Inside OS X Mavericks 362
rjmarvin writes "Apple's era of naming OSs after big cats is over. The Mavericks wave is rolling in, and the first four developer previews have given an inside look at the cutting-edge OS. Users and developers have almost entirely positive things to say about Mavericks, from faster speed and improved stability to new features like iBooks and iCloud keychains. While some installation concerns and errors have arisen, developer preview have improved version by version, and Mavericks is looking good."
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:3)
So happy I switched to VMware. It seemed like parallels was constantly breaking to force upgrades only for revenue stream; it felt like the late 90's all over again...
Re:Parallels (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Have you ever got virtualbox's 3d support to work? Every time I try, virtualbox crashes. This is why I'm still using vmware player, where it almost always works now (was still kind of flaky in 3, pretty good in 4, pretty great in 5.)
Re: (Score:3)
Same here. I run every new version of the Mac OS in VMware and boot from 10.6.8 which sucks so much less than the new OSes.
Re:FuckinG NiggerS!! (Score:5, Funny)
I think this guy has managed to use the word "nigger" in his posting more times than it is used in Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn". While that is kind of an anti-achievement, I think he has also more than adequately demonstrated his lack of gray matter between his ears. He's probably depressed because it's still hard to get Twinkies.
AirDrop (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:AirDrop (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AirDrop (Score:5, Interesting)
As the previous poster said about Parallels,
> They eventually found the bug and fixed it... in Parallels 3. Their solution to the problem of
> selling me a product that was not fit for purpose was for me to give them more money
And I'd bet they both learned this trick from the MSOffice team.
Nope. Apple has known this forever. The Rev.1 B&W G3 macintosh [xlr8yourmac.com] had a UDMA data corruption error. Apple's "fix" was to either buy FWB toolkit and disable UDMA (and half a disk's performance!) or to buy a mac ATA card which, due to the mac tax, would cost literally four times as much as buying the same card for the PC, with a different ROM. When they rolled the old TechInfo Library (TIL) into the modern Apple Knowledge Base (KB) they imported articles before and after the one where they describe this problem, but they deleted the article on B&W G3 data corruption in an attempt to hide the fact that they told their customers that they had to spend more money because the product they purchased did not in fact meet specifications (didn't do ATA correctly.) Early Sun UltraSparc machines which I have used personally have the same chip and don't have the same bug.
Nobody has anything to teach Apple about blaming the victim or hiding the evidence.
Re: (Score:3)
Mavericks eh? (Score:2, Funny)
They better hope Dr. Light doesn't work for Microsoft.
Re: (Score:2)
They better hope Dr. Light doesn't work for Microsoft.
So what does he [wikipedia.org] have to do with anything called "Mavericks"?
Re:Mavericks eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Will Windows go for ShitPipe [surfline.com]?
Re: (Score:3)
And Linux 3.11, Linux for Workgroups.
Spam nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Alleged "article" is zero information and all noise. Read at your own risk of brain damage.
Re:Spam nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Here's my summary of TFA:
1. Developer previews of Mavericks are available for developers to look at
2. Each DP is more stable than the previous one.
3. It feels faster than 10.8
4. < List of Mavericks features that is less comprehensive and detailed than this list [apple.com] >
If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iOS". (Score:5, Interesting)
> He concluded by mentioning that he hoped Mavericks would serve as the bridge between OS X and iOS, allowing his company to make Mac versions of its iOS titles.
So basically this guy is happy that OS X is bridging closer to iOS (because his business stands to gain from this).
How exactly is that supposed to warm my heart as a user who already thoroughly loath the very idea of the "Natural Scrolling(tm)" option on previous updates?
Is it too much to ask for them simply not to break anything and leave me with the halfway-decent UI to a powerful *nix that I am happily using?
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? What change have they introduced to improve iOS compatibility that you can't just ignore if you don't like it?
The OS X desktop and interface have not changed much at all.
The scrolling, which is a vast improvement for many, you can turn off. Autohide scrollbars, again a godsend for many users, you can turn off. Everything else, you can just not use.
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:5, Insightful)
"The scrolling, which is a vast improvement for many, ... Autohide scrollbars, again a godsend for many users,..."
Ridiculous hyperbole and utterly false. Things worked the way they did for a reason. The changes suit an agenda, they aren't a "vast improvement" or a "godsend" to any user. They couldn't be regardless of merit.
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is that hyperbole? I used to work on HP machines a long time ago (when they were running some HP-owned BASIC) and I loved the natural scrolling. It took some time get used to used, but I preferred it over the "non-natural" on all other machines.
Autohide scrollbars is also nice to have, though I'm not religious about that one - scrollbars just use up precious screen estate. Especially when using two-finger scrolling on touch pads, I don't really need to see the scrollbars all the time.
