BigFeynmanFan

Q: Why should anyone upgrade to Mavericks when 30% of the user feedback on the download site describes horrific results and rates Mavericks 1 out of 5???

I would really like to upgrade my MBP from 10.6 to Mavericks and was just about to download when I reveiwed the recent user feedback on the download site.

Mavericks was released on Oct 22 2013. I am wrting this on Jan 9 2014 and of the 735 reviews for the current version on the download site 219 or 30% describe horric results and rate this OS at 1 out of 5.

 

So I would like to hear from Apple - Why should anyone upgrade to Mavericks when there's a 30% chance of disaster !!!

 

I would have asked this question on the download site but users must first install before being allowed to post a review !!!

 

Have Apple provided any expalantion as to why so many users are having problems upgrading? or even provided a checklist of precautions to minimize the chance of such problems?

 

I am hoping this community can provide some useful information even if Apple is silent on this matter.

 

Optimistically,

 

BigFeynmanFan

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Jan 9, 2014 5:42 PM

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Q: Why should anyone upgrade to Mavericks when 30% of the user feedback on the download site describes horrific results and rates Mav ... more

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  • by MarcAndK,

    MarcAndK MarcAndK Mar 13, 2014 8:03 AM in response to BigFeynmanFan
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 13, 2014 8:03 AM in response to BigFeynmanFan

    I feel I was led down the garden path. I upgraded to 10.9.2 from 10.6.8 (where everything was working fine), in order to take advantage of the iCloud calendar sync, which would not work in10.6.8. I rely heavily on my calendar for business and I want to have it synced with iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro and iCloud and share it with my partner. Once completed, I discovered that all my Appleworks files can't be read. And there's no conversion app around. And I had to buy an MS Office upgrade and after that it could not read my office files until after I did a convoluted procedure with Font Book that I'm not sure I did correctly. A new Quark will cost me $850. And the iCloud calendar would not sync. I followed another convoluted set of instructions to get iCloud to gather my Mac calendar data and it erased my calendar - years of client data and all my future job dates. Now the Mac is at a tech's to see if the calendar can be recovered. All that hype over the years about Macs being so much easie and trouble free. Bull.

  • by varjak paw,

    varjak paw varjak paw Mar 13, 2014 8:51 AM in response to MarcAndK
    Level 10 (169,890 points)
    Mar 13, 2014 8:51 AM in response to MarcAndK

    Apple discontinued support in Mac OS X for PowerPC-only apps three and a half years ago with the introduction of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. The lack of that support has been covered many, many times now, here and on every Mac-related web site. So that is a failure of your research prior to upgrading, not of the upgrade. Whenever you do an upgrade of an operating system on any computer, even with minor upgrades and certainly when doing a major upgrade, it's common sense to confirm compatibility with what you have before upgrading, and/or make sure you have an easy path to go back to the working version should issue arise.

     

    As to your calendar problems, not knowing the exact circumstances, I can't comment on what might have gone wrong. All I can say is that we've upgraded a number of computers to 10.9 here and none have lost any calendar or contact data. If you didn't have a backup of important contact and calendar data before upgrading, then that was taking a big risk. Things can go wrong, regardless of the platform and operating system you're working with, and not having backups of data critical to your business is, if I can be forgiven for saying so, foolish.

     

    Regards.

  • by Network 23,

    Network 23 Network 23 Mar 13, 2014 9:24 AM in response to MarcAndK
    Level 6 (12,043 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 13, 2014 9:24 AM in response to MarcAndK

    The thing is, all of those changes you mentioned would have to be done at some point, no matter what computer brand you used, because tech moves fast. And the longer you put off the conversions and upgrades, the harder they hit when they come.

     

    (On the Windows side, for example, I know lots of people who are extremely irritated that they have to upgrade from Windows XP now, often invoking thousands in hardware and software upgrades for a single person, because Microsoft will stop issuing security updates for XP. And this may have been made worse because Microsoft supported XP for over a decade, letting people get lazy.)

