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 MlchaelLAX,

    MlchaelLAX MlchaelLAX Jun 21, 2014 7:04 PM in response to itsamacthing
    Level 4 (2,256 points)
    Jun 21, 2014 7:04 PM in response to itsamacthing

    itsamacthing wrote:

     

    And you continue to deny what Apple and I agree on.

     

    <Edited By Host>

     

    I have to admit that the Moderators have a tough job:

     

    They leave in all of this nonsense, and then they edit out THAT sentence!?!

  • by itsamacthing,

    itsamacthing itsamacthing Jun 21, 2014 9:09 PM in response to MlchaelLAX
    Level 1 (85 points)
    Jun 21, 2014 9:09 PM in response to MlchaelLAX

    I guess they don't like unicorns and rainbows....  

  • by chilli_Trav,

    chilli_Trav chilli_Trav Jul 5, 2014 1:16 PM in response to chilli_Trav
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jul 5, 2014 1:16 PM in response to chilli_Trav

    Another update:

    Not too long after my last "update" post, I apparently went too far with the tweaking of various *.icns in the system library &/or coreservices. Machine got glitchy, Finder functionality compromised, etc. Unfortunately, I don't know precisely where the problem was, but restored most recent uncorrupted Time Machine backup and problems fixed.

     

    Then used LiteIcon + the 'get info > copy/paste method', and everything has been looking (and more importantly working) friggin great for several months now.

     

    No hang-ups. Loving Mavericks.

  • by BrotherKz,

    BrotherKz BrotherKz Jul 6, 2014 4:33 AM in response to chilli_Trav
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iWork
    Jul 6, 2014 4:33 AM in response to chilli_Trav

    Agreed on all these things.

     

    1. Mavericks is the best iteration of the best OS all-round as of right now. (IMO of course).

    2. The title of this post is one of the most poorly thought-out I've ever come across.

    3. Apple needs to be more aware of bugs that slipped through and get them fixed before adding new features.

    4. FIX MAIL. Mail has had issues shutting down since forever. It effects every mac user I know. Apple: no more new features till you fix it you hear!

    5. They made a bad decision dumbing down Numbers and Pages. I understand and commend the minimal user friendly approach. But keep advanced features hidden, not removed entirely. The removal of the Numbers sidebar has made it unusable for anything with more than 3 sheets. Let us turn stuff back on like in iTunes next time.

    6. New Macs running Mavericks are getting sluggish quickly. This is almost definitely due to sloppy 3rd party apps and things not being updated properly so while technically probably not Apple's fault, they need to be aware and put preventative measures in place. One thing I would like to see is more robust built-in app tracking that knows when 3rd party files that are not contained in App Packages get orphaned, especially Launch Daemons. This stuff should be automatically purged when we do an upgrade. Developers need to be more sternly discouraged from using helper applications and background Daemons. It's the stuff that brought windows machines to their knees and required constant re-installs. The app-package model where an app comes as one icon that is dragged to the Applications folder saved us from this happening, as do App Store installs (mostly). Nothing is run until I choose by double clicking the App. Now we're seeing a lot of installers which scatter files all over system folders and install unnecessary helpers and daemons and ultimately end up clogging system arteries.

    7. Apple's implementation of SMB2 needs some work but it is a more advanced protocol and I'm sure they'll iron the bugs out soon.... as long as they don't get too lax with it like Mail.app:)

     

    Anyway, apart from a few gripes, it's a **** fine OS and its a joy to use. My favourite by a long shot, and I'm no stranger to them all.

  • by kahjot,

    kahjot kahjot Jul 6, 2014 8:16 PM in response to BrotherKz
    Level 4 (1,397 points)
    Desktops
    Jul 6, 2014 8:16 PM in response to BrotherKz

    It doesn't seem that the all sluggishness described by unhappy Mavericks users is the fault of third-party apps, since it is also reported as happening on clean installs.

     

    I've seen nothing from Mavericks so far that I find superior to Snow Leopard. I love the elegance and stability and versatility of Snow Leopard. I'm still testing…however, after installing the CalDigit driver for 10.9 and the 10.9.4 update, I am feeling cautiously optimistic that the disk ejection problem may be solved for Mavericks. I still have to do some more testing, but it looks promising. Unfortunately the disk ejection problem continues to plague Mountain Lion and that will probably never be fixed.

