What grinds your gears in Mavericks?

Finder is still abysmally slow at showing files/folder contents sometimes.

Access for assistive devices has been limited to a per-App activation scheme, hidden away in the security theatre control panel (Allow the Apps below to control your computer). Apple did a half-assed job implementing it too. Once an App is on the OK list, there's no way to take it back out.

Speaking of security theatre, how come I have to entire my password so often? OSX 10.1.5 wasn't nearly so pointlessly intrusive on my work flow.

There's too many menu items and button titles that only show up when you hold down some undocumented special key. Why not just put the options in the menus, or give em a button, in the first place. To see what I mean, select a file in Finder, then bring up each finder menu and try holding down the option and or ctl keys. The route to finding the command you want to execute has devolved into nearly total chaos.

iTunes 11... Why Apple.. Why?

Oh and Finders speed is never fun to deal with.

I like Mavericks and it's fast, stable and compatible with most of my legacy apps and hardware. Can't say the same about about Snow Lep as it was crash city back in the day! 10.85 was very good on my MacPro and iMac and maybe I should have stuck with it longer.

My only beef with Mavericks is crappy FW support: my FW drives will not spin down when idle. 10.92 partially fixed the sleep bug: they spin down during system sleep or when ejected but otherwise go all day and get very hot. Yes, they worked perfectly under 10.85 and Energy Saver is set to spin them down when idle. Eventually I switched my externals to USB2 to keep them running cool and sure is S L O W. My MOTU Ultra audio interface works fine, even through a FW hub. The issue is only with external FW drives.

Maya rendering with mental ray doesn't work. Major showstopper for animators.
Heavy CPU load (for example when rendering) sometimes causes the mouse pointer to become laggy to the point of the entire OS becoming unusable, especially with Wacom Tablets.
Polygon lasso is Photoshop is now a mess.
That STUPID Quicktime conversion hassle.
Slow network file browsing.
The coloured dots that replaced filename colouring, and how they are displayed next to the date, not at the end of the filename.
How Finder in full detail defaults to columns too wide to fit in the window so by default I can't see the above coloured dots.
Terrible performance on older, low memory hardware despite the bragging about improved memory handling.
The fact we're at 10.9.2 already and none of these have been addressed.

Not all of the above will apply to everyone, nor are they necessarily Apple's fault, but they make me regret installing it.

How BLOODY SLOW it is booting up in a 5400RPM disk. Drives me mad
my original Apple SSD died in my 2012 15inch MBP 16GB ram, so I've had to use a HDD as a temporary alternative and it's literally takes 2 whole minuets from logging in till when the DOCK appears (CLEAN INSTALL NO APPS INSTALLED)

Back to Mountain Lion 10.8.5 for the mo - every things super

Coming from Windows and various Linux distros I have to say I don't like Finder or the general file management in OSX, I definitely prefer Windows for that. Gaming performance still lags way behind but that's a game developer issue rather than Mavericks (thankgod for bootcamping).
Aside from that I love it.

The fact that I have had to wipe it twice to get sleep working, it drops wireless connections on roaming networks (Not just Apple's AirPorts, but Aerohive, UniFi, and even Cisco), extraordinary RAM usage, and high CPU usage.

I am not going to complain about the new iWork as with the new updates the other day, most features were put back in. People need to understand that we are past the floating inspector window era. The new iMovie is okay, but the CPU spikes and also shows random artifacts when editing.

For those wondering, I have a mid-2012 cMBP, 120 GB Samsung 840 Evo, 16 GB RAM, 2.5 GHz i5. It is not a slow system by any standards.

a104375 said:

When I switched to Mavericks there were a few things that really made me dislike the OS compared to Snow Leopard, but I decided to make the jump because there were so many things that no longer would run.

So what made you move and what grinds your gears with Mavericks?

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Why I moved....compatibility with iWorks apps on mobile, MacBook Air compatibility

What grinds my gears...Firewire refusing to sleep when mounted but inactive

ssls6 said:

Why I moved....compatibility with iWorks apps on mobile, MacBook Air compatibility



What grinds my gears...Firewire refusing to sleep when mounted but inactive

Click to expand...

My guess is that Apple will fix this in 10.9.3.

There is still no good way to opt out of autosave/versions and use the standard “Save As…” functionality that worked great all the way through Snow Leopard.

Finder windows routinely “forget” what view state they are in, and switch from icons to list, or start showing the toolbar which had been hidden, for no apparent reason after restarting or waking from sleep.

There’s no good way to search for hidden or system files that have changed recently: even including hidden and system files in a search for things that have changed within the last day, sorted by last modified date, does not show things that are recently changed such as when installing a program that adds/modifies files in, for example, /Library/Application Support.

There’s no way to save the installers for programs downloaded from the App Store (other than OS X itself).

There’s no way to make all Finder windows always open with sidebar and toolbar hidden by default.

There’s no way to make Finder windows with toolbar hidden show the tabs bar.

There’s no way to both make Finder windows open folders in a new window when double-clicking and in a new tab when cmd-double clicking.

And bunch of random other things:

There is no way to make Preview show two columns of thumbnails in the sidebar.

The main Xcode editor window has a minimum width that is way wider than I want.

Does that bug still exist where it takes forever for files and folders to show up in the save/open dialogs? I applied the workaround that disables automounting of network drives a while back so it hasn’t affected me recently, but if it’s still there that’s bad.

I’m sure there are more things that are slipping my mind right now.

Qaanol said:

There is still no good way to opt out of autosave/versions and use the standard “Save As…” functionality that worked great all the way through Snow Leopard.

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depends on your definition of 'good' but there are ways to SaveAs in mavericks..

while in an app which is hooked up to autosave, go to the File menu then press the option key.. 'Duplicate' will change to 'Save As'

however, you still can't apply that directly to past SaveAs conventions because it doesn't simply create a new file then revert the current one to it's original state- untouched..

to get that behavior, there's a slight shift in how you have to go about it.. that being-- do the SaveAs at the beginning of a session instead of at the end.. this way, you'll have the original file untouched and a new working file that all the new autosaves are going to.

^

oh.. or what i do personally (i do mostly 3d cad.. in rhino- which is hooked up to versioning/autosave.. point being, there are times when i may want to work on a file in a completely exploratory manner in which i don't want that stuff in the file as versions)..

i just copy/drag (option key while dragging) a file which duplicates it then gives it a sequential name.. (example.jpg becomes example 2.jpg)

then i open the copy and do the exploratory work in there.. if i get to a point to where i want to keep the work i've done within my original working file, i'll just copy/paste the new geometry into the main file..

it's basically the same thing as doing a SaveAs or Duplicate at the beginning of a session but less clicks/no typing.

flat five said:

depends on your definition of 'good' but there are ways to SaveAs in mavericks..

while in an app which is hooked up to autosave, go to the File menu then press the option key.. 'Duplicate' will change to 'Save As'

however, you still can't apply that directly to past SaveAs conventions because it doesn't simply create a new file then revert the current one to it's original state- untouched..

to get that behavior, there's a slight shift in how you have to go about it.. that being-- do the SaveAs at the beginning of a session instead of at the end.. this way, you'll have the original file untouched and a new working file that all the new autosaves are going to.

Click to expand...

Yeah, in addition to that, I’ve actually globally changed the shortcut for Save As… to ⌘⇧S and the shortcut for Duplicate to ⌘⌥⇧S, so the former shows in the menu and the latter does not (unless option is pressed). I also set Export to have the shortcut ⌘E.

But as you say, it does not restore the old behavior.

flat five said:

^

oh.. or what i do personally (i do mostly 3d cad.. in rhino- which is hooked up to versioning/autosave.. point being, there are times when i may want to work on a file in a completely exploratory manner in which i don't want that stuff in the file as versions)..

i just copy/drag (option key while dragging) a file which duplicates it then gives it a sequential name.. (example.jpg becomes example 2.jpg)

then i open the copy and do the exploratory work in there.. if i get to a point to where i want to keep the work i've done within my original working file, i'll just copy/paste the new geometry into the main file..

it's basically the same thing as doing a SaveAs or Duplicate at the beginning of a session but less clicks/no typing.

Click to expand...

That does work, but it means you have to decide ahead of time whether you want to save a second copy of any given file, before you have even made the changes that you may or may not want to save. Essentially, what Apple did is change the workflow from “Make changes then decide whether or not you want to save them” as it was all the way up through Snow Leopard, and they turned it into “Decide whether or not you are going to want to save changes, then make changes.”

