Q: Does anyone have any positive feedback after upgrading to Mavericks?

Brian E. wrote:

 

....but the forum shows all negative experiences with the upgrade....

Healthy people don't go to a hospital, which is what these

forums are analogous to.  So of course you will see only

problems posted.

As for me, I have yet to have any issues with Mavericks on two

Macs.

Some words of advice before upgrading:

1.  Back up all data as anything can happen

      (you should be doing this any way).

2.  If you currently have any operational issues with

      your computer, clear them up first as they will likely

      cause even more issues after upgrading.

3.  Make sure that all mission critical apps that you use

      are compatible or have upgrades/updates to make them

      so.

4.  Back up all data as anything can happen.

I tried to respond personally to the first three folks who replied, and it just ended up posting the replies in my thread.

That's correct. There's no private messaging on these forums, just public discussion.

I think it's funny that the computer software & hardware industries use their customers to answer questions from other customers

Apple simply provides the forum. If you would rather get help directly from Apple, you have other options, such as making a Genius Bar appointment or paying for phone support. I see no problem with that... if people like us are willing to help, and folks are willing to listen, why should Apple not facilitate that?

I can't imagine my car mechanic or doctor using the same approach.

LOL, just wait until Obamacare goes into full effect, since it promises everyone affordable health care but does nothing to address the dwindling supply of physicians. We're heading down the same road England did with dentists:

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/10/15/england.dentists/

TechTool Pro has never, EVER presented an issue for me on any version of OS X.

What gives????

The problem with using a tool like TechTool Pro is this: no disk repair tool is ever 100% reliable. As such, it's generally bad practice to continue trusting your data to a drive that has become damaged, even after repairing it.

When a drive becomes corrupt, rather than repairing it, it's time to erase it and restore your data from backups. This gives you a nice, stable platform on which to put your data, rather than one that has been patched together. It doesn't matter how good the tool is, there's simply no substitute for starting over with a cleanly formatted drive.

Where tools like TechTool Pro, DiskWarrior and even Disk Utility come in handy is with data recovery. If you don't have any backups, and your hard drive is damaged, it may be useful to repair the drive, so you can get it working long enough to rescue your data.

Of course, the downside to that is that a failed repair could very well cause data loss. For that reason, I would tend to recommend other methods, such as use of data recovery software, to rescue your data. These tools do not make any changes to the hard drive, thus won't cause data loss, so you could try again with another tool if one doesn't do the job.

So, with all this under consideration, disk repair tools have extremely limited utility. Given that, if you install a disk repair tool that modifies the behavior of your system, as I believe TechTool Pro does, there's very little benefit in exchange for the possibility of problems (especially following an OS upgrade). Similarly, using a tool like this to do frequent "surface scans" and the like will simply increase wear and tear on the drive, potentially causing it to fail long before it otherwise would have, just to find bad blocks that all modern drives' firmware will find and map out on their own in the course of normal use.

"There is a general abhorrence to maintenance, security, and some system monitoring utilities here, with some in particular that have gained a poor reputation; however, despite this, some of the abhorrence is a bit of blind adherence to what others in the Mac communities have claimed. This isnt to say they are baseless, but often in my experiences I've found that utilities folks warn against have not had the ill effects that are claimed to follow them. Overall its just a judgement call."

There I am:

I had dissues with Techtoolpro in Lion, MountainLion, no experience with Mavericks.

I had issues with Onyx in Lion, but I still have it and need it from time to time.

I had issues with CleanMyMac and the like, when I tested it, SL, L, ML, Mav.

I had issues with all Lacie Software except with Silverkeeper (a simple Backup Tool).

I had crashing experiences in all OSX from WD software, and Seagate Software.

In this forum I warned against all of those.

Hi all,

I've upgraded a 2012 MPB and an IMAC 2012. So far no real problems. My 2 TB Lacie clouddisk and other local 3 TB USB disks are working.

Timemachine was and is working fine.

Only issue Quicktime and cutoff of PERIAN took me finally to VLC. But this is no 10.9 Problem!

Quicktime is an Apple product and therefore not built for FLVs, specific MP4 and MPGs.

Mail.app with Exchange connection: I had to rebuild (Mail function) each postbox, where I had lots of. But 30 mins and it was fixed. No printer / Scanner Problem with my Canon MG5350.

Maybe there is something to come but so far it took me approx 3 hrs to rework and test all functions and apps.

Result as mentioned so far ok.

Concerning Mavericks I had higher expectations.

Perian is working fine in Mavericks.

But VLC is the best player and plays practically all formats.

Mail in Mavericks is not quite handling well the Google mail account: read several threads here: most of the issues are eliminated by setting IN THE GOOGLE SITE SETTINGS the Drafts "Show in Imap" to OFF. Then also in Mailbox Behaviour in Mail Account settings.

Canon drivers work well in Mavericks.

Quicktime: I set most extensions to "always play in VLC".

In general I have a good feeling about Mavericks: it is faster, and more efficient with Ram. Because it handles Ram differently as all OSX before all "inactive memory" is released immediately or not even going into inactive.

Hi Lex,

how do you know that Perian is working with Mavericks?

They have stopped developments and I have read that also in Mountain Lion Perian should not have worked.

I have within Mavericks deleted and reinstalled Perian but no result.

Can you help me with a hint?

Thy stopped supporting Perian a long time ago, but it is programmed so that it does not need to go deep in the OS; it is rather "independant" of OS.... I have it in L, SL, Lion, ML, and Mavericks. It still works perfectly.

If it does not work in your Maverics system, there is something else blocking it. Can you do an Etrecheck list here?

