Would you ever own a mac?

[nickdalzell]

i thought i made that clear, i do NOT want it to look like iOS 7 or Windows 8 or whatever Google plans to do to KitKat. that does not mean it isn't going to happen. iOS 7 is going to become Mac OS X whether we like it or not. but, for 5.5 GB used up, i expected it to be different since they are advertising it as a 'major' upgrade with '200 new features' which i fail to see. it looks just like Mountain Lion. so did i just waste my time for nothing? the only change so far is being named after a very unpopular Ford car from the 1960s (at least that's the image invoked when i read 'Maverick' or 'Mavericks')

 

[mikedt]

I'd suspect the 5.5GB consumed might be because the downloaded file or ISO is still sitting around on the HDD somewhere. After all you might want to reinstall it sometime, and you'd need the Mavericks ISO image to burn a DVD or make a bootable USB stick. It might not be convenient to go downloading it all again if you wanted to reinstall it. The older Mountain Lion stuff should have been deleted, and not still in there along with the new Mavericks stuff.

 

[nickdalzell]

what about all that space it used up during the upgrade? i may have a 500GB hard disk, but if i'm upgrading i expect to notice *something* otherwise i wasted HDD space for no reason. everywhere i try searching for those in the same boat as i am in, noticing nothing at all, but all i get is tons of hype about how 'different' Mac OS X Mavericks is. while i notice nothing?

 

[mplevy]

it didn't leave a 'disk drive' icon the way other programs do that can be dragged to trash. i thought that was the actual install amount? it updated through the App Store much like the way a normal app update does. it didn't actually download an image and mount it.

It's a LITTLE different from a normal app update. The update is designed to delete the files needed for updating once it completes, this is why you don't see the drive image mounted. Yes, it did download an image, why do you think it took time to start? The disk image was contained within the updater that was in your Launchpad/Applications, I made a copy of the dmg from the package so I could create a USB installer without re-downloading it.

Still left wondering what, besides the name itself, was done. they called it a 'major update' but i see nothing. i kinda expected it to go all iOS 7 on me but I am glad it didn't. but what exactly was done? the info online is vague. it feels more like an incremental upgrade if you ask me. i read this and that about '200 new features and a better battery life' but it looks like Mountain Lion to me. i had to do a double-check of the 'About this Mac' screen to verify it actually upgraded.

As i said the only noticeable change was the login screen itself, plus the addition of two apps that previously were not installed (Maps and iBooks, which i fail to see their usefulness on a laptop without GPS capability)

There are some "under the hood" things that changed. My battery life seems to be better, Activity Monitor has changed (has a new "Energy" tab and the section at the bottom has changed). A new version of Safari shipped with 10.9 (now version 7.0), the design of some apps changed (Calendar, Contacts, Notes are no longer "skeumorphic").

If you want to see what's changed I suggest Siracusa's review for your evening reading for the next week (it's 24 pages), I linked to it before but I'll put it in this post also.
OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review | Ars Technica

 

[nickdalzell]

i never use Contacts, Calendar, iBooks or such so i guess i wouldn't have noticed it. those types of apps fit my Android phone more than a computer. can't see the usefulness of reading e-books on a laptop, much less navigation via Maps sans GPS capability, plus using a laptop for navigation is about as cool as using an iPad for a camera, but i digress.

i just expected to see *something* other than a longer boot-up time. even Safari, maybe i missed it, looks exactly the same. it just feels like i wasted hard drive space for no reason. now i'm down to 471GB free as opposed to the 481GB free that i had before. i am not sure if downgrading is possible just to recover the space as it isn't worth the trouble if i cannot notice anything.

Not only does the OS on my Mac have the name of some rust bucket Ford, but it is using ~20GB of space for *nothing*. it looks exactly the same, works a bit SLOWER to me. it takes longer to boot up.

 

[Hadron]

You don't use an external monitor? Multi-monitor support is supposed to be much better.

(Still waiting for my order to work it's way through corporate bureaucracy . Not putting it on my current machine in case it's the final straw for the old wreck...).

