Downgraded from 10.9 to 10.8

[KoolAid-Drink]

No troll (promise!) but after feeling very frustrated with sluggish behavior, weird glitches, continuous beach balling with 10.9.2, I decided to just downgrade to ML. Ahhhh! It was like taking a breath of fresh air. The odd thing is, my laptop felt sluggish in general, even when booting to SL on an external HD, but the instant I removed the Mavericks partition, my laptop immediately sped up. It was really weird (because what's on one partition shouldn't affect another), but it was a relief. Plus, I was about to do an in-place install of Mavericks to hopefully repair the OS - the installer said it'd take 50 minutes! ML, on the other hand, took only 20 mins!

It's weird. I'm not usually one to advocate downgrading - I always want the best of the best, but Mavericks truly has been perplexing. I tried everything (Onyx, repair permissions, installing the combo updater vs. delta updater for 10.9.2). Sometimes the OS worked normally, but there were many moments where there was erratic behavior, sluggishness, and just oddities that was hard to put up with. I've been putting up with the OS since October, and it was getting worse and worse.

Since I've gone back to ML, so far (knock on wood!), it feels SO good to have fast system performance back, and ML has been humming along smoothly. Seriously, ML feels like the 2nd SL. I also feel good having those back:

a) Console window that remembers its positions
b) Time Machine that stays at the folder you request it go back into time - vs. Mavericks, which switches to your Home folder instead
c) Much smoother Time Machine starfield experience - Mavericks was choppy and sometimes missed windows while going back in time
d) Instantaneous WiFi connection after waking up from sleep
e) Faster performance, no weird, random lags

Don't mistake me - Mavericks DOES have potential to be a good OS. However, I think it's one of the buggiest, most sloppiest versions of OS X to be released since Panther, Leopard, and Lion, and I would prefer to wait until 10.9.3 is released to see if those issues are fixed. If no go, then I'll probably just hold out until 10.10.

Moral of this post? If you're having frustrations/issues with Mavericks, downgrade to ML if you can. There's not *that* much of a difference between ML and Mavericks, with the exception of iBooks/Maps being excluded, and some apps (iPhoto/iMovie/Aperture/FCPX/iWork) require 10.9 (the latest versions, anyway).

Curious if anyone else had similar positive experiences downgrading to SL/ML?

 

[ricede]

Mavericks has had a massive uptake ( helped probably by it being given away free ). On forums such as this, one tends to hear about all the bad experiences & not the positive sides of the coin. I do actually know people running it who are VERY happy & have few complaints. I think that there are probably plenty of them around ( quite a few of them new to macs and therefore not aware of what went before )

My experience was that i upgraded when it was released and downgraded back to Mountain Lion after 10.9.1. To me the OS just didn't seem finished & suffered from overall slowness / too many beach balls / wifi glitches etc. Nothing i have heard about 10.9.2 has made me want to try again. Possibly 10.9.3 will cure some of the stuff. All i do know is that my workflow needs stability & i wasn't getting it form Mavericks.

Its odd that every other Apple OS released, seemingly suffers from major problems. Like yourself i found it an enormous relief to return to a finely tuned OS, which to me is Mountain Lion. I am now going to wait for 10.10 ( probably the 2nd update ). In the past i have always upgraded at the new release, accepting there will be minor problems ( as with any new OS ), but in future i shall wait a while before updating. Mainly because downgrading can be a right PITA.

I notice that you have a Momentous XT HD. I read somewhere that Mