My OS X Mavericks Rating

Question

I upgraded to Mavericks a couple weeks ago. No sigificant problems with the upgrade, but it took a lot of time or effort.I&#x27;m giving Apple a 4 out of 10 (10 is best) for Mavericks. Unless you must update to this operating system version to fix something like the inability to completely access internet web sites (the problem I was having), or other problems with obsolecscence, then I&#x27;d steer clear of it. This is the operating system that tries to do too much, and in doing so, constantly gets in my way. Mouse functionality is just plain bizarre. Something as sensible as the keyboard shortcuts in the old Preview, exist no more, and I can find no settings that restore them. Clicking on a post-as button (posting in a blog) causes a menu to pop up asking me if I want to "look up" my own posting ID. I could go on. These things are more than just annoying. These problems, and there are many, many more like this did not exist before. Mavericks is just plain slow compared to my old OS X version--it seems to try to do too much, but fails to do the necessary simply.A couple weeks ago, I would have given only a 1 out of 10, based on the assumption that old problems had been cleared up. I&#x27;ve gotten used to the issues I&#x27;ve described (+1), and partially fixed other issues (+1), and Apple gets 1 through charity (they&#x27;ve been great in the past, hardly putting a foot wrong).My next computer upgrade, if there is one, will proibably involve LINUX, and OpSys I&#x27;ve used before along with UNIX (where life on earth began).

CT · Answer

Unable to confirm.

MichelPM · Answer

Mavericks isn&#x27;t the issue. It&#x27;s what users have installed on their systems that is causing issues with Mavericks operation.How much RAM installed on your Mac?How full is your Mac&#x27;s hard drive? Do you have any antivirus installed? Antivirus software can negatively impede the normal operation of OS X. Do you have apps like MacKeeper or any other so called "cleaning" maintenance apps like CleanMyMac 1 or 2, TuneUpMyMac or anything like these apps, installed on your Mac? These types of apps, while they appear to be helpful, can do too good a job of data "cleanup" causing the potential to do serious data corruption or data deletion and render a perfectly running OS completely dead and useless leaving you with a frozen, non-functional Mac. You may have other incompatible or software that hasn&#x27;t been updated to compatible Mavericks versions.If you wish, Please download, install and run Etrecheck. Etrecheck was developed as a simple Mac diagnostic reporting tool by a regular Apple Support forum user and technical support contributor named Etresoft. Etrecheck is a small, unobstrusive app that compiles a static snapshot of your entire Mac hardware system and installed software. This is a free app that has been honestly created to provided help in diagnosing issues with Macs running the new OS X 10.9 Mavericks. It is not malware and can be safely downloaded and installed onto your Mac. http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheckCopy/paste and post its report here in another reply thread so that we have a complete profile of your Mac&#x27;s hardware and installed software so we can all help with your Mac performance issues.

AppleIsMessedUp · Answer

20 GByte Ram should be enoughAbout 883 Gbyte free on my 1 TByte system drive (other drives have a higher % free). I&#x27;ve considered a possible disk fragmentation. On my last Apple system, I did an OpSys upgrade which massively fragmented my disk, slowing system performance. Defrag helped. I know of no degrag SW available and it apparently no longer needed. In 15+ years of UNIX system experience, I never once had to defrag a disk, it just was never required.No antivirus SW. I&#x27;m thinking it may be beneficial, BUT as you imply, it is good to be able to turn it off since it could impede system performance.I have no "cleaning"/maintenance SW installed on my system--such SW is advertises at various websites, but it all looks suspicious to me.I updated every (Apple) app that required updating after the Mavericks download, took me almost another full day to dowload and install.To be clear, my system is not snail-like slow. Just a quite noticeable slowdown in things like app loads to memory.I will try Etrecheck, see if it helps. And I&#x27;ll let you know the results.Thanks.

AppleIsMessedUp · Answer

Etrecheck report:Hardware Information:          Mac Pro (Mid 2010)          Mac Pro - model: MacPro5,1          2 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon CPUs: 8 cores          20 GB RAMVideo Information:          ATI Radeon HD 5770 - VRAM: 1024 MBSystem Software:          OS X 10.9.2 (13C1021) - Uptime: 0 days 5:10:42Disk Information:          HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GH61N            WDC WD1001FALS-41Y6A0 disk1 : (1 TB)                    EFI (disk1s1) &lt;not mounted&gt;: 209.7 MB                     Macintosh HD (disk1s2) / [Startup]: 999.35 GB (883.26 GB free)                    Recovery HD (disk1s3) &lt;not mounted&gt;: 650 MB USB Information:          LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 1 TB                    EFI (disk0s1) &lt;not mounted&gt;: 209.7 MB                     LaCie (disk0s2) /Volumes/LaCie: 999.86 GB (402.7 GB free)          Apple, Inc. Keyboard Hub                     Macally Peripherals Macally BUMPERMOUSE                     Apple Inc. Apple Keyboard           Apple Inc. Display iSight           Apple Inc. Apple LED Cinema Display           Apple Inc. Display Audio           Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub                     Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller FireWire Information:          G-TECH OEM ATA Device 00 800mbit - 800mbit max                     disk2s1 (disk2s1) &lt;not mounted&gt;: 32 KB                     G-Drive Mini (disk2s3) /Volumes/G-Drive Mini: 499.97 GB (492.62 GB free)Thunderbolt Information:Gatekeeper:          Mac App Store and identified developersKernel Extensions:          [kext loaded] com.ATTO.driver.ATTOExpressPCIUl4 (4.4.2) Support          [kext loaded] com.hzsystems.terminus.driver (4) Support          [not loaded] com.roxio.BluRaySupport (1.1.6) Support          [not loaded] com.roxio.TDIXController (2.0) SupportLaunch Daemons:          [loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support          [not loaded] com.attotech.attomgtd.plist Support          [running] com.intego.BackupAssistant.daemon.plist SupportLaunch Agents:          [loaded] com.intego.backupassistant.agent.plist SupportUser Launch Agents:          [loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist SupportUser Login Items:          MagicMenu          iTunesHelper          BitTorrentInternet Plug-ins:          Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 3.2.0.16   - SDK 10.8 Support          FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 13.0.0.206 - SDK 10.6 Support          Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9          AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 10.1.9 Support          AdobePDFViewer: Version: 10.1.9 Support          Flash Player: Version: 13.0.0.206 - SDK 10.6 Support          QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3          iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0 - SDK 10.7Safari Extensions:          AdBlock: Version: 2.6.28          Video Converter: Version: 3.1.0Audio Plug-ins:          BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9          AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9          AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9          iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9iTunes Plug-ins:          Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.93rd Party Preference Panes:          Flash Player  Support          Flip4Mac WMV  Support          Perian  SupportTime Machine:          Time Machine not configured!Top Processes by CPU:               6%          BitTorrent               4%          WindowServer               4%          thunderbird               1%          Dock               1%          fontdTop Processes by Memory:          410 MB          mds_stores          184 MB          Safari          164 MB          Shrook          164 MB          thunderbird          143 MB          com.apple.IconServicesAgentVirtual Memory Information:          15.25 GB          Free RAM          3.04 GB          Active RAM          306 MB          Inactive RAM          1.40 GB          Wired RAM          470 MB          Page-ins          0 B          Page-outs

MichelPM · Answer

Could your ATTO card and drivers be causing issues with Mavericks?Are there updated drivers or software from ATTO that can updated?Also, try turning off the Intego backup software , temporarily to see if this software is also slowing up your Mac.

AppleIsMessedUp · Answer

All this may help I guess.I&#x27;ve removed the Intego app from my system. I never used it, had already disabled any scheduled backup scheme and was surprised the daemon was still "running" since it did not show up on the activity monitor. I&#x27;ll check into the ATTO stuff soon.

MichelPM · Answer

Having OS incompatible third party hardware installed and incompatible or non-updated software that runs that incompatible hardware can definitely have an impact on your Mac&#x27;s and OS performance.If the added third party hardware is completely incompatible with the Mac and current OS X version,  it can cause OS X Kernel panics and freezes.It could explain your Mac&#x27;s continued slower performance issues.

AppleIsMessedUp · Answer

Is there the equivalent of what I know as a SYSLOG file that logs various HW/SW events. There was under UNIX and I have looked for such a file under OS X. Might tell me of incompatibilites.

MichelPM · Answer

Not that I am aware of.There are different versions of Unix.The OS X version of Unix is one of those variations.Apple&#x27;s version of OS X comes from the Berkeley College Software Distribution of Unix. I am not aware of anything in Apple&#x27;s version that is equivalent of SYSLOG.

Barney-15E · Answer

Open Console app and look at All Messages. You can scroll through the log list and look at the system log (or any of the others), but All Messages consolidates most of the important ones.Open Activity Monitor and look at the Memory and CPU tabs to see what is using most of the resources. You can sort the list by memory/CPU%.It seems Spotlight is working overtime (mds_stores). Has it completed the initial scan? It shouldn&#x27;t be working that hard unless it is doing the initial scan.You can reset the spotlight index like this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2409

etresoft · Answer

If you are completely unable to load websites, then it would be best to find out what was causing that before upgrading. You could easily re-install the same software on Mavericks and cause problems.Can you define what you mean by "slow". And can you do with without BitTorrent running?You seem to have a kernel extension from Toast. Make sure that is up to date.If you want to look at log files, they are all in /var/log. Most of them are in Console.app too.