 

[ThatOneRearEnd]

I got a G4 AGP. Though it's rather old, it still beats some other machines in booting time.

If I'll ever win in lottery, rob a bank or do both the mentioned stuff, I'd surely get a new one...

 

[mikedt]

Nick where is this "200 new features" of Mavericks? Because I can't actually find that, certainly not on Apple's website. However I do remember "200 new features" being listed for OS X Leopard when that came out, and a lot of them were just additional fonts, as well as things like the Alex voice.

Here's the list of changes and features for Mavericks according to the Wiki...

• Improved multiple display support: The menu bar and the Dock can be accessed on each display; Apple TV can be used as an external display.[8]
• Mission Control has been updated to organize and switch between Desktop workspaces independently between multiple displays.[8]
• Finder enhancements, including tabs,[9] fullscreen support, and document tags.[10]
• Added new iBooks application.[11]
• Added new Maps application.[12][13]
• Calendar enhancements.[14]
• Safari browser enhancements.[15]
• iCloud Keychain sync.[16]
• Notification Center enhancements.[17]
• Some skeuomorphisms, such as the leather texture in Calendar and the book-like appearance of Contacts, have been removed from the UI.[18][19]
• Timer coalescing, which enhances energy efficiency by reducing CPU usage by up to 72 percent.[20][21]
• App Nap, which sleeps apps that are not currently visible.[20][21]
• Compressed Memory, which automatically compresses data from inactive apps when approaching maximum memory capacity.[20][21][22]
• Server Message Block version 2 (SMB2) is now the default protocol for sharing files.[21]
• LinkedIn sharing integration.[23]
• OpenGL 4.1 Core Profile.[24]
• OpenCL 1.2.[25]
• USB syncing of calendar, contacts and other information to iOS devices has been removed, instead requiring the use of iCloud.[26]
• Some system alerts, such as low battery and removal of drives without ejecting, have been moved to Notification Center.

I don't suppose you're going to notice the iCloud, iBooks or LinkedIn stuff, unless you're actually using them. Some of the changes are just subtle eye candy stuff, and some are background changes like the Open CL and Open GL.

I do suspect the 5.5GB of consumed HDD space is the downloaded ISO image somewhere, maybe it's hidden? You would need it if you were to reinstall the OS at sometime in the future. Otherwise you'd have to get out your old Mountain Lion or Snow Leopard or whatever DVD, install that, and then download the whole 5.5GB of Mavericks again. Which might not be convenient or possible, e.g. no internet or limited metered internet.

My Macbook is still Snow Leopard, but because it's an older one it can't do Mavericks. It does much everything I need except for one thing, no Mongolian. Apple only seemed to cater for United States minority languages. I'm pretty sure almost no one around this part of the world needs Cherokee or Cheyenne, but we do need Mongolian. Microsoft on the other hand is far better for language support than Apple, in fact Linux is better in this respect as well.

 

[mikedt]

Not only does the OS on my Mac have the name of some rust bucket Ford, but it is using ~20GB of space for *nothing*. it looks exactly the same, works a bit SLOWER to me. it takes longer to boot up.

LOL. Is that what Apple is doing now, naming OS X versions after cars, or it could be famous characters from movies they're using? - because I think they ran out of big cats. ...hmmm Mac OS X Yugo, Mac OS X Lada. There was a version of Ubuntu called "Maverick", Maverick Meerkat, .. trademark or copyright infringement possibly? ....hmmm.

EDIT:

Apparently the OS X naming convention now is places in California, and there's plenty of them, unlike big cats.

 

[nickdalzell]

i doubt Ford wants to sue, for trademark infringement. i think like most, they want to forget the Ford Maverick ever happened (it was compared with the Pinto during the time). today, folks still mock their ads calling it the 'Simple[ton] Machine'

i have only seen one still running, it was blue, (robin's egg) and blowing more than enough blue smoke to qualify as a two-stroke. the guy driving it was extremely large and the whole thing was rusted so badly i was surprised it was street legal. Ford must have been ashamed even then as there is no badging of 'Ford' anywhere to be seen, just a cattle-horned badge on the grille and trunk lid, and the words 'Maverick' on the hubcaps and interior.

