The "Mavericks is A Beach, Full of Beach Balls" Compilation - Please List Your Mac

dude, this whole FORUM is filled with that sort of thing. look around.

if you're having a PROBLEM, ask for HELP. THAT's the real usefulness of tech forums...

Weaselboy said:

I think you are missing the OP's point. I believe he was hoping to have a thread where users could list their model of Mac and if they had trouble with Mavericks in hopes of identifying perhaps a trend of certain models consistently having trouble. He was not looking for help fixing his Mac.

It does seem like it would be a useful effort.

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perhaps, but there are SO many variables to consider. no harm tho. so, apologies. if this thread helps anyone, then...all good...

Mavericks isn't fully sluggish/slow on my computer, but it does act weirdly and glitchy from time to time. It's sporadic and random, but seems to occur mostly with the Time Machine 'starfield' UI.

My MBP is a late 2011 13" MBP, but I have upgraded the RAM to 10GB, added a 750GB hybrid (Seagate Momunteus XT) hard drive, so that makes my situation a bit more unique. My MBP has the i7 processor (2.8GHz).

Installed Mavericks using a fully clean install (erase of the HD), no migration. Dropbox, Parallels, 1Password, Office are my primary apps.

Hope this helps to collect a more comprehensive profile of computers that aren't completely functioning properly on Mavericks.

I don't know if this helps but...

Late 2011 hires antiglare 15 in MBP, 8 GB RAM, 7200 RPM drive, i7 2.5 Ghz.

Under 10.7.5 it Geekbench 2'ed at 10,500. Under 10.8.3, it hit 9300. Under 10.9.2, it hit 9700. Do I need to get back to 10500? Not so much. I just need the thing to be ready to do what I need when I need it.

For a while after installing Mavericks over 10.8.3, I was seeing beachballs galore and I was pretty frustrated. I was routinely submitting snide remarks about "rolling back to Snow Leopard" with every mail.app and airmail.app crash report I submitted to Apple. There were a few steps I took to banish the beachballs (hopefully) once and for all...

1) SSD - I picked up a Samsung EVO 840 .75 TB SSD
2) Fresh Install - connected the SSD via a USB to SATA cable, installed Mavericks from a homemade USB stick and "migrated" from the Mavericks install that was still sitting inside my MBP then allowed Mavs to update itself to 10.9.2 before swapping the SSD into my MBP.
3) Archived 140,000 of my 160,000 email threads. This was causing Mail.app and Airmail.app to go ballistic upon load. Now that all those 4+ year old messages are archived, I can use email as a tool not an obstacle.

Of course YMMV but I find Mavericks to be stable enough for my use right now. There are a handful of things I believe Mavericks does better than Mountain Lion:

1) Memory management - I believe my 8GB "feels like" 12 GB when I'm running Mavericks. I noticed this before the 3 steps above and this continues to hold true after the upgrade to SSD/downsizing email hoard.

2) Automatic app updates - I don't remember if this was available in ML, but I definitely want automatic app updates on OSX as much as I wanted it on iOS. Frankly, it's something we should have had all along.

3) Notes aren't part of mail.app. I think this was introduced before Mavericks but to all those crowing about going all the way back to SL, it really was awful to have to launch mail.app just to take a look at some quick notes I took on my iPad or iPhone.

4) Kill Switch - I ran into this when I upgraded my HDD. If you boot from the recovery partition, it asks for your AppleID before you can do anything. This doesn't quite qualify as a kill switch for stolen Macs but it's a step in the right direction. At our company we have thousands of Dell and HP notebooks. We only have a few dozen Macbooks. 6 of them were stolen a while back and it would have been nice to have the ability to use "find my Macbook" to recover them more quickly. The cops finally did find the guys but we haven't gotten our computers back as they are evidence in the trial.

I should also mention I have Mavericks running on a 2010 Mac mini. There are a few more beachballs but again a fresh install to SSD makes for a smooth running system. The configuration is similar to my MBP. There is 8 GB of RAM and a 500 GB Samsung EVO 840. Putting the SSD into the Mac mini was a 46 step process (detailed on iFixit) but it was well worth it.

On both systems, I used Chameleon to enable TRIM support. On both systems the drives are less than 60% full and huge files are kept on either firewire, USB or NAS drives.

Hope this helps...

groove-agent said:

Clearly you didn't read my OP.

Click to expand...

and clearly you didn't read my apology...

Late 2013 27' iMac Baseline Model
8GB RAM
1TB 7200RPM HDD
DropBox and Bootcamp installed with some pro apps also but only opened when needed.
Happens most after first boot and when trying to do the simplest multitasking e.g. opening a finder window and switching to another desktop to change song in Spotify...

Cant say I'm incredibly happy with my second Mac purchase.

2011 MacBook Pro 15".

Very much regret installing Mavericks over Snow Leopard. Even opening something little like VLC or the System Pref's (!) takes more than a few seconds now. Unbelievable. It's all so incredibly sluggish that it feels like hard work to use the thing.

Notice that everyone who's posted their specs here because of beach balling has a HDD and not an SSD?

After throwing out my HDD because of beach baling on Mavericks and replacing it with a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro, it's smooth and launches apps instantly. No more beach balls.

I also get 11-second boot times too.

Weaselboy said:

I believe he was hoping to have a thread where users could list their model of Mac and if they had trouble with Mavericks in hopes of identifying perhaps a trend of certain models consistently having trouble.

Click to expand...

That's a good idea and I hope it works out.

I had problems with Mavericks on a five year old Macbook. I only have 2gb of RAM which is probably just not enough, and I can't isolate that factor from any others that may apply. I still haven't figured out why an OS whose main claim to fame appears to be improved memory management requires more memory than previous OSs.

To me, just one little vote, all Mavericks threads should be about how to install any new OS on a test partition or drive, so that the user can know ahead of time whether they are going to have problems with a new OS before their existing Mac set up is touched in any way.

Imho, this is the most efficient and safe way to address all Mavericks problem threads today, and all new OSX versions problem threads for years to come.

Felasco said:

To me, just one little vote, all Mavericks threads should be about how to install any new OS on a test partition or drive, so that the user can know ahead of time whether they are going to have problems with a new OS before their existing Mac set up is touched in any way.

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Doing so you'll need a very good cause & effect study on the updated (trial-and-error) OS. I believe that updating any OS will or can not be tested to the core. So many different systems, users, apps, errors, bugs and tweaks. At what point will you update your original OS machine to the new update?

Imho, this is the most efficient and safe way to address all Mavericks problem threads today, and all new OSX versions problem threads for years to come.

Click to expand...

As a 'normal' user I first read as many reviews, check forums etc. I can imaging when being a developer and updating any OS with beta versions, you have test systems at hand for specific testing and use.

Isn't life all about trial-and-error

GL & Cheers

2011 Mac Mini

16 GB memory

5400 rpm Hdd

All current software and apps

3 years service

Every new OS, I do a clean install only

No issues ever.

Doing so you'll need a very good cause & effect study on the updated (trial-and-error) OS.

Click to expand...

Well, the typical user need only test the OS on the kinds of things they normally do.

At what point will you update your original OS machine to the new update?

Click to expand...

What I do is use an older reliable OS for my daily work. And then I have the newest OS, Mavericks for now, in a separate partition for exploring and testing etc.

If coming updates to Mavericks improve it to the point it works well on my machine for the kinds of things I normally do, I will make Mavericks my main OS.

As a 'normal' user I first read as many reviews, check forums etc.

Click to expand...

This is good for finding out whether a new OS has features that are useful to us in our personal situation. If not, then there may be no reason to even test it.

A common mistake seems to be for people to update their OS without really knowing why they are doing it, based on some vague notion that new must be better.

A first step for anyone considering updating should probably be to create a list of features that they hope to obtain by upgrading. If they find a compelling feature, then they have a good reason to go to the trouble of testing the new OS. If they don't find a compelling feature, they might be advised to simply wait for further developments.

ABC5S said:

Every new OS, I do a clean install only
No issues ever.

Click to expand...

Do you clean install your apps too?

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Felasco said:

Well, the typical user need only test the OS on the kinds of things they normally do.



What I do is use an older reliable OS for my daily work. And then I have the newest OS, Mavericks for now, in a separate partition for exploring and testing etc.

If coming updates to Mavericks improve it to the point it works well on my machine for the kinds of things I normally do, I will make Mavericks my main OS.



This is good for finding out whether a new OS has features that are useful to us in our personal situation. If not, then there may be no reason to even test it.

A common mistake seems to be for people to update their OS without really knowing why they are doing it, based on some vague notion that new must be better.

A first step for anyone considering updating should probably be to create a list of features that they hope to obtain by upgrading. If they find a compelling feature, then they have a good reason to go to the trouble of testing the new OS. If they don't find a compelling feature, they might be advised to simply wait for further developments.

Click to expand...

Good feedback, thanks for sharing!

13 inch late 2011 MacBook Pro
4Gb RAM
500Gb 5,400 RPM HD
OS X 10.9.2
Clean install of Mavericks
Clean install of apps

The only issue I run into is that it seems to take System Preferences almost a full minute after I click it to open. Very rarely does that cause a beach ball, though. It just doesn't display the window until its ready.

I had an issue with Mission Control animations being choppy, however MacRumors user w0lf made an application called cDock that let me turn my dock transparent. For some reason, this also fixed the choppy animations in MC.

Hell, Mavericks boots to desktop in under 40 seconds for me. Windows 7 on the BootCamp partition takes over a minute. So far, I've been happy with Mavericks. (Except the name, but thats a whole different gripe lol.)

My advice is simple:

If you have a Mac that absolutely requires Mavericks, you don't have a choice, but...

... if you have a Mac that can still run Mountain Lion, it's a FAR better working OS than is Mavericks...

My opinion only, and I realize others' may differ.

2009 MacBook Pro
750gb HDD
8gb RAM
Installed Mavericks over Snow Leopard

No issues. Faster than Snow Leopard and everything much snappier.

No cleaning apps or anti virus installed.

I get beach balling sometimes when doing in Lightroom. Precisely when zooming the picture to 100% view.

And I have: 15'' Late 2013 rMBP - Mavericks (2.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD)

In other cases I didn't notice any beach balling.

BDM STUDIOS NL said:

Do you clean install your apps too?

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Good feedback, thanks for sharing!

Click to expand...

What I did was make sure the apps were up to date (Most current). I've done this with each OS release and have never had issues.

Clean install of Mavericks after doing a erase first from Utilities > Go to the App store, and download each app/program that is the latest > Most everything is in the iCloud/iPhoto/Preview. What is not comes from my USB thumb drive of all the important programs and files that I save.

2011 27" iMac

3.1 GHz i5
16GB RAM
Radeon 6970 1GB
Stock 1TB Seagate 7200rpm HDD

Mavricks is an upgrade (no clean install)

Photoshop
ComicStudio
Dropbox
Spotify

No beach balls.



2009 13" MBP

2.26 GHz C2D
8GB RAM
GeForce 9400M
Upgraded 500GB WD Black 7200rpm HDD

ComicStudio
Photoshop
Dropbox
Spotify

Mavericks was an upgrade

I got some beach balls in Photoshop, generally if I was working with a canvas bigger than 300DPI. I pulled the optical drive and bought a Toshiba 250GB SSD and created a Fusion drive, no more beach balls.