No, not an Apple fanboy - there is enough to criticize and I usually criticize Apple a lot - but not for these features, that you can actually turn OFF.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It is my contention that these changes were good features for Apple, and not so good for users. That "many" users enjoy them means fuck-all. 5% of Apple users is still a bunch of people you could describe as "many".
Re: Extrapolation (Score:3)
Users who don't like them can simply turn then off. It takes 5 seconds to do and the setting will persist through is upgrades.
I know you will conveniently ignore this again because you are just trolling, but I thought it would be fun to point out the facts.
PS everyone is not like you.
Re: (Score:3)
But the BS here is that you have to hunt and look for where to do it.
There are so many "improvements" in the Mac OS that I simply want to GO AWAY. In many cases, you can't turn them off. Opening a folder in List View in the Finder by pressing the right arrow? It used to display instantly. Now, it cascades the content down in an animation that you can't turn off.
Just show me my fucking data as fast as you can, dammit! Stop stop stop animating EVERYTHING. Apple, if you INSIST on animating everything, at
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple sees what Microsoft is going through with the XP transition. Why would they want that?
That being said... 25% of the userbase holding back from Lion / Mountain Lion is an interestingly high number.
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Is it too much to ask for them simply not to break anything
Yeah, this is unfortunately a very serious worry with OSX......
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yup. Apple is following Microsoft for a change. Not only in tabletifying their OS but also in their naming of it.
I remember Jobs way back in the cat era poking fun at Vista's pre production name "Longhorn" and now they name their own OS "Mavericks" which as every QI watcher knows was originally a term describing unbranded cattle.
So is this all a hidden homage to Tucows [wikipedia.org] or a comment on how they see their customers?
Re: (Score:3)
Well, it's a Mac, so the appropriate animal is the Dogcow [wikipedia.org].
OTOH, given they're moving to location names, Mavericks [wikipedia.org] is apparently a place for surfers. Unofficially, at that, so it's either a play on the stereotype of Californians, or Apple's OS names are going to be of obscure place names only k
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, the naming scheme is in reference to self-identified groupings of American politicians.
Mavericks refers to John McCain and Sarah Palin, who considered themselves renegade "maverick" politicians unbeholden to traditional power structures.
The next OS Release will be OS X "Wankers" featuring American politicians who went off the deep end with sexual and/or other humiliating exploits, ie. Spitzer, Weiner, and that Idaho guy soliciting gay sex in a gas station restroom.
Look for OS X Teabaggers in 2015, featu
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. Apple is following Microsoft for a change. Not only in tabletifying their OS ...
Even Snow Leopard had LaunchPad - and that was being sold in 2009. You almost never see it, though, because the tablet paradigm doesn't translate well to a computer... so no one chooses to use it.
Re: (Score:3)
Apple is taking a different path (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. Apple is following Microsoft for a change. Not only in tabletifying their OS but also in their naming of it.
I don't think that's at all true.
Microsoft decided the tablet and the PC were exactly identical, and made one the other at the cost of both.
Apple however, has said a number of times that PC and tablet/mobile OS's are different things, with different needs (and that desktops do not need touch screens, just gestures). While OSX may borrow at times from iOS, and also share frameworks in some cases, the way you use them and the abilities they have remain pretty different.
Just the aspect of Mavericks adding on a lot of welcome additions to multiple screen use including multiple menu bars (something very un-tablet like indeed) indicates a strong separation - for the better.
Re: (Score:2)
... and now they name their own OS "Mavericks" ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavericks_(location) [wikipedia.org]
"Longhorn" was announced about at the time when MacOS X 10.3 "Panther" was released. And panthers kill longhorn. Microsoft delayed delivery until after the release of 10.4 "Tiger". Tigers and longhorn don't live in the same place.
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember Jobs way back in the cat era poking fun at Vista's pre production name "Longhorn" and now they name their own OS "Mavericks" which as every QI watcher knows was originally a term describing unbranded cattle.
They had no choice; if they'd kept up the feline naming scheme, the only one left was "OS X Domestic Cat".
Which still would have been better than "Mavericks".
Re: (Score:3)
Which still would have been better than "Mavericks".
Well, if they're naming OSX releases after Santa Cruz surf spots, it stands to reason that the next one will be called "Steamers", which I think is an excellent name for an OSX release.
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:5, Interesting)
I hated... HATED... "Natural Scrolling" when it first came out. But I gave it a week. You push up on the trackpad... screen goes up. You push down, screen goes down. It just feels.. natural.
Now when I use another computer the scrolling just feels weird.
Re:If by "looking good", you mean "looking like iO (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here.
