Boot time in OSX 10.9?

That person probably has a SSD in their laptop so they are use to the fast speed. It makes a big difference to have one, you will notice the quickness.

 

Definitely. Since adding an SSD my 2010 MBPro 13 boots in about 15 seconds.

 

That was about how long mine took to boot before installing a SSD. It now takes about 15-20 seconds.

 

I had a unibody MBP with a 5400rpm drive and 10.9 installed and that's about what I was getting also.

You could try some disk cleaning with a program called Onyx. Might help a bit.

 

On a 7200 rpm drive, it took my Mac a full 1 minute 23 seconds just to start up and log in. And after logging in, I had to wait another minute before I could start opening apps smoothly.

On a Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD, it booted in just 11 seconds. And immediately after login, I could open apps straight away without delays.

 

My 2011 13" MacBook Pro took 50s-60s to boot with its original HD (5200rpm, back then on 10.8).
It now takes 8s on SSD (Crucial M4 256GB on 10.8 and 10.9).

Do you have lots of startup items?

 

I just measured the time my late 2011 MBP (running Mavericks) takes to boot up. It took 37 seconds. My MBP has a normal HDD.

 

I did a clean installation when I upgraded to Mavericks. I'm pretty selective when it comes to installing software. I keep only a set of apps that I frequently use. I keep an eye on LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons folders to know what programs are having startup components and try to avoid them. Currently Flash player and the Java from Oracle are the only non-Apple software installed on my computer that has put stuff into those folders.

I have folder action setup for LaunchAgets and LaunchDaemons so I get an alert if a newly installing software puts something into those folders.

 

New rMBP 15" with tons loading at boot loads in 9 seconds