30 years of writing compilers and operating systems I have never seen a hog like Mavericks -- well, maybe out Microsoft, but that is to be expected.
I seriously question why I "upgraded" to Mavericks. In fact, the last serious desktop o/s from Apple was Snow Leopard which happens to be my favorite animal. Since then I have seen Apple consistently pump out "Vistas" like M$.
Sorry, man but there is not excuse for eating almost 8 GB of my memory on a MBP just for kernel processes. That's a BUG, not a feature. Sad, since Apple used to do a great job of memory management until they took the word "Computers" from the company name.
I know you kids will have a lot to say about this, but empirically speaking is your system slower?
Marty
ps) the keep working guys, my Social Security check needs you 🙂
Interesting how you mention the MS comparison, as since updating to Mavericks, my 2011 2.7 GHz 12 GB iMac has been reminding me more and more of my last Windows machine. Mainly, it has been the inexplicable delays and slowness compared to performance under 10.6.8. I don't have any detailed data, with the exception of start up times. I used to brag to my friends about the lightning-fast boot up times on my iMac, as their Windows machines wallowed in mind-numbing and mystifying boot up and shut down delays. I loved to show them how I could hit the power button and be internet connected in 34 seconds, and shut down completely and powered off in 5 seconds. Consistently. My startup time is approaching two minutes now, and while I understand 2 minutes isn't the impossibly long time that I used to experience in Windows, it is clearly a performance downgrade. Same with shutting down. It now takes longer, and for no apparent advantage to the user. Those are the only performance metrics I have measured. In general, the overall speed of my iMac has grown sluggish, with many, many more "beach ball" delays than before. I would say that all apps take longer to start. IPhoto and iMovie absolutely take longer to start. It used to be, click, start, and boom, I'm working. Now it is more like click, spinning beach ball, opening screen, go grab a coffee, come back, thumbnails loading, hold on a sec, here we go, almost ready, nowwwww, go ahead. It is back to that old feeling that there are all these unknown processes running in the background that I don't have control over, or easy access to observe.
The reduction in speed on my wife's '09 MBP is even more pronounced. Even tasks as mundane as opening a
third (*gasp*) tab in Safari are exercises in patience.
While I still don't dislike using my iMac, the bloom is way off the rose with it, especially under Mavericks. It is undoubtedly more lethargic with 12GB RAM and Mavericks than it was with 4GB RAM and Snow Leopard.