After being thoroughly conditioned to be used to think of scrolling as something you do by dragging the thumb of a scrollbar for many years, I decided to give this a chance nevertheless, knowing the brain can be pretty quick in 'rewiring' itself to changes like this. It's even possible to get used to seeing the world upside down within a few days: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/12/improbable-research-seeing-upside-down [theguardian.com] - or maybe right side up, as the image on the retina is normally inverted.
I now think of scrolling like: finger drags content up or down. Simple. No inbetween stuff like screens, mouses, trackpads, scrollbars - just my finger moving around content.
Re: (Score:2)
It's like they reversed the up/down rotation on an aircraft or switched left-right steering in a car. Yeah, you can get used to it, but then whenever you use a non-Apple product it feels weird again.
I would assume they did it because it's kinda skeudomorphic, as in you would push in that direction. Now they seem to be abandoning the skeudomorphic stuff in favour of a flat look it would make sense to go back to the normal way, but I doubt they will risk annoying everyone twice.
Either is fine. Both is not. (Score:3)
I hated... HATED... "Natural Scrolling" when it first came out. But I gave it a week. You push up on the trackpad... screen goes up. You push down, screen goes down. It just feels.. natural.
I'm agnostic about it but since I have to use lots of machines that scroll the traditional way I don't really want to screw myself up. I could get used to either direction but I don't want to have to get used to both.
Re: (Score:2)
I hate natural scrolling too, but that's because I still use a mouse. Most Mac users are using touchpads (laptops), where it is more natural. And you can turn it off.
Re: (Score:2)
Most Mac users are using touchpads (laptops), where it is more natural.
And for the Mac users with a desktop, most of those will use Apple's Magic Mouse, the top of which is basically a trackpad.
You can still scroll the old-fashioned way by doing mouse stuff in the scrollbar, but it's not what most people typically seem to using anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
That's right. Adding a broken scrolling concept onto a horrendously non-ergonomic mouse is the last thing you want to do. Typical for Apple, though. There was never a mouse they couldn't ruin.
Re: (Score:3)
I think this is actually one of the few Apple mouse incarnations that doesn't suck for some reason. The original Mac mouse, while innovative at the time, was a non-ergonomic brick which had to be cleaned about once a day, the original iMac mouse was a barely usable hockey-puck sending of the mouse in unexpected directions, there was a period where they stubbornly refused to give us a second button, etcetera. Their previous mouse was almost OK, except that the tiny scroll thingy on top would always become b
Re: (Score:3)
Most serious mac users on a desktop have switched to the Magic Trackpad. I can't stand a mouse anymore. I like that it works the same as on my Macbook.
Da Cloud freaks me out (Score:3)
It says it will enhance cloud integration and "all your passwords" can be in the cloud. Of course one can do that voluntarily now (lastpass etc) but it wigs me out a little. I recently bought a chrome book and when you fire it up you realize how when you commit to the cloud whole hog that there is some magic. It's like going back to the convenience of the thin client days but in a full modern way. But what I find frightening is that literally my whole life hinges on my google password. My computer, all
Re: (Score:2)
It says it will enhance cloud integration and "all your passwords" can be in the cloud.
Just what I want, all my passwords in a bunch of data centers in various locations.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Take a look at your ~/Library/Mobile Documents/ directory. iCloud is like DropBox everything is still local.
OS X Upgrade Fear (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
From what I've heard, Mountain Lion is a worthwhile upgrade to Lion.
Mountain Lion fixed Kerberos authentication, in any case - it was horribly borked in Lion. ML also handled Active Directory reasonably well.
Not that most home users care about either one...
Re: (Score:2)
I'd still love to know what fixes that "Kerberos 5 refuses you" thing you sometimes see in the Console when a user logs in.
It's survived an OS reinstall and rebuilt user account.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A "one for one" copy means a "bit for bit" copy, as in the kind of images I routinely make of physical and virtual hard disks. This kind of copy isn't influenced by partitions or filesystems present on a disk. You get an exact replica of the disk in a file.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And people mock Microsoft for not getting it right until the first Service Pack.
Re: (Score:3)
Mavericks is a great upgrade for your machine.
http://www.apple.com/osx/preview/advanced-technologies.html [apple.com]
Mavericks has an app nap feature that automatically slows apps down that are completely hidden and a Safari Power Saver feature.
Overall your machine will hopefully use LESS resources than it currently does with better performance for those apps your actually using (i.e. in the foreground).
Re: (Score:2)
And on my portable I want battery life and responsiveness for the app I am ACTUALLY using.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not an upgrade. That's a downgrade to MS-DOS. I want my modern PC to do actual multitasking, not half-assed TSR stuff.
Two possibilities: Apple devs are idiots, or you are an idiot. Which is more likely?
So you want your PC to do multitasking. You want your apps to waste CPU time and battery life _when you can't see what they are doing_. Great.