Sure don't like the idea of my new Mac, as amazing as it seems, to remind me of that. yes, the bootup time is a bit longer than i remember. i don't use Multiple displays (was cool when you had two CRTs side by side in the 1990s but that time has long since gone) but it has had the ability to use an Apple TV for ages, it was called Airplay Mirroring. was available long before Mountain Lion.

In the Mac App Store, where it shows the upgrade for Mavericks, it says in the first sentence 'OS X Mavericks includes 200 plus new features...' and goes on from there. while i notice ZERO. Safari is the same, the OS UI is the same, the notification centre functions very much like it has been, the finder menu is the same, all the animations are still there, and to me the launchpad is no different. multi-touch gestures are still the same, the only noticed additions are two apps i hope i can uninstall as i fail to see their relevance on a laptop, and a longer bootup time, as well as my background wallpaper in the login screen. other than that, i notice nothing. it feels about as fast as it has been, but now uses up more space than i'd like given that it has changed, *nothing*. certainly not enough to use up 20GB of hard disk. as i said, i had to actually look in the 'About this Mac' screen to verify it actually upgraded as not only did it complete so fast as to never tell me it had succeeded, it looks and acts exactly as i remember it.

 

[EarlyMon]

Does AFT/MTP still work?

 

[nickdalzell]

depends on what that is, Earlymon.

 

[mikedt]

i doubt Ford wants to sue, for trademark infringement. i think like most, they want to forget the Ford Maverick ever happened (it was compared with the Pinto during the time). today, folks still mock their ads calling it the 'Simple[ton] Machine'

I bet Apple would sue for trademark infringement though, if anyone else were to subsequently call their OS "Mavericks" or "Maverick". They tend to keep very tight control on their IP. I don't think Ford would particularly care if an OS were to be called "Edsel".

i have only seen one still running, it was blue, (robin's egg) and blowing more than enough blue smoke to qualify as a two-stroke. the guy driving it was extremely large and the whole thing was rusted so badly i was surprised it was street legal. Ford must have been ashamed even then as there is no badging of 'Ford' anywhere to be seen, just a cattle-horned badge on the grille and trunk lid, and the words 'Maverick' on the hubcaps and interior.

Sure don't like the idea of my new Mac, as amazing as it seems, to remind me of that. yes, the bootup time is a bit longer than i remember. i don't use Multiple displays (was cool when you had two CRTs side by side in the 1990s but that time has long since gone) but it has had the ability to use an Apple TV for ages, it was called Airplay Mirroring. was available long before Mountain Lion.

I frequently use multiple displays for my job, usually internal screen on the laptop and a DLP projector. But then I'm only using the projector to duplicate what's on the laptop's screen, i.e. mirroring.

In the Mac App Store, where it shows the upgrade for Mavericks, it says in the first sentence 'OS X Mavericks includes 200 plus new features...' and goes on from there. while i notice ZERO. Safari is the same, the OS UI is the same, the notification centre functions very much like it has been, the finder menu is the same, all the animations are still there, and to me the launchpad is no different. multi-touch gestures are still the same, the only noticed additions are two apps i hope i can uninstall as i fail to see their relevance on a laptop, and a longer bootup time, as well as my background wallpaper in the login screen. other than that, i notice nothing. it feels about as fast as it has been, but now uses up more space than i'd like given that it has changed, *nothing*. certainly not enough to use up 20GB of hard disk. as i said, i had to actually look in the 'About this Mac' screen to verify it actually upgraded as not only did it complete so fast as to never tell me it had succeeded, it looks and acts exactly as i remember it.