     

    I'm especially reluctant to turn Mavericks Mail loose on my e-mail.

  • by BrotherKz,

    BrotherKz BrotherKz Jul 6, 2014 8:59 PM in response to kahjot
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iWork
    Jul 6, 2014 8:59 PM in response to kahjot

    There's also a strong possibility things like timer coalescing, app napp and compressed memory need more tweaking to work efficiently in all situations.

    Again, 3rd party apps that weren't designed with these technologies in mind (especially cross platform and those designed for mainly for PC then ported i.e. Adobe / MS ) are not likely to gel perfectly with these technologies without some tweaking. They're also geared better for newer macs.

    This is a hard one though. For example, it's super frustrating that I can't install anything past iOS5 on my iPad1 and most of things I want to install require iOS6.

    iOS6 on an iPad though would be a real dog though so that would probably be more frustrating.

     

    I'd be interested to hear of sluggishness from anyone with a mac no more than say 4 years old, running Mavericks on a fresh install (not upgrade) with only 'single package' apps installed.

     

    Also, for those with sluggish mavericks macs of any kind. Have a look in your Activity monitor (sort by CPU%) and see if any things in particular are sticking near the top.

  • by itsamacthing,

    itsamacthing itsamacthing Jul 7, 2014 2:21 AM in response to BrotherKz
    Level 1 (85 points)
    Jul 7, 2014 2:21 AM in response to BrotherKz

    Mail seems to be running better after I removed the gmail account from it.  With just iCloud it closes down ok.  I think a mail program should be robust enough to handle all kinds of email accounts with no excuses. 

     

    SMB2, Apple should jump to SMB3 and make it work.  I believe they will eventually, managing their own SMB fork has been a challenge, it's not working correctly, altho I do see some improvement. 

     

    I'm not sure about my iMac getting sluggish, but all in all I can see lots of little things that add up and make the OS pretty frustrating these days:

    1. List view columns are expand by themselves
    2. SMB write speeds are 1/10th of the read speeds which are to spec
    3. Mail is nice, but not robust enough to be thought of as business/enterprise class (IMO). 
    4. Safari does this strange thing when I first start it up, the previously opened windows that are previewed in the dock are not there, and only the logo.  Once I click on it and then minimized it again, the preview of the screen is also with the logo in the dock.  Very odd, have seen that for many version of OS now
    5. When opening Notes, you have to be careful not to make a note too quickly while it's updating because that note will vanish
    6. When trying to open up the save as dialog box from within some 3rd party apps, once cannot open network shares to save documents.  This has turned into my biggest problem. 
    7. Finder has issues browsing SMB shares, it's slow, and sometimes the information does not populate. 
    8. Bloated and slow iTunes.  It's time to break this app up.  Not sure what the solution is, but maybe taking the sync out would be a great idea.  Turn sync back into it's own app. 
    9. Not sure I can see any sluggishness, using a Late 2012 iMac - it's certainly not like a Windows XP machine after a year
    10. Sleep on my MacBook Air is fine, sleep on my iMac = bad day and might as well reboot.  My iMac goes bonkers after sleep... I wish that this worked. 


    That's what I see on a day to day basis.  Hope that helps you make your choice to upgrade or not. 

  • by searlegirl123,

    searlegirl123 searlegirl123 Aug 4, 2014 9:13 AM in response to BigFeynmanFan
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 4, 2014 9:13 AM in response to BigFeynmanFan

    I have a late 2010 macbook pro that was on snow leopard, I upgraded to mavericks and it works seamlessly. It took a very long time to download, and even longer to install (about one and a half hours) but it works fine on every level without any issue, even the mail app runs perfectly. I have to say I'm very pleased with it, as it appears to be faster and more efficient than my previous OS. Just thought I would put my experience out there, as I haven't seen many reviews that say they haven't had any problems at all.

  • by slottytim,

    slottytim slottytim Aug 12, 2014 6:33 AM in response to BigFeynmanFan
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2014 6:33 AM in response to BigFeynmanFan

    Tend to agree with the other comments, I would advise anyone who has Snow Leopard not to install Mavericks. Unfortunately I did & boy do I regret it! My Mac Book Pro used to start up & run like new (though it's now 3 yrs old), it now runs like a 6 month old PC, everything takes forever & it locks (spinning rainbow) constantly, therefore the only way of continuing is to hold down the power button & start again.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Aug 12, 2014 6:35 AM in response to slottytim
    Level 9 (51,353 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 12, 2014 6:35 AM in response to slottytim

    I upgraded my 2009 MBP from Snow Leopard to Mavericks and it is noticeably faster than before I did.

     

    Mavericks works great.

  • by petermac87,

    petermac87 petermac87 Aug 12, 2014 1:49 PM in response to slottytim
    Level 5 (7,402 points)
    Aug 12, 2014 1:49 PM in response to slottytim

    Obviously there is some incompatibility with your system. All our studio Macs are now running 10.9.4 with no hiccups. Much faster than the old Snow Leopard. But there is no reason why you can't reinstall the system backup of Snow Leopard that you made before you chose to upgrade.

     

    OS X Mavericks: Revert to a previous OS X version

     

    Cheers

     

    Pete

  • by itsamacthing,

    itsamacthing itsamacthing Aug 12, 2014 6:09 PM in response to slottytim
    Level 1 (85 points)
    Aug 12, 2014 6:09 PM in response to slottytim

    I wouldn't assume anything, please start by checking that your hardware meets the requirements for Mavericks OS X Mavericks: System Requirements

     

    What kind of connected devices do you have?

     

    Have you considered your internal HDD?  It might be time to replace that with an SSD.

     

    Lastly, do a fresh install and not an upgrade.

     

    good luck

  • by Jeffrey Silberman,

    Jeffrey Silberman Jeffrey Silberman Aug 17, 2014 7:13 AM in response to MagicMat
    Level 1 (25 points)
    Aug 17, 2014 7:13 AM in response to MagicMat

    IMHO, anyone running anything less than a Mac Pro and is still on 10.6 should ask themselves why they would upgrade now if they have seen no reason to upgrade the past 2 opportunities. Besides the fact that every revision has left something important to someone at each level except for 10.6 that I am aware of since that was the most universal OS version which also kept the 2nd highest level of compatibly bloat next to 10.5. I still keep a 10.6 partition on my MacBook pros and only my 2010 MBP is eligible for 10.9 since thankfully apple did not allow all hardware (Intel compatible) upgrade or you would have seen disasters reported to the point of rioting.

    John Galt (I can't get that movie character name out of my head, hehe.) was on the money in his explanation. While his analysis hits the nail nearly dead center on the nail, there are a few non-third party issues that can and does arise but you may not notice or care depending on how in tune with your system you may be or your level of expectation of what an OS upgrade will do for you rather than to you. (Slightly convoluted answer? Not really.)

    Personally, I understand both sides of the discussion and have felt the disappointment in performance as I have run the upgrade on a few different models of varying age. I have deployed what I think David Stelly refers to a "facile" backup i.e. a full device clone to an external on all but one of my upgrades. The exception was the first iMac to be released with 10.8 with no optical drive.

    Before I go any further I should mention I teach, use, maintain and manage Macs for a school district with 400 plus and counting from 10.4 to 10.9 revisions of eMac, iMac, MacBook pro 13,15, 17, and MacBook Air 11's in addition to a couple hundred iPads. 

    I think a lot of people made the upgrade who would have been more cautious if they charged even a few dollars. Something about free combined with some new eye candy and tricks added to the base OS rather than 3rd party facilitated a leap they were not ready for. Meaning, even I moved forward a little faster knowing what I already know and having experienced lesser growing pains in 10.8 than in 10.6-10.7 in terms of loss of 3rd party features or functionality. It is really important to keep in mind that if you rely heavily on things like express card support for legacy or simply the most diverse accessibility to multiple storage and peripheral devices, you should always hold of on moving to a new system until the bugs have been worked out and the drawbacks have been identified and then make sure you walk that tight rope with a net under you.

    Regarding the upgrade to 10.9 on the latest hardware, it was surprisingly debilitating with regard to the extra OS demand on resources. Our machines came with 8 gigs of Ram with 2.66 Quad core i5's and they were pushing the envelope for the level of power I needed to run to my satisfaction. The average user doesn't see or feel it but they are not running as demanding a regiment nor are they monitoring other machines in the process. I did not experience horrific/catastrophic data loss (thankfully) with my external drives, but I did experience painful time sucking bugs that came simultaneously with Apple Remote Desktop bugs that brought unwelcome/unannounced changes in monitoring/viewing and workflow that clean installs on fresh machines still have not overcome the headaches that pre 3.7 versions did not incur. Having the knowledge that a few of my favorite utilities were and are still not as functional as they are on 10.8, I kept only the iMac on 10.9 because I was initially unable to restore it due to changes in port connectivity and the loss of the firewire port entirely which meant all sorts of adapter/thunderbolt workarounds and alternative methods of various types of recovery routes. Suffice to say that there is always a new wrinkle with new hardware and software upgrades speaking from a deployment perspective be it individual or mass.