Hi,

here is the list from Etrecheck:

Hardware Information:

          MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011)

          MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,1

          1 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2 cores

          4 GB RAM

Video Information:

          Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 384 MB

Audio Plug-ins:

          BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0

          AirPlay: Version: 1.9

          AppleAVBAudio: Version: 2.0.0

          iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3

Startup Items:

          HWNetMgr - Path: /Library/StartupItems/HWNetMgr

          HWPortDetect - Path: /Library/StartupItems/HWPortDetect

          tap - Path: /Library/StartupItems/tap

          tun - Path: /Library/StartupItems/tun

System Software:

          OS X 10.9 (13A603) - Uptime: 0 days 6:31:18

Disk Information:

          TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF disk0 : (500,11 GB)

                    EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209,7 MB

                    Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 499,25 GB (238,96 GB free)

                    Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

          MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-8A8 

USB Information:

          Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

          Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub

                    Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

          Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

          Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

FireWire Information:

Thunderbolt Information:

          Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Kernel Extensions:

          com.markspace.driver.Android.RNDIS          (1.2)

          foo.tap          (1.0)

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

Launch Daemons:

          [loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

          [loaded] com.memeo.Memeod.plist

          [loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist

          [loaded] com.sierrawireless.SWoCTool.plist

          [loaded] com.zeroonetwenty.BlueHarvestHelper.plist

          [loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx.plist

          [failed] pcloudd.plist

Launch Agents:

          [not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

          [loaded] com.divx.dms.agent.plist

          [loaded] com.divx.update.agent.plist

          [not loaded] com.sony.ReaderDesktop.RunReaderDesktop.plist

          [loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist

User Launch Agents:

          [loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

          [loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist

          [loaded] com.nero.HSMMonitor.plist

User Login Items:

          CheatSheet

          iTunesHelper

          FreeSpace Tab

          Microsoft Database Daemon

          Canon IJ Network Scanner Selector EX

          Network Strength

          KiesViaWiFiAgent

          readerAppHelper

          BlueHarvest

          LaCie Network Assistant

          fuspredownloader

3rd Party Preference Panes:

          Flash Player

          Java

          Perian

          Secrets

Internet Plug-ins:

          Default Browser.plugin

          DivX Web Player.plugin

          EPPEX Plugin.plugin

          Flash Player.plugin

          FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

          Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin

          JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

          LogitechHarmony.plugin

          OVSHelper.plugin

          QuickTime Plugin.plugin

          SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin

          Silverlight.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

          Picasa.plugin

Bad Fonts:

          None

Time Machine:

          Skip System Files: NO

          Mobile backups: OFF

          Auto backup: YES

          Volumes being backed up:

                    Macintosh HD: Disk size: 499,25 GB Disk used: 260,29 GB

          Destinations:

                    MBP Backup [Local] (Last used)

                    Total size: 499,76 GB

                    Total number of backups: 5

                    Oldest backup: 2013-10-28 23:57:42 +0000

                    Last backup: 2013-11-04 13:55:01 +0000

                    Size of backup disk: Too small

                              Backup size 499,76 GB < (Disk used 260,29 GB X 3)

Top Processes by CPU:

               2%          Calendar

               2%          WindowServer

               2%          CheatSheet

               1%          EtreCheck

               1%          hidd

               0%          Network Strength

               0%          pbs

               0%          fontd

               0%          configd

               0%          FreeSpace Tab

Top Processes by Memory:

          180 MB             com.apple.IconServicesAgent

          172 MB             Mail

          145 MB             com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

          106 MB             mds_stores

          86 MB              WindowServer

          82 MB              Calendar

          74 MB              Finder

          74 MB              soagent

          70 MB              Safari

          61 MB              CalendarAgent

Virtual Memory Statistics:

          127 MB             Free RAM

          1.49 GB            Active RAM

          1.36 GB            Inactive RAM

          1.01 GB            Wired RAM

          1.20 GB            Page-ins

          4 MB               Page-outs

Please provide your hints on this concerning Perian.

Lots of thanks in advance.

Wow, incredible, 90% of everything i propose to delete/uninstall....

I do not have 100% secure idea what blocks Perian.

The latest Perian version is 1.2.3.

1. but as a sideline, I see you use the Sony Reader. A much better app is Calibre. I would (as I did) uninstall Sony Reader (use the uninstaller) and install Calibre. This leaves the OSX much more "alone" than SonyReader.

2. do not pay attention what this list says about TimeMachine, it can be a bit "off" sometimes.

3. let us begin with deleting the   Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin   from the InternetPlugins folder.

4. Uninstall LaCie Network Assistant, and check afterwards if it is gone from the Users&Groups/LoginItems.

5. Do you want me to comment on all the things that IMHO should be uninstalled?

Lex

Hi,

if not too timeconsuming for you I would appreciate your comments and hints on the complete list.

Thanks in advance

and best regards,

Ok, some questions first:

a. markspace.Android: it is a kext, and in principle you have to avoid all tools/apps that install kexts.

the same for foo.Uninstall that.

b. What is tap and tun???

The following is what I would do:

5 . Uninstall PCloudd

6.  Uninstal Macosforge.Xquartz

7. Uninstall CheatSheet, FreespaceTab, NetworkStrength, Blueharvest, Fuspredownloader (and all downloaders)

8. Uninstall Secrets, Nero, Memeo, Sierra, Java (not the Javascript plugin

Tell me what you did and what you doubt.

b. What is tap and tun???

I believe those are probably components of this:

http://tuntaposx.sourceforge.net/index.xhtml

Thank you Thomas. This has to go, I insist, too deep inside OSX.