AFAICT many of the changes to OS X Mavericks are under the hood as they say. Even going through prior versions of OS X, most of the changes have been mainly subtle and incremental, things like going from pinstripe to brushed metal to solid or graduated gray, or changes to the Dock, rather than anything really radical or complete change. ...ahem Microsoft, Windows 7 > Windows 8 I wouldn't really want Apple to make OS X go like flat kiddybrick UI or whatever. The biggest change to Mac and OS X in recent years was going from PowerPC to Intel x86 architecture, but the OS X UI didn't change much, if at all. I can't comment about Mavericks too much myself other than what I've read or seen about it, because my Mac doesn't run it.

If you compare Mavericks to say OS X 10.0 Cheetah from 2001, overall things do look very similar, does work very much in the same way and methods. The most obvious difference to me is the Dock, going from 2D to 3D, and the pinstriping. The Aqua is there with the boiled sweet looking buttons and sliders. But that's all eye candy stuff. Completely unlike the various versions of Windows, and the way that's changed appearances over the years. Windows XP to Windows 8.

 

[nickdalzell]

Neither would i, but at least give me *something* to warrant the additional 20GB used up on my hard drive for what seems to be a mere incremental upgrade not worthy of all the hype seen online.

I should have opted for the 2TB Time Capsule. because now its too late to downgrade. it is just a rebadged Mountain Lion, made more bloated. some might think my complaints make no sense ("you don't like change, so you should be happy!" "what's 20 GB when you got a total of 500 GB?") but despite my rather large hard drive, i don't like any space going to waste if nothing noticeable has happened. also, increasing my bootup time isn't something i like (instead of the once ten-second boot time, it now takes a minute, doing some type of rainbow effect on the Apple logo screen just before it asks for my login.) I used to be up and going seconds after the startup chime. now i sit at the Apple logo screen for a minute, then it goes all funky color (the entire grey turns green, orange, blue) then my login screen shows, albeit a bit laggy as the Apple logo moves upward to reveal my user accounts

 

[EarlyMon]

Does AFT/MTP still work?

depends on what that is, Earlymon.

http://www.android.com/filetransfer/

Media transfer protocol, MTP, developed by Microsoft and used by virtually all extended storage Androids. Introduced during Honeycomb, it's what you use to transfer data via USB.

It's not built in to Macs, so Google developed AFT.

Used to reliable except for some Samsung that violated the spec, up until Snow Leopard.

After that, various Macs upgrading to Lion or Mountain Lion suffered from AFT not working with all phones.

Clearly, back in the USB Mass Storage days where iPhoto recognized Android phones up until Tiger, and broken since Leopard, Apple is not above breaking Mac/Android compatibility.

When AFT trouble surfaced with Lion, I stopped upgrading.

So I'm looking for any firsthand info on it working or not with Mavericks.

 

[nickdalzell]

oh, that's what i used to transfer my entire MP3 collection from my Android phone to my Mac when i first got it. it always caused a 15-second spinning pinwheel but worked. but that was Mountain Lion. since Mavericks, at least, seems to be Mountain Lion rebadged (it looks and acts exactly the same) i cannot see why it wouldn't work. it might be slower as my Mac has been a few seconds behind since the upgrade.

 

[mikedt]

Neither would i, but at least give me *something* to warrant the additional 20GB used up on my hard drive for what seems to be a mere incremental upgrade not worthy of all the hype seen online.

I can't really understand why it would consume 20GB of additional space over the previous version, if the changes are indeed only minor. The download was 5.3GB, but allowing for compression that could be around 20GB. The old Mountain Lion stuff should have been deleted during the install, unless it's still sitting there unused in another folder somewhere. Windows will do that when you install over the top of an older version. The existing Windows folder gets renamed to Windows.old. And it's up to you if you want to delete it or not. Dispite the changes between Win 7 and 8, they're pretty much the same installed size. Certainly nothing like 20GB.

How large are your /System, /bin, /etc, /usr and /Applications folders, because that's where much of OS X and associated software lives. Also if the old Mountain Lion was kept back rather than being deleted, it might be in a hidden directory, not visible to the Finder by default.