     

    I had to move a Mac from 10.6.8 to 10.7 to be able to run new software. Now that is a bad move. I wish that Mac could run 10.8 or even better 10.9 Mavericks, which I think is the best one since 10.6.8.

  • by George Chapman,

    George Chapman George Chapman Mar 13, 2014 9:51 AM in response to Network 23
    Level 2 (356 points)
    Apple Watch
    Mar 13, 2014 9:51 AM in response to Network 23

    All this is fine but I've used Apple computers since I bought my first Apple IIc and the clerk said you'll never need more computer (and my wife believed her). For the first time I feel like I've been taken with the new updates. Photo Stream doesn't work right, my iBook is limited to Lion so Pages 9 won't open Pages on Mavericks, no backward compatibility and Apple knew it by keeping Pages 9 in a folder. This makes for a giant pain while going between machines. In addition Mail is a total mess. This is not what Apple should be. No matter how many people download any of the various upgrades, there are serious problems and since I will never leave Apple, I keep having to find work arounds.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Mar 13, 2014 9:55 AM in response to George Chapman
    Level 9 (51,353 points)
    Desktops
    Mar 13, 2014 9:55 AM in response to George Chapman

    Then restore the backup you made prior to replacing your operating system.

     

    Expecting things not change over so many years is unreasonable, I for one would not want to be stuck at the 10.6.8 level for ever.

  • by MlchaelLAX,

    MlchaelLAX MlchaelLAX Mar 13, 2014 11:33 AM in response to George Chapman
    Level 4 (2,256 points)
    Mar 13, 2014 11:33 AM in response to George Chapman

    George Chapman wrote:

     

    All this is fine but I've used Apple computers since I bought my first Apple IIc and the clerk said you'll never need more computer (and my wife believed her).

    Actually when that statement was made (circa 1984), Apple was promoting the Apple ][ Forever campaign and they probably actually believed what they were saying was true!

     

    Nice of you to point it that it was your wife who believed her!

  • by MlchaelLAX,

    MlchaelLAX MlchaelLAX Mar 13, 2014 11:41 AM in response to varjak paw
    Level 4 (2,256 points)
    Mar 13, 2014 11:41 AM in response to varjak paw

    varjak paw wrote:

     

    ...So that is a failure of your research prior to upgrading, not of the upgrade. Whenever you do an upgrade of an operating system on any computer, even with minor upgrades and certainly when doing a major upgrade, it's common sense to confirm compatibility with what you have before upgrading, and/or make sure you have an easy path to go back to the working version should issue arise.

     

    AND: nice of you to push back against this poster and make it his fault!

     

    I consider myself someone who is a little bit more computer prolific than the average Joe!

     

    In Summer, 2011, when my iMac G5 died for the last time, I purchased a new 2011 Mac Mini which came with Lion.  Immediately I could not use any of my PowerPC apps and subsequent research solved this problem for me (and the many others who have followed my advice on this topic).

     

    Clearly, the knowledge that Rosetta was not longer included with Lion would not have changed my situation one iota!  I would have still had to purchase that 2011 Mac.

     

    Rosetta was so transparent in operation, that to this day, most Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard users (who are totally happy with their operating environment) have NO IDEA what Rosetta is or why they need it.  Mavericks, being offered for free, has generated a new generation of users from these older versions of OS X and who are only now becoming aware of the problem.

     

    For many of these users, not unlike my experience, there would be no reason to do any research before buying a new Mac with Mavericks.

     

    Pointing the finger at them with the blame offers no positive suggestions for their problem.

  • by George Chapman,

    George Chapman George Chapman Mar 13, 2014 1:39 PM in response to MlchaelLAX
    Level 2 (356 points)
    Apple Watch
    Mar 13, 2014 1:39 PM in response to MlchaelLAX

    Yes, I probably shouldn' hve said that. In addition I discovered I didn't update the phone to iOS 7.1 which I thought I had and PhotoStream seems to be working now as long as wireless is connected.

