OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks - An Appreciation

[ZipZilla]

Recently purchased a 2012 Mac Mini, immediately upgraded to Yosemite.

Slower than molasses.

Downgraded today to the bundled OS, 10.9.5 Mavericks. And it's like everything is 10 times faster. Zoom, Zoom, ZOOM!!!!!

And it actually still *looks* like OS X.

Thank you Mavericks!

 

[sharon22]

AMEN BROTHER/SISTER!

I will never ever EVER EVER EVVVVERRRRR install Yosemite ever again.

Downgrading to Yosemite was the worst day of my life.

Upgrading back to Mavericks was the happiest day of my life.

 

[ZipZilla]

AMEN BROTHER/SISTER!

I will never ever EVER EVER EVVVVERRRRR install Yosemite ever again.

Downgrading to Yosemite was the worst day of my life.

Upgrading back to Mavericks was the happiest day of my life.

Absolutely, sister! (Brother here.)

And the thing is, I can find no redeeming quality of Yosemite that I miss! Yosemite is Apple's Windows 8.

 

[bbfc]

I liked Yosemite at the start, but the more I use it the more I realise just how slower it is compared to Mavericks.

I'm currently using Mavericks on an external drive, and really contemplating installing it again as my main OS.

I will miss SMS Forwarding though, but i can live without that.

 

[sharon22]

I'm currently using Mavericks on an external drive, and really contemplating installing it again as my main OS.

Switch back NOW, before you "get too far" into Yosemite.

There comes a point where you'll have "too much into" Yosemite, and, well, then you'll be stuck there.

Do it now.

And, remember, you can ALWAYS downgrade to Yosemite in the future.

 

[Traverse]

Downgrading to Yosemite was the worst day of my life.

You are very fortunate.

Upgrading back to Mavericks was the happiest day of my life.

That's kind of sad.

---------

I have had no issues on Yosemite, but am still thinking of going back to Mavericks. I don't like all these annual updates and just want to stay stable on one system for a little while. Yosemite three big things for me are:

-SMS Relay: will be sorely missed
-iCloud Drive: since I'm using it on iOS 8 it will be a bit of a hassle, but has been a disappointment and I'll just use OneDrive.
-Notification Center: useless in Mavericks, nice in Yosemite.

----------

I'm currently using Mavericks on an external drive, and really contemplating installing it again as my main OS.

Could you reply here (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1816793/) and tell me if that is the proper way to do this? Thanks!

 

[BenTrovato]

I kept Mavericks on my desktop for no reason other than I still kinda like it. Yosemite on the rMBP just looks so much better than Mavericks does on the retina screen though so the laptop is upgraded but it doesn't run slightly slower than it did with Mav

 

[HyperZboy]

MY LATEST BUG REPORT ON YOSEMITE FROM MY MAC PRO...
This is like a damned if you do damned if you don’t.
Connecting an iPhone 5s kills Bluetooth. Mouse gone.
Reporting this via the program kills Ethernet & WIFI.
Connect another Mac via Firewire and EVERYTHING IS GONE!
Do you like have monkeys throwing paint at a wall or something writing this code? SERIOUSLY!
HOW CAN YOU NOT FIX THIS PROBLEM APPLE ???
I’m going to have to reset my router just to send this report because the Feedback Assistant is so buggy.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

All true! And easily reproduced too. :-( UGH!

 

[ZipZilla]

-Notification Center: useless in Mavericks, nice in Yosemite.

Because of the loss of the widgets? I don't think it's that big of a difference. At least I can launch the calculator in Mavericks instantly, rather than the 5 bounces it takes in Yosemite.

Yosemite is not ready and is slower than molasses. It's optimized to sell new computers with retina screens and is a sales tool to enforce forced obsolescence.

 

[Traverse]

Because of the loss of the widgets? I don't think it's that big of a difference. At least I can launch the calculator in Mavericks instantly, rather than the 5 bounces it takes in Yosemite.

Yosemite is not ready and is slower than molasses. It's optimized to sell new computers with retina screens and is a sales tool to enforce forced obsolescence.

Not third party widgets, but I like have native stock and weather apps right there. I accomplished the same thing with dashboard or I could just use my phone, but I like it. Still, that isn't enough of a reason to remain on Yosemite. I don't know if I'll switch back to Mavericks or not. Yosemite has run very smoothly on my Iris Pro MacBook Pro.