I've never actually installed a newer version of OS X onto an existing one. When we upgraded the Macbook I'm using from Leopard to Snow Leopard. We blanked the hard drive first of all, and then installed Snow Leopard, along with iLife and iWork from DVDs, and anything like updates and additional software were downloaded.. And I've still got the original Apple DVDs here. I'm trying to think how would you do a fresh install of Mavericks onto a blank HDD in the absence of an existing version of OS X. You would either need a DVD or a bootable USB stick with it on, of course some Macs don't have DVD drives, like the Air.

 

[EarlyMon]

oh, that's what i used to transfer my entire MP3 collection from my Android phone to my Mac when i first got it. it always caused a 15-second spinning pinwheel but worked. but that was Mountain Lion. since Mavericks, at least, seems to be Mountain Lion rebadged (it looks and acts exactly the same) i cannot see why it wouldn't work. it might be slower as my Mac has been a few seconds behind since the upgrade.

A lot of people couldn't see why it stopped working for them with Mountain Lion, but it did.

Apple did something to break its robustness after Snow Leopard.

 

[mplevy]

nick, since you seem to be harping on the "200+ new features", have a gander at this link Apple - OS

 

[nickdalzell]

regarding iBooks, i just cannot imagine reading e-books on a large screen. it seems more fitting for an iPhone or iPad Mini or even a decent Android phone (the Notes are great e-book readers).

Maps makes no sense. aside the utter lack of a GPS in the MacBook line, using a navigation app on a laptop makes about as much sense as using an iPad as a digital camera.

As for the 20GB used up, i'm going to do a clean of some of the apps that came with Mavericks as i never use them and didn't ask to have them installed, so i'll gain some of that back. but it still looks the same. the fake linen is still there on the notification center, and other textures are still there in the Launchpad, as i said, i had to verify it with the System Information to know it actually done it. the only changes are more used up disk space (especially in the 'Other' category, which has since doubled but i cannot find any source online to clean it as yet) a longer boot time, a bit of lag at the login screen, two additional apps, background wallpaper on the login screen, and a new name that invokes Ford in my brain. other than that, nothing has happened. but despite how large my hard disk is, i couldn't care less if it's 15TB or 150 gigaquads. i hate wasting any of it. as i see it, Mavericks is a waste of hard disk space that brings very little to the table.


You seem to assume i wanted it to look different. that's not true. looks don't really matter as long as the UI is useable and doesn't look like utter crap, or something little girls into My Little Pony or Hello Kitty would use, or something a 4-year-old uses from Fisher Price.

But for 20+GB used, including an additional 15GB in the 'other' (was 7GB before) i expected a few more features. like having Siri available (as i do adore voice control). things like that. more apps, a way to run Windows apps without Boot Camp, perhaps more customization. anything to warrant the used space. instead, i got Mountain Lion + Bloat.

 

[EarlyMon]

I've used desktop navigation directions quite often.

Directions to my house from the airport, printing route maps ahead of time and so forth.

While I rely on my phone and GPS when I can, not everyone does and I can't rely on the assumption that I'll have data or time to muck about when traveling someplace new.

And Google Maps is a dog in a browser.

If they have a better app for it, it makes sense to me.

 

[nickdalzell]

I took a trip to Cincinnati once, and it was before i had a GPS or a Smartphone. basically i only had my Toshiba laptop and downloaded MapQuest data. my idea then was to use the laptop with the screen on and the driving directions on the screen, in full-screen. when i needed to change roads or check status, i'd either glance at it, or pull-over and look for more detail. i successfully made the trip, but i'll never do that goofy 'use a laptop for a GPS replacement' again. it was very cumbersome and i'd have rather used a Galaxy SIII and turn-by-turn Google Maps Navigation any day over it.

I'm planning a trip to Arkansas soon to visit a friend who has another pet deer, and i'm glad to have my GS3 now. it will make things a lot more easy.

 

[EarlyMon]

I just made printouts for my own AAA style TripTicket.

 

[nickdalzell]

that's another device i've long since moved past. the printer. haven't needed to print anything since college.

 

[EarlyMon]

Far handier than a laptop on a car seat.