit card required to create an Apple ID if you don't have one: tip 1

No Snow Leopard upgrade from Leopard (however you should have a Snow L. licence for this Mac): tip 2

One still needs a Snow Leopard at least to use the new App Store and download the Maverick files.
Maybe you can go to a friend's and use your new ID to download your Maverick copy... or wait for a tip 3 someone may post here !

Re:Some Tips : no CC required - no other upgrade

[smitty97]

Tip 3: profit!

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X looks so dated. Gradients? Really? Everyone else left that UI design back in the 90s.

Make your own Kool Aid

[fyngyrz]

I'm not saying Apple's alone in this (that was someone else), I'm just pointing out how Objective C can relate to lock-in.

Certainly using any OS's unique APIs can bind you tightly to that specific OS.

However, there are also lots of APIs that are the same, or so similar that dealing with them generally doesn't lock you to anything. The standard C library, for instance, contains lots of useful stuff, most of which works as designed on all major platforms (Windows, OSX, linux), and you can often leverage that without any significant lock-in with the exercise of a little care. Some things -- like fork() -- you need to know where and how the differences affect you, but mostly there's a uniform set of tools.

In my case, I've found it absolutely worth my while to avoid vendor specific APIs as much as possible, and write my own stuff. Not only because then I can move it around (which I do... I write for multiple OS's, often within the context of a single project), but because unlike an OS vendor, when I find a bug, I fix it instead of sitting on it for months or years. So I have lots of graphics stuff, list handing code, memory allocation code, threading code, etc. that I use.

For instance, one recent project was a library that contained a suite of live, non-destructive image processing code for DSLRs. It was designed to leverage multiple cores and give the user control over various aspects of that. I leveraged POSIX threads instead of the OSX API for threading; works great, and runs on multiple platforms, which it would not have if I had stuck with the OSX Objective C API.

Then there's QT, which provides a uniform (if somewhat busted) API that hides the OS underneath, and gives you a pretty good degree of platform independence in doing so. Sadly, QT is just as prone to leaving serious bugs in versions and blundering forward without fixing them (ever) as are the major OS vendors. So again, building your own code instead of using the provided APIs can save you.

It's a matter of time on the one hand, and of craftsmanship on the other.

Re:Biased Ars Review of Apple Product

[BreakBad]

INORITE...someone said something about colors, and I was like Huh? Then I was like Wuh?

Re:Biased Ars Review of Apple Product

[mrxak]

John Siracusa's reviews of OS X over at Ars Technica have always been in-depth and informative, and while John Siracusa himself may be a fan of OS X, he doesn't shy away from being very critical when it does something not-so-great, or he sees a problem with Apple's direction. This year he (rightfully) railed against several UI elements that are pretty bizarre. It's hardly a puff piece. It's more educational, than anything.

In general, I find his reviews much more about explaining how things work, than actually praising or criticizing. It's a review, in the sense that it's an overview of the new operating system, rather than some sort of grading of the operating system. He's not comparing it to anything except the previous versions of OS X, and then only in objective technical respects. It's not about competing views of different products, it's to tell existing OS X users what they can expect if they upgrade.

Mostly Siracusa talks about under-the-hood workings of the operating system and computer hardware, and past Siracusa reviews have even included code examples to explain new APIs to developers interested in the platform, and users who may be the beneficiaries of developers using new APIs. This year it talks quite a bit about race-to-sleep and other technical issues that apply to computing as a whole. It's exactly the sort of review somebody would want to read if they were technically-inclined, like the Slashdot audience. I would say a Siracusa OS X review is entirely appropriate, here. If you're just looking for some kind of Windows vs. Mac (vs. Linux) argument fodder, it's not the review for you. I wouldn't want or care about those sorts of reviews on Slashdot.

Buggy

[Anonymous Coward]

1) I seem to be posting this as Anonymous Coward, even though I'm logged in. Maybe it's a slashdot problem, but I don't think they've rolled out a major software release lately.

2) Mail keeps crashing. I can't even read my e-mail. As someone who relies heavily on Apple Mail, this is a VERY serious issue.

Other than that, it seems snappy enough. I give it a 2/10 until they fix the bugs.

Re:Biased Ars Review of Apple Product

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think a single post particularly from a user with Massive AntiApple bias is particularly appropriate. Is is that hard to find competing goosesteppers from the Google camp.

Price

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like this new operating system is worth the price!

Education

[roysaha007]

My site education All ... educationour best site

Re:Whoah! Battery life

[nmb3000]

Timers of all programs are synchronised so they are fired right after each other so that there are longer periods processing and longer periods of idle. This means that frequency throttling up and down happens a lot less often.