 

[sjinsjca]

Yosemite has run very smoothly on my Iris Pro MacBook Pro.

Yosemite runs like a hose here on my recent 2014 rMBP. I'm truly puzzled at all the hate and naysaying. For me, Yosemite has been a very nice upgrade in terms of smoothness, stability, speed and features. I liked Mavericks quite a lot too, but Yosemite is better on my machine.

Clearly "your mileage may differ" but the key question is why. I pound my machine, with multiple virtual machines running simultaneously along with Safari with many tabs open, Mail, Scrivener, etc., not to mention constant international travel, so my good experience can't be because the machine is loafing.

Did y'all try a clean install? I simply upgraded in-place, and that worked fine, but who knows, a clean install could be worth the hassle. On the other hand, if you're happy with Mavericks and don't miss Yosemite's airy feel and great new features, that's fine too.

And please stop with the "Windows 8" stuff. Please stop. Anyone who has used that abortion of an operating system will be sensitive to the horror.

UPDATE: Actually, just remembered I did have trouble with one of my machines being slow after the upgrade, until I upgraded Dropbox to the latest rev. That fixed all problems. So the first thing to do is ensure all your software is up to date, especially stuff that runs 24/7 like Dropbox.

 

[Traverse]

Yosemite runs like a hose here on my recent 2014 rMBP. I'm truly puzzled at all the hate and naysaying. For me, Yosemite has been a very nice upgrade in terms of smoothness, stability, speed and features. I liked Mavericks quite a lot too, but Yosemite is better on my machine.

Clearly "your mileage may differ" but the key question is why. I pound my machine, with multiple virtual machines running simultaneously along with Safari with many tabs open, Mail, Scrivener, etc., not to mention constant international travel, so my good experience can't be because the machine is loafing.

Yeah I just did an upgrade as well. I run Windows 8 VM, Safari, Scrivener, Mail, Chrome, Itunes, etc. and my system runs fine.

Yosemite does use more memory than Mavericks, but I haven't noticied any decreased performance.

 

[kolax]

Yosemite runs very well, if not better than Mavericks did on my early 2011 MacBook Pro.

Are you sure Spotlight wasn't reindexing your hard drive? Also, how much memory do you have?

 

[sjinsjca]

Yosemite does use more memory than Mavericks, but I haven't noticied any decreased performance.

A better way to phrase that would be to say it does a better job of not leaving RAM idle.

RAM that's unused is RAM that's not caching code or data to make your applications fly. In other words: using more RAM can be a good thing.

 

[Traverse]

A better way to phrase that would be to say it does a better job of not leaving RAM idle.

RAM that's unused is RAM that's not caching code or data to make your applications fly. In other words: using more RAM can be a good thing.

I realize that. For me Yosemite uses more RAM than Mavericks. If your system uses so much RAM that you run out then you can have a negative performance hit. I have not experienced that in Yosemite.

 

[ZipZilla]

Yosemite does use more memory than Mavericks, but I haven't noticied any decreased performance.

I just have 4GB of RAM and Yosemite is terrible whereas Mavericks flies. I will eventually max out the RAM.

 

[sharon22]

Zip, that's an interesting thing you just brought up. I wonder if the "stutteriness/jerkiness" I experienced when downgrading to Yosemite was due to not enough RAM? I have 4GB of RAM.

Being the "scientific type," I did go into my Activity Monitor (while using Yosemite), and looked to see if my Mac was low on RAM (using the slower hard drive paging system), and it was not. However, I just wonder if *even though* the machine is not SHOWING it's outta RAM, that more ram might make it smoother?

Anyway, like you, I just love the way Mavericks looks, and I dislike Yosemite. That's kinda worrisome, because the entire future of Macs starts with Yosemite, and we'll all have to move to the next operating system at some point

 

[ZipZilla]

Zip, that's an interesting thing you just brought up. I wonder if the "stutteriness/jerkiness" I experienced when downgrading to Yosemite was due to not enough RAM? I have 4GB of RAM.

Being the "scientific type," I did go into my Activity Monitor (while using Yosemite), and looked to see if my Mac was low on RAM (using the slower hard drive paging system), and it was not. However, I just wonder if *even though* the machine is not SHOWING it's outta RAM, that more ram might make it smoother?

Anyway, like you, I just love the way Mavericks looks, and I dislike Yosemite. That's kinda worrisome, because the entire future of Macs starts with Yosemite, and we'll all have to move to the next operating system at some point

I am sure it's the RAM. Everything I am reading says Yosemite is a RAM hog. I will maybe eventually upgrade when I get more RAM and when Yosemite gets up to 10.10.5 and is refined and exits the beta testing phase.