Qaanol said:

That does work, but it means you have to decide ahead of time whether you want to save a second copy of any given file, before you have even made the changes that you may or may not want to save. Essentially, what Apple did is change the workflow from “Make changes then decide whether or not you want to save them” as it was all the way up through Snow Leopard, and they turned it into “Decide whether or not you are going to want to save changes, then make changes.”

Click to expand...

yeah, they did change the workflow but i think it's important to realize they did it as a means of preventing data loss.. i mean, that's basically the worst thing that can happen during a project (losing 1/2 day work or whatever) and that just won't happen anymore (at least, not because of software)

the files are updating every 5 minutes so at the very most, you will lose 5 minutes work in the event of an app crash.. it's just that the autosave needs somewhere to store the info and it does it in the files themselves.. that's why you have to decide what to do first-- you're telling osx which file to do the saves to.. (fresh, unsaved documents autosave files are working off of temp files at ~/Library/Autosave Information)

but if your main goal is to "Make changes then decide whether or not you want to save them" then there's a preference setting to control that.. System Preferences> General> 'Ask to keep changes when closing documents'

with that preference checked, autosave will still be working so you're covered in the event of a crash but, upon closing a document, you'll be prompted to either save as is or discard the changes and revert the file to the state it was in upon opening it.

flat five said:

yeah, they did change the workflow but i think it's important to realize they did it as a means of preventing data loss.. i mean, that's basically the worst thing that can happen during a project (losing 1/2 day work or whatever) and that just won't happen anymore (at least, not because of software)

the files are updating every 5 minutes so at the very most, you will lose 5 minutes work in the event of an app crash.. it's just that the autosave needs somewhere to store the info and it does it in the files themselves.. that's why you have to decide what to do first-- you're telling osx which file to do the saves to.. (fresh, unsaved documents autosave files are working off of temp files at ~/Library/Autosave Information)

but if your main goal is to "Make changes then decide whether or not you want to save them" then there's a preference setting to control that.. System Preferences> General> 'Ask to keep changes when closing documents'

with that preference checked, autosave will still be working so you're covered in the event of a crash but, upon closing a document, you'll be prompted to either save as is or discard the changes and revert the file to the state it was in upon opening it.

Click to expand...

I don't think that it is a bad idea in theory, but the implementation is flawed. If I need to revert, then it goes into a Time Machine like interface! But why? I like how Microsoft does it (that pained me to say that), where if a program crashes I am given the option to restore the data or revert to the last save.

MarcusCarpenter said:

How BLOODY SLOW it is booting up in a 5400RPM disk. Drives me mad

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Mavericks is optimized for SSDs if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah exactly I have the machine in my sig but my SSD died so I got a quick alternative until I can afford 2x 500gb SSD for raid 0 and mavericks seems to take forever to boot compared to any other OS 10.x

yjchua95 said:

Mavericks is optimized for SSDs if I'm not mistaken.

Click to expand...

How about Trim Support?

BDM STUDIOS NL said:

How about Trim Support?

Click to expand...

We are talking about standard HDD's under mavericks, enable trim on your SSD if you want some people have issues with trim on

MarcusCarpenter said:

We are talking about standard HDD's under mavericks..

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I'm not, you are! Install a new SSD and report back?
What's the difference you measure comparing the SSD and the 5400rpm HDD at boot times?

Like others have said before, The Finder's drop for SMB for there SMBX. Most users ignore this fact and don't adjust their scripts to use the cifs string:

BDM STUDIOS NL said:

I'm not, you are! Install a new SSD and report back?

What's the difference you measure comparing the SSD and the 5400rpm HDD at boot times?

Click to expand...

He said he needs to use a hard drive in the mean time until he can afford his new SSDs.

In all honesty, Mavericks should be nowhere as slow on a hard drive as it is.

Altemose said:

He said he needs to use a hard drive in the mean time until he can afford his new SSDs.

In all honesty, Mavericks should be nowhere as slow on a hard drive as it is.

Click to expand...

Thats exactly what i was getting at, was no reason for that, the guy was replying to my post then he's banging on about Trim ? lol

MarcusCarpenter said:

Thats exactly what i was getting at, was no reason for that, the guy was replying to my post then he's banging on about Trim ? lol

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There is no denying that Mavericks is optimized for SSDs. And all but the majority of users have them now. But it is unacceptable for Apple to give such substandard performance on conventional hard drives.