That sounds a lot like the timer coalescing added in Windows 7, and it did have notable improvements in power usage over XP. So while the idea isn't new or innovative on the part of Apple, it does help them maintain their lead over Windows when it comes to lower power consumption.

Re: frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone meaning whom? Microsoft? Yeah they make their Ui look like a subway sign now. So what?

I really hope it's "all that"

[doccus]

Because..Lion and Mountain Lion have completely steered me away from the Mac. I'm certainly willing to give it a go, just like I gave Lion a half year before deciding it was utter crap. It'd be a whole lot easier than migrating to an entirely new OS, such as Linux Mint.. However, going to clear a new partition to do the upgrade on, just in case... So, I'm hopeful. Let's hope that the drop (for me) in usability of OSX was just an abberation...

Re: frosty piss

[macs4all]

No, you know what looks dated: The UI elements in the Windows Modern UI (Windows 8, Ms Server 2012, et al.). I swear it's like they pulled up the Windows 3.1 theme...

Re: frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree that they do. It's a good thing I don't use Windows either.

Re:It's free. Why does App Store need a credit car

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsupport.apple.com%2Fkb%2FHT2534&ei=FTBoUvmXGaOTyQGwhIGYBw&usg=AFQjCNExXBg4eZ6sibWoNy6N1EiwfPs12g&sig2=GAQnFjOk4G7y-eLz2p4YEw&bvm=bv.55123115,d.aWc

Re:OS X: just another mediocre UNIX

[unixisc]

Yeah, those were the days when Apple's OS was no better in multitasking than Windows 3.1, and when Apple took forever to design something that could match Windows 95 - like Copland, before giving up the ghost and recalling Steve & buying NEXT. Once OS X was complete, it was trivial to cross port it to the x86, and later, to make the iOS derivative & put it on ARM

Actually

[bussdriver]

I remember a couple apps that had rewind buttons in them! I don't remember their names... Obviously they didn't rewind in real time because then there would be zero benefit to bothering to buy and learn the computer. I fooled around with most everything in the area as it came out... the early stuff actually DID make you wait because it was hooked into actual tape decks-- The benefit of recording and replaying all your edits was only worth it for a professional -- the COST was totally unjustifiable for most just so you could combine all your edits into 1 automated process so you wouldn't have to sit and wait.... I never could imagine somebody managing to do a whole edit session without actually doing the edits before continuing... especially when so many devices were not perfectly frame accurate on the edits.

Exceptions - SAVE

[bussdriver]

Save is an exception to the general rules. The whole concept of "saving" was and is abstract and foreign to the real world for MOST people. Despite the lack of a save metaphor new users learn it QUICKLY. Once you lose your work a few times, you learn to SAVE.

Doesn't matter what symbol is used or what word. Saving is a computer metaphor and could have been any word. Now "Save As..." that is not an exception - millions still do not understand it but use it as SAVE due to past experience. If you could make a bluetooth rabbits foot that saved every time you rubbed it... somebody should be thinking up fun pranks that utilize the webcam to see if you can get users to make faces or do silly actions to get positive results from the machine!

iOS integration...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is NOT a Good Thing!

I'm sticking with Snow Leopard for as long as I can and then I'm moving to Linux, probably Ubuntu Classic. (I'm waiting for more Linux apps to differentiate between Control-C and Command-C and getting some consistency across apps.)

This from an Apple aficionado since Feb 78.

Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not their "thing" , it's not bad but really not up to the level of the new Windows kernel.
My Powerbook is end of life this year so I'll be looking at the new Lenovo workhorses.
 

test Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

test

maverick review

[Anonymous Coward]

dont know a lot of the details to the maverick operating system but I know my laptop has never run this bad before is slower and freezes up way too much never had so many problems before this update I hope they fix it fast or I can get back the old one soon. I have a macbook pro 13" retina display which is fairly new so dont think the speed of my laptop should be an issue for these problems to occur

Re:APPLE SUX !!

[iggymanz]

Linus refined his work over time, and yes had the technical engineering smarts to selectively recognize and incorporate good contributions. Linux scales from smart phones and appliances to supercomputing clusters, due in no small part to Linus' abilities.

you don't do kernel or system programming, do you? your "examples" are silly, sound lime you are just a software/os installer

Mavericks: Gimme back my GCC, darn it.

[petefriedman]

I carelessly upgraded to Mavericks and while some free UI tweaks are nice, what they don't mention in the feature list is the rather important fact that the GCC compiler is no longer used in 10.9. It simply points to Clang, their new compiler of choice. While Clang may be better in some ways according to some advocates, and I really don't know enough about compiler performance to have an informed opinion - recompiling anything seems to no longer work. Ouch. Anyone have any ideas on this and how to solve? I'd rather roll with Clang if there's some known configuration fix, but searching around, I see a lot of stumped folks.