 

[kolax]

I am sure it's the RAM. Everything I am reading says Yosemite is a RAM hog. I will maybe eventually upgrade when I get more RAM and when Yosemite gets up to 10.10.5 and is refined and exits the beta testing phase.

I think it's people misinterpreting what the memory usage actually means on a Mac, because it's not a direct comparison of memory usage to a Windows machine. I have 8GB of RAM, and look how much is being 'used'.

OS X releases RAM space as it is needed, so 'used' doesn't translate to 'unavailable' - it's quicker to keep it inactive in RAM than to have to re-read it all from disk.

Check what your swap usage is, if it's low, then RAM isn't an issue. It's most likely poorly optimised graphics drivers that should hopefully improve with OS X 10.10.1+.

 

[Traverse]

Listen to killamite.

Before Mavericks, I used Activity Monitor and it was more "literal," meaning that when it said "7.99 of 8GB Used" I was out of memory and my system would slow way down.

Starting with Mavericks, OS X started utilizing more physical RAM, but managed it much more intelligently in a way that is far more invisible to the user. Don't look at "free" or "available", look at pressure. If your pressure is low than you're slow down isn't from RAM even if all the RAM is used.

Example: my old Mac had 8GB of RAM and it would slow down when under load with VMs on Mountain Lion. With Mavericks, my system used 7.99 out 8, but I had no slowdown. Now I have a rMBP with 16GB and on average Yosemite uses more RAM doing the same tasks, but my pressure remains low and I have not experienced any slowdown.

The only parts of Yosemite that aren't smooth are occasional UI glitches such as those in the finder.

 

[Traverse]

I liked Yosemite at the start, but the more I use it the more I realise just how slower it is compared to Mavericks.

I'm currently using Mavericks on an external drive, and really contemplating installing it again as my main OS.

I will miss SMS Forwarding though, but i can live without that.

The issue for me is that Yosemite is a dividing update, just as Lion was. Lion was the iCloud schism between iOS and OS X. Yosemite is the schism between the old and new iCloud.

It's not required, but makes a difference. I am at a point now where I just want a stable OS that consistently works with as few bugs as possible. I don't know why, but after a few years of being on the bleeding edge I'm just tired. I wanted Mavericks to be my OS for a while, but Yosemite is needed for further features. I like both UI's for different reasons.

I'd sorely miss SMS relay, but would live.
I can use iCloud Drive (rarely used now) through Safari, though that's a bit clunky.
I like the new Notification Center..
I keep jumping back and forth.

----------

Also, Yosemite just doesn't seem as professional to me. Now seems like an OS for the general masses, not professionals, which I guess is what OS X has become.

 

[Traverse]

I finally decided to return to Mavericks.

Restored Mavericks, restored my applications and files, enabled FileVault, and made an encrypted Time Machine backup in 5 hours.

I'm much happier now. I do miss some things about Yosemite (mainly SMS Relay), but I'm back in familiar territory.

 

[ColdShadow]

Brand new (2 days old) Retina Macbook pro,it came with Mavricks.I installed Yosemite (clean install),and regret it.
Didn't like the UI,it just didn't feel like OSX anymore,ugly icons..
and slower loading time.
I am downgrade (upgrade) ing back to Mavricks via internet recovery tool while I'm typing this on iPad.
I will not be using this operating system.I just don't like it.

The only things I will miss will be Ability to send/receive calls and SMS.

 

[Traverse]

Brand new (2 days old) Retina Macbook pro,it came with Mavricks.I installed Yosemite (clean install),and regret it.
Didn't like the UI,it just didn't feel like OSX anymore,ugly icons..
and slower loading time.
I am downgrade (upgrade) ing back to Mavricks via internet recovery tool while I'm typing this on iPad.
I will not be using this operating system.I just don't like it.

The only things I will miss will be Ability to send/receive calls and SMS.

Once you do, and if you enable FileVault, can you reply here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1818849/

I'm trying to see I have an issue.

 

[435713]

Also reverted back to Mavericks twice now. 1st Yosemite attempt was only an hour and I was digested by it. Tried again and said I would give it a week. Less than a day was already back to Mavericks. Probably the last good looking OSX from what I can tell. Ive is horrible at GUI design.