Snow Leopard to Mavericks: Feeling Overwhelmed. What do I Need To Know?

Look at what apple wrote about Mavericks here http://www.apple.com/osx/

Also look at this incredibly in-depth review over at Ars Technica

The biggest changes came in earlier OSes: Resume, Autosave and Versions.
When you restart your Mac, it will reload all the apps that were open at shutdown. When you launch an app, it will reload all the documents that were open when you quit it.
New applications don't need to save files: they do it automatically every 5 mins. The first time you save it is simply to give it a name and location on your drive.
OS X then keeps a record of each version, a bit like time machine for each file.
If you're used to altering a document and Saving As when you've finished, then you'll need to Duplicate the document first, then work on it.
You can always Revert a document to the last opened version.

Plenty of screaming has been posted about these: my advice is that it's best to get used to them, rather than try to make things work differently.

The most radical changes (Resume, Mission Control, Autosave, Versions, new interface...) were made in Lion, so I would try to catch up with those innovations first. ML added a few extra's, like Messages, new apps and I believe iCloud was added around that time as well. Mavericks added few visible new features.

If you really want to learn everything there is to know, read the last three Ars reviews. It'll take you a while but you'll learn a lot.

moog liberation said:

So I just upgraded my 2010 Macbook Pro to Mavericks from Snow Leopard. I haven't kept up with the changes to OSX over the last 4 years, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. I also know there a ton of features that I must be missing. Has anyone created a guide for the changes from Snow Leopard to Mavericks? I can't be the only person in this boat.

If not, does anyone to share anything that I need to know when it comes to things that have changed since Snow Leopard? Thanks.

Click to expand...

You could take a look at the video and text tutorials on this page:
Apple - Find Out How - Mac Basics

Thought of another option, these Macworld articles, read in order, should bring you up to speed:

Mac OS X Lion: What you need to know

Hands on with Apple's new OS X: Mountain Lion

FAQ: Everything you need to know about OS X Mavericks