Anybody run Mavericks on 2010 MBA with C2D processor?

2010 11" 1.4 MBA here, clean installed last night. Everything is working swimmingly. Even played Portal 2 quite nicely.

Of course install it. Do a clean install. Your system will run so much better.

saintforlife said:

I have a 13" 2010 MBA with a 1.86 Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB RAM and 128 GB SSD (used 60GB) that seems to be on its last legs. Everything has gotten slow - web scrolling lags and misses frames, switching between apps using Expose stutters, it takes 10 seconds after wake up before the computer responds to any inputs, I see more and more spinning discs everyday...the list goes on. The only thing it still does well is shut down in less than 5 seconds and boot up in less than 15 seconds.

Just wondering if anybody has tried using Mavericks on a 2010 MBA? Could it breathe a new lease of life int my machine, seeing as how the new OS is supposed to optimize memory, battery life etc.?

Click to expand...

I have same config and I can't believe what Mavericks did for this machine. I was feeling same way, seemed like it was getting a bit slow. I did a clean install, don't know if that made any difference, but extremely satisfied. Yes both memory utilization and battery life much improved. Safari use is much better now as well. Hope that helps.

About to try this over the weekend. Haven't done a clean install on my 2010 since Lion. Obviously opinion is divided between clean installations and inplace installations but I'd like to get back some of my battery life....

Interesting comments about your slow performance. I have the same Macbook Air, except I have the larger SSD. I'm still running Snow Leopard and mine is running as fast and snappy as the day I bought it. Battery life has dropped a bit, but I attribute that to the age of the battery. It's still very good. I wonder what's causing the slow down in performance with your computers?

I've gone back and forth about upgrading to Mavericks. There are still some software that I run that won't be compatible with the new OS, but there is other software I have that I would like to upgrade and get new features that I'm going to need Mavericks in order to upgrade.

But it's good to hear that Mavericks runs smoothly on these old computers. How much space and memory does Mavericks take up compared to SL?

stockscalper said:

Interesting comments about your slow performance. I have the same Macbook Air, except I have the larger SSD. I'm still running Snow Leopard and mine is running as fast and snappy as the day I bought it. Battery life has dropped a bit, but I attribute that to the age of the battery. It's still very good. I wonder what's causing the slow down in performance with your computers?

I've gone back and forth about upgrading to Mavericks. There are still some software that I run that won't be compatible with the new OS, but there is other software I have that I would like to upgrade and get new features that I'm going to need Mavericks in order to upgrade.

But it's good to hear that Mavericks runs smoothly on these old computers. How much space and memory does Mavericks take up compared to SL?

Click to expand...

I'm running on a stock 2010 13" with 2GB RAM and Mavericks is running fine on it. Couldn't tell you space differences as I didn't log it.

If you want to keep SL and don't have the internal space, put it on an external drive, OS X can boot from anywhere. Use Carbon Copy Cloner and close your existing installation to an external drive an you're good to go.

Benefits to upgrading to Mavericks.

http://lifehacker.com/should-i-upgrade-to-os-x-mavericks-1449627553

I have a 1.6GHz C2D 11" MacBook Air from 2010. It runs Lion well. No reason to expect it won't run Mavericks just as well, maybe even better.

Yell0w said:

http://lifehacker.com/should-i-upgrade-to-os-x-mavericks-1449627553

Click to expand...

I've upgraded a 2012 iMac 27 inch, a 2013 MacBook Air i7, a 2010 MacBook Pro 15 inch i5, and a 2009 Mac Mini C2D with Mavericks. None of the systems I've upgraded experienced the slowness and bugs that Lifehacker claims "everyone" is experiencing.

scaredpoet said:

I've upgraded a 2012 iMac 27 inch, a 2013 MacBook Air i7, a 2010 MacBook Pro 15 inch i5, and a 2009 Mac Mini C2D with Mavericks. None of the systems I've upgraded experienced the slowness and bugs that Lifehacker claims "everyone" is experiencing.

Click to expand...

I am interested to update my system which only has 2gb of ram. Is the ram installed on all your systems 4gb?

Mavericks feels just that bit smoother than Mountain Lion, just did an upgrade, 2010 13" 2.13/4/256 here, but its about to get replaced as soon as the UPS truck shows up!