  • by Network 23,

    Network 23 Network 23 Mar 13, 2014 6:41 PM in response to George Chapman
    Level 6 (12,043 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 13, 2014 6:41 PM in response to George Chapman

    I guess I have to agree with your situation though, in that many of the problems were related to the choices Apple made in handling their own applications, and the reason they didn't affect my favorable upgrade of Mavericks is that I don't use a lot of Apple's own applications (for my job I use Word, Indesign and Photoshop instead of Appleworks, Pages, & Photostream).

     

    It's ironic and sad that the deeper a person was tied into Apple's own system, the worse they got bit when Apple did what they did to the recent versions of the iWorks apps.

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Mar 13, 2014 7:35 PM in response to Network 23
    Level 9 (50,774 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 13, 2014 7:35 PM in response to Network 23

    It's ironic and sad that the deeper a person was tied into Apple's own system, the worse they got bit when Apple did what they did to the recent versions of the iWorks apps.

    How exactly did that hurt anybody?

    The old versions were left intact because Apple knew the rewrite of all the Apps would need time to incorporate all the existing features. They have already pushed out one update to add some features. I expect there will be more, much like Final Cut X (which they apparently learned from).

  • by Network 23,

    Network 23 Network 23 Mar 14, 2014 11:58 AM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 6 (12,043 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 14, 2014 11:58 AM in response to Barney-15E

    Barney-15E wrote:

    How exactly did that hurt anybody?

    The old versions were left intact because Apple knew the rewrite of all the Apps would need time to incorporate all the existing features.

    Yes, but if I understood some of the problems correctly, you would open your old document in the new version, find out you lost a bunch of formatting, then find you that you couldn't take your document back to the old version because the new version already converted it to the new format because it had a neat "auto-save" feature. Meaning if you didn't have a backup you just lost your only path back to the nice version you used to have, and you are stuck with the crippled version of your document.

     

    In other words it really was a chain of individual decisions by Apple that added up to a bad data loss situation for a lot of people.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Mar 14, 2014 12:04 PM in response to Network 23
    Level 9 (51,353 points)
    Desktops
    Mar 14, 2014 12:04 PM in response to Network 23

    You can choose to export to Pages 09 format.

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Mar 14, 2014 2:26 PM in response to Network 23
    Level 9 (50,774 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 14, 2014 2:26 PM in response to Network 23

    As Csound1 explained, there still isn't any "hurt" going on.

  • by chilli_Trav,

    chilli_Trav chilli_Trav Mar 21, 2014 12:52 AM in response to BigFeynmanFan
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 21, 2014 12:52 AM in response to BigFeynmanFan

    I'm reluctant to upgrade because of the aforementioned icon issue. Regarding icon tweaks, does this whole "get info, copy, paste" method really work? I mean long term? What about iCal and such ilk? I ask because, historically, that's a temporary band-aid at best (and simply doesn't work at all at worst). What about icons beyond apps, like documents?

     

    I find the bright bubbly icons abrasive, garish, obnoxious, etc. I have liked the system black icon set for years and all of my icons (some of which I designed in the same vein) are basically some variant of grayscale with a subtle touch of color when needed (then let the background light things up with the vibrant false-color masterpieces from Chandra, Spitzer, Gemini, Hubble, ALMA, and the like).

     

    Aesthetics are HUGE part of UI!! If they restrict changing appearances too much, or if the only method is to manually backup icon files and replace every single system icon by hand, Mavericks will frankly never be worth it for me. I'd rather stick with an older OS than deal with the tawdry gimcrack rainbow of the standard icon set.

     

    Thanks in advance for any replies answering above questions... and thanks for bearing with the rant.

  • by petermac87,

    petermac87 petermac87 Mar 21, 2014 1:57 AM in response to chilli_Trav
    Level 5 (7,402 points)
    Mar 21, 2014 1:57 AM in response to chilli_Trav

    Stay with the old OS you are using. Mavericks is working well for the many million using it. Seems like you have no intentions of being one of those users, so for everyone's sake, stay with what you have at present.

     

    Good Luck

     

    Pete

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