Apps that do _useful_ work while in the background and while the user cannot see them call an API that tells the OS about it, and they can spend all the CPU time that they want.
Re: (Score:2)
Real programmers TM quit often kick off jobs that they want to run to completion not every thing is the latest "Wasp T12 Speechtool" toy app for a phone or tablet. I Doubt that some one at ILM or a CFD engineer at RBR Racing would want there render/models to low down if they where reading email while they where waiting for a job to complete.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a late 2008 15" MBP on Mountain Lion. It's fine.
Upgrade to the maximum RAM you are capable of. (A good practice at all times.) Mavericks will be a different beast, and it's well worth waiting to see on a 5+ year old machine, but you're probably fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:OS X Upgrade Fear (Score:5, Insightful)
Ars (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Siracusa already has most of it written, it sounds like, based on stuff he's said on Accidental Tech Podcast. Just a few weeks ago he was figuring Mavericks was still months away from release based on the issues it still had, but now it seems like there are lots of rumblings that it'll be coming sooner, which seems strange, since there's no reason they would want to detract attention from the September 10th iPhone announcement.
Re: (Score:2)
now it seems like there are lots of rumblings that it'll be coming sooner, which seems strange
It doesn't seem too odd given they probably want to launch the Mac Pro with Mavericks, and more specifically want Mavericks in a general release at least a few weeks before the Mac Pro ships.
Re: (Score:3)
I'll give you my 2-second review: Right now, it's still buggy. It crashes. In fairness, it's a beta. Aside from that, if you like flat design and dislike skeuomorphism, you'll probably be pleased with some of the design changes. The improvements in multi-monitor support are kind of good, but still problematic. If you use the new setup, you can't have one window overlap with multiple monitors. Each window will only appear on on monitor at a time. I didn't really like that, but at least they let you ch
How does it stack up to emacs? (Score:2)
Okay, j/k.
But did they name it after John McCain or Sarah Palin?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thinking Bret, Bart, Beau or Brent.
iCloud Keychain (Score:2)
"...online, shared between your devices and backed up by a meaty encryption system"
Will all that 256-bit AES encryption system to outlast a NSL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter) like effort or will it be a form of one time, one way only online system?
Re: (Score:2)
"Meaty"?
The OS is good, but the hardware pushes me away (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been a Mac OS user since 1997, and I love the interface (in some respects I still like Mac OS 9 better than X). I have owned two PowerPC Macs before, but when their move to Intel coincided with a little personal economic downturn, I went the hackintosh way. Sometimes I think of getting a new actual Apple, but when I look into it, they don't offer a machine that suits me.
You just can't get a headless system with good specs, except the Mac Pro, and that's crazy overkill. The mini is a complete joke, with little memory, lame Intel video, no optical drive, no expandability whatsoever. I could go for an iMac (and deal with external drives, a single 1TB disk doesn't really cut it anymore). But I'd have to go with the rather expensive 27-inch ones to get a video card that beats my rather outdated GTS 250. Seriously, I assembled this machine a couple years ago, penny-pinching all the way, and even back then I knew this video card was the bottleneck. They still sell machines with worse video. It's quite ridiculous.
So... too much money for little benefit. Maybe some other time, Apple.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Play modern games on high quality at a solid 60 fps. The Intel HD Graphics 4000 is the deal killer.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Checked eBay and Amazon: those enclosures are crazy expensive, some cost more than the computer itself.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry if I used the wrong term - I meant a machine without a built-in screen, like a regular desktop PC, not an all-in-one like the iMac.
For developers (Score:2)
Re:Apple press release (Score:4, Interesting)
Been using it since beta 1. What kind of problems did you see? I saw no issues other than the email sync issues.
Re:Apple press release (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple press release (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Apple press release (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple press release (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
There is a nagging bug in the DVD player I have reported to Apple and they have not fixed that is not present in the Snow Leopard version.
What kind of bug?
pop ups that tell you to clean your room and brush your teeth.
Re: (Score:2)
There's also the percentages problem - considering the size of the user base, it's not really surprising that people encounter problems with the product. The only piece of software I've seen work flawlessly in the last, what, 20 years would be Hobbit's netcat, and tha
Re:How much (Score:4, Insightful)
There are less conspiracies going on in the world than you think.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not news at all, it's just spam trying to generate some buzz around the new OS release. This is just a beta, not even an RC. TFA is mostly just people saying how wonderful it is, barely even bothering to cover the new features. I don't know why it was called "inside OS X" because it's extremely superficial and lacking in technical detail.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd bet they paid the same amount that Google pays for new Android releases, Microsoft pays for new Windows releases, and Linus Torvalds pays each time a kernel version comes out. All of which get plenty of coverage and exposure on /., and always have.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)