    I keep 10.6 on my quad and triple boot machines in order to run any legacy software and equipment that could lose access to hardware connections that 3rd party support has ceased. I lost connection via express card in previous upgrades but regained the connection with a reinstall of the software even when it was no longer updated but was simply removed by the install as incompatible yet a reinstall was successful with the original software driver support. This time I was not as lucky as I'm on borrowed time with the 17 discontinued and with it any developer's incentive to continue supporting older hardware like the eSata via express card. The new machines are great and we will all have to eventually move on and in doing so we get newer compatible and faster equipment. It is very disappointing to lose the use of perfectly good machines simple because updating the software renders prior functionality inoperable. Therein lies the pain of progress. It could be part of the "planned obsolescence" but in the case of Apple it is more likely the cost of remaining all things to all people is just not a viable business model.

    I use multiple machines and the machines that shipped with 10.9 run fantastic. I connect to the same external equipment though different connections on different machines depending on that machine. You have to be prepared to leave some machines on an older system in order to maintain better performance and legacy compatibility and functionality as the case my necessitate. I have personal machines that are still running 10.7x due to older limitation by Apple and a 2010 MBP 2.66 i7 maxed at 8gigs of ram running memory clean with great success doing substantial multitasking with Adobe Photoshop, Aperture, and iMovie running all at the same time. It would run better with more RAM but that is no longer upgradeable. Doing this same combination on the 10.9 2.7 quad core i5 -1600MHz DDR3 and the 8gig option experiences some sluggishness and really feels like the OS and the expanded capabilities of new Apple Software updates has gone beyond what the machine can handle (due to the memory limitations that come from not maxing out at order time). Again, that is my power user activity on machines intended for the far less demanding needs of faculty and even students in the multimedia classes. Your mileage may vary.

    Frankly, Apple downplays the risk to upgrading on older machines and does not go out of their way to warn of the potential ramifications. They seem to feel that if you run into trouble you should upgrade your hardware. Apple would have everyone on the 3-year renewal cycle. However, the trouble I see arising is the fact that new hardware not being upgradeable in RAM after purchase can substantially impact the ability to get through 3 years before software pushes the limitations of the hardware. This new pitfall IMO makes the need for maxing out the machine at purchase a hidden necessity for far more users than people suspect. Otherwise, a lot of users are going to become very dissatisfied with a non-upgradable after purchase option where they thought they could try to save a few dollars or chose that lesser expensive all in one.

    Using a MacBook Air shipped with 10.9 and only 4 gigs of RAM is still very functional with the aid of the Memory Cleaner App. I feel that the 10.9 system is still leaking too much memory and the OS is too hungry for RAM. The new compression might work for some combinations of Apps but I've found ARD is not one those that work well without a lot more physical RAM. RAM cures a lot of ills but without after purchase options, that could be a serious hang-up beyond the lost hardware compatibility.

    The features you pickup with each OS may not be necessary for you but carrot on the stick of things like iCloud key chain only working if you have 10.9 on at least one machine or the 10.7 mobile/me change to iCloud needed or the speech to text moving to 10.8 are the kind of little things (or not so little) that entice you followed by the discovery of the 2-10 things you just gave up to get them can be frustrating. (Aside from other failures that come from way to many 3rd party or individual user failures to maintain their machines)

    Bottom line? You are on 10.6 this long for a reason. You may have waited to long and I can only imagine the combination of issues from leaping over 2 generations of upgrades. You are going to experience all of them without the benefits that came support during the incremental stages which could have been improved or completely dropped by now. So, backup and partition to find out. It is entirely likely that you may just be have to make new investments in equipment to take advantage of all that the new OS and software updates have to offer.

    Personally, I like most everything in 10.8 better but again, they force upgrades to get specific features. This is the first time I've actually reverted personal machines to a previous version. Besides disabling a lot features I don't like in the newer versions of both 10.8 and 10.9, I don't like the performance hit that the machines suffer on 10.9 with only 8gigs of RAM when heavy multitasking with RAM demanding programs. Even with the help of Memory Clean, performance suffers on traditional mechanical hard drives. I can tell you that my MacBook Pro with 750gigs and 8 Gigs NAND RAM significantly smooths out the sluggishness that the iMacs without the NAND just can't overcome with more RAM.

    Hope that was helpful. 

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Aug 17, 2014 8:46 AM in response to Jeffrey Silberman
    Level 9 (51,353 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 17, 2014 8:46 AM in response to Jeffrey Silberman

    I will advise all users to stay away from Ram cleaners. They are not compatible with Mavericks memory management methods.

     

    In my personal experience (many machines) a properly prepared Mac will run faster with Mavericks than any previous version of OSX.

  • by petermac87,

    petermac87 petermac87 Aug 17, 2014 3:20 PM in response to Jeffrey Silberman
    Level 5 (7,402 points)
    Aug 17, 2014 3:20 PM in response to Jeffrey Silberman

    Jeffrey Silberman wrote:

     

    IMHO, anyone running anything less than a Mac Pro and is still on 10.6 should ask themselves why they would upgrade now if they have seen no reason to upgrade the past 2 opportunities. Besides the fact that every revision has left something important to someone at each level except for 10.6 that I am aware of since that was the most universal OS version which also kept the 2nd highest level of compatibly bloat next to 10.5. I still keep a 10.6 partition on my MacBook pros and only my 2010 MBP is eligible for 10.9 since thankfully apple did not allow all hardware (Intel compatible) upgrade or you would have seen disasters reported to the point of rioting.

    John Galt (I can't get that movie character name out of my head, hehe.) was on the money in his explanation. While his analysis hits the nail nearly dead center on the nail, there are a few non-third party issues that can and does arise but you may not notice or care depending on how in tune with your system you may be or your level of expectation of what an OS upgrade will do for you rather than to you. (Slightly convoluted answer? Not really.)

    Personally, I understand both sides of the discussion and have felt the disappointment in performance as I have run the upgrade on a few different models of varying age. I have deployed what I think David Stelly refers to a "facile" backup i.e. a full device clone to an external on all but one of my upgrades. The exception was the first iMac to be released with 10.8 with no optical drive.

    Before I go any further I should mention I teach, use, maintain and manage Macs for a school district with 400 plus and counting from 10.4 to 10.9 revisions of eMac, iMac, MacBook pro 13,15, 17, and MacBook Air 11's in addition to a couple hundred iPads. 

    I think a lot of people made the upgrade who would have been more cautious if they charged even a few dollars. Something about free combined with some new eye candy and tricks added to the base OS rather than 3rd party facilitated a leap they were not ready for. Meaning, even I moved forward a little faster knowing what I already know and having experienced lesser growing pains in 10.8 than in 10.6-10.7 in terms of loss of 3rd party features or functionality. It is really important to keep in mind that if you rely heavily on things like express card support for legacy or simply the most diverse accessibility to multiple storage and peripheral devices, you should always hold of on moving to a new system until the bugs have been worked out and the drawbacks have been identified and then make sure you walk that tight rope with a net under you.

    Regarding the upgrade to 10.9 on the latest hardware, it was surprisingly debilitating with regard to the extra OS demand on resources. Our machines came with 8 gigs of Ram with 2.66 Quad core i5's and they were pushing the envelope for the level of power I needed to run to my satisfaction. The average user doesn't see or feel it but they are not running as demanding a regiment nor are they monitoring other machines in the process. I did not experience horrific/catastrophic data loss (thankfully) with my external drives, but I did experience painful time sucking bugs that came simultaneously with Apple Remote Desktop bugs that brought unwelcome/unannounced changes in monitoring/viewing and workflow that clean installs on fresh machines still have not overcome the headaches that pre 3.7 versions did not incur. Having the knowledge that a few of my favorite utilities were and are still not as functional as they are on 10.8, I kept only the iMac on 10.9 because I was initially unable to restore it due to changes in port connectivity and the loss of the firewire port entirely which meant all sorts of adapter/thunderbolt workarounds and alternative methods of various types of recovery routes. Suffice to say that there is always a new wrinkle with new hardware and software upgrades speaking from a deployment perspective be it individual or mass.

    I keep 10.6 on my quad and triple boot machines in order to run any legacy software and equipment that could lose access to hardware connections that 3rd party support has ceased. I lost connection via express card in previous upgrades but regained the connection with a reinstall of the software even when it was no longer updated but was simply removed by the install as incompatible yet a reinstall was successful with the original software driver support. This time I was not as lucky as I'm on borrowed time with the 17 discontinued and with it any developer's incentive to continue supporting older hardware like the eSata via express card. The new machines are great and we will all have to eventually move on and in doing so we get newer compatible and faster equipment. It is very disappointing to lose the use of perfectly good machines simple because updating the software renders prior functionality inoperable. Therein lies the pain of progress. It could be part of the "planned obsolescence" but in the case of Apple it is more likely the cost of remaining all things to all people is just not a viable business model.

    I use multiple machines and the machines that shipped with 10.9 run fantastic. I connect to the same external equipment though different connections on different machines depending on that machine. You have to be prepared to leave some machines on an older system in order to maintain better performance and legacy compatibility and functionality as the case my necessitate. I have personal machines that are still running 10.7x due to older limitation by Apple and a 2010 MBP 2.66 i7 maxed at 8gigs of ram running memory clean with great success doing substantial multitasking with Adobe Photoshop, Aperture, and iMovie running all at the same time. It would run better with more RAM but that is no longer upgradeable. Doing this same combination on the 10.9 2.7 quad core i5 -1600MHz DDR3 and the 8gig option experiences some sluggishness and really feels like the OS and the expanded capabilities of new Apple Software updates has gone beyond what the machine can handle (due to the memory limitations that come from not maxing out at order time). Again, that is my power user activity on machines intended for the far less demanding needs of faculty and even students in the multimedia classes. Your mileage may vary.

    Frankly, Apple downplays the risk to upgrading on older machines and does not go out of their way to warn of the potential ramifications. They seem to feel that if you run into trouble you should upgrade your hardware. Apple would have everyone on the 3-year renewal cycle. However, the trouble I see arising is the fact that new hardware not being upgradeable in RAM after purchase can substantially impact the ability to get through 3 years before software pushes the limitations of the hardware. This new pitfall IMO makes the need for maxing out the machine at purchase a hidden necessity for far more users than people suspect. Otherwise, a lot of users are going to become very dissatisfied with a non-upgradable after purchase option where they thought they could try to save a few dollars or chose that lesser expensive all in one.

    Using a MacBook Air shipped with 10.9 and only 4 gigs of RAM is still very functional with the aid of the Memory Cleaner App. I feel that the 10.9 system is still leaking too much memory and the OS is too hungry for RAM. The new compression might work for some combinations of Apps but I've found ARD is not one those that work well without a lot more physical RAM. RAM cures a lot of ills but without after purchase options, that could be a serious hang-up beyond the lost hardware compatibility.

    The features you pickup with each OS may not be necessary for you but carrot on the stick of things like iCloud key chain only working if you have 10.9 on at least one machine or the 10.7 mobile/me change to iCloud needed or the speech to text moving to 10.8 are the kind of little things (or not so little) that entice you followed by the discovery of the 2-10 things you just gave up to get them can be frustrating. (Aside from other failures that come from way to many 3rd party or individual user failures to maintain their machines)

    Bottom line? You are on 10.6 this long for a reason. You may have waited to long and I can only imagine the combination of issues from leaping over 2 generations of upgrades. You are going to experience all of them without the benefits that came support during the incremental stages which could have been improved or completely dropped by now. So, backup and partition to find out. It is entirely likely that you may just be have to make new investments in equipment to take advantage of all that the new OS and software updates have to offer.

    Personally, I like most everything in 10.8 better but again, they force upgrades to get specific features. This is the first time I've actually reverted personal machines to a previous version. Besides disabling a lot features I don't like in the newer versions of both 10.8 and 10.9, I don't like the performance hit that the machines suffer on 10.9 with only 8gigs of RAM when heavy multitasking with RAM demanding programs. Even with the help of Memory Clean, performance suffers on traditional mechanical hard drives. I can tell you that my MacBook Pro with 750gigs and 8 Gigs NAND RAM significantly smooths out the sluggishness that the iMacs without the NAND just can't overcome with more RAM.

    Hope that was helpful. 

    I would hate to see your not so humble opinion!!

    However, I must disagree.

     

    Pete

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