Still have to say though - that for what I do on it daily, it doesn't feel like its on its last legs, far from it, and Mavericks seems just that bit better even. Would definitely recommend everyone upgrade to it... and its free too.

My 2010 13 is running fine on SL, still getting 10+ hours with Coolbook, think I'll stick with SL after reading about beachballs using Mav.

My 2010 MacBook Air 11" is running flawlessly on Maverick.
Battery life is improved.
Wake up from sleep is faster (Previously it took time to light up and TrackPad to work)
iSight Camera is working.
Microsoft Office no problems.
iPhoto and Aperture work fine.

polee said:

I am interested to update my system which only has 2gb of ram. Is the ram installed on all your systems 4gb?

Click to expand...

None of them are 2GB. They range from the Mac Mini at 4GB, the MacBooks at 8GB and the iMac at 32GB. So I wouldn't be able to tell you what 2GB of RAM is like in Mavericks. Maybe that's what the lifehacker author was testing on?

Just yesterday I updated a teacher's 2010 C2D and it runs great! 128GB SSD & 2 GB ram.

scaredpoet said:

I've upgraded a 2012 iMac 27 inch, a 2013 MacBook Air i7, a 2010 MacBook Pro 15 inch i5, and a 2009 Mac Mini C2D with Mavericks. None of the systems I've upgraded experienced the slowness and bugs that Lifehacker claims "everyone" is experiencing.

Click to expand...

gavinstubbs09 said:

Just yesterday I updated a teacher's 2010 C2D and it runs great! 128GB SSD & 2 GB ram.

Click to expand...

Thanks guys. I haven't upgraded my early 2008 MBP yet so I'm reading other people's experiences before I do so. Seems like people are getting good results so I don't know what the life hacker author is talking about.

I'm running Mavericks on a late 2010 MBA Ultimate (2.13 ghz C2D, 4 GB ram, 256 GB SSD). Just installed it yesterday, everything is running perfectly. Not as snappy as Snow Leopard but the interface is definitely more fluid. The biggest perk = my battery life has dramatically improved. Well worth the upgrade.

I have been impressed with the upgrade on my ultimate late 2010 11" MBA. Very noticeable improvements to battery life and Safari seems sn....

Need to clear some files off it as photos and iTunes only leave about 6GB free.

Still love this thing. Best laptop I've ever owned.

Moccasin said:

Very noticeable improvements to battery life and Safari seems sn....

Click to expand...

Safari sn? Snappy?

I have a 2010 ultimate 11" that is still running SL with coolbook installed. I'm curious how this setup compares directly with Mavericks, as many of the improvements being pushed in Mavericks are battery related. Any feedback?

So for your clean installations did you wipe the SSD, install Mavericks, then use your Time Machine backups to restore the apps, data, etc; or did you manually add the apps and settings and just restore your files?

JonLa said:

So for your clean installations did you wipe the SSD, install Mavericks, then use your Time Machine backups to restore the apps, data, etc; or did you manually add the apps and settings and just restore your files?

Click to expand...

At least for mine 2010 MBA 1.86/4/128, I repartitioned drive ( Toshiba SSD 128GB ) into 2 partitions on install, 100GB + 20GB. I used first one for "Macintosh HD" deleted the 2nd as I generally under provision SSD's, ( on avg only have used > 60 GB ) The real reason for under provisioning the SSDs is to maintain performance plus with only 4GB of ram you see OS X write quite a bit to virtual memory, better with Mavericks but still want to allow drive unused space for better wear leveling ( prolong drive with all those VM writes. ) plus better IO utilization. If not sure what I'm saying look at any of anandtech.com recent SSD reviews and look at difference the under provisioning makes, and assuming you don't need to use all available space. Anyway manually installed all files and apps after install of os. Machine runs awesome. Just my experience.

That sounds easy in principle but tricky in practice as I do want to try to get time machine to put a lot of my settings back (particularly my itunes library, split between an sdxc card and the Ssd).

I normally try to keep 40-50GB free on my 250 gb ssd for similar reasons (albeit an amateurish implementation)

PBG4 Dude said:

I'm running on a stock 2010 13" with 2GB RAM and Mavericks is running fine on it. Couldn't tell you space differences as I didn't log it.

If you want to keep SL and don't have the internal space, put it on an external drive, OS X can boot from anywhere. Use Carbon Copy Cloner and close your existing installation to an external drive an you're good to go.

Click to expand...

Thanks!