I love Apple, but I am bewildered about these "improvements" in Mavericks. Why are the needs of traditional and longstanding users being held in contempt? Why is it necessary to remove our ability to tweak the OS to our liking? This was always one of the key pleasures of being a Mac user.
Three reasons I will not upgrade to Mavericks:
1) Unable to restore 2D dock via a terminal command
2) Unable to restore Labels (within the Finder itself, not the same as "finder replacements" such as Total Finder)
3) Unable to double-click on a folder to open a new window (as a Mac user since 1987, I still can't believe I had to type that!)
The fact that Apple removed the ability to restore these features via terminal commands means that they stipped them out deliberately and will never bring them back again, no matter how much we beg them to. I do realize that tags required extensive modifications to the file management system and any restoration of the old style labels would probably be a cosmetic one at best. Until there are third party hacks to resolve these issues, there is no way I will "upgrade".
Since 2012 we have seen desktop Macs become (mostly) non-user-upgradeable, all taped and glued together like large iPads. Graphics cards are being downgraded into integrated graphics to save power. Optical drives are banished. Every major revision of OS X removes longstanding features, some of them dating back to OS 8 or earlier. It seems we are moving into a new era of disposable Macs that you need to replace every 2 years, running a dumbed-down OS X to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
There just isn't a market for traditional user who like to customize, upgrade and tinker with their Macs. We probably make up less than 1% of Apple's customer base, so there is no economic incentive for us to be accommodated anymore. I am resigning myself to the fact that OS X 10.10 will introduce garish iOS 7 style graphics, and within a few more years we'll probably see Intel being ditched for ARM processors, ruining OS X's compatibility with legacy x86 and Windows software. I am seriously wondering how far Apple is going to take things.. perhaps forcing me into becoming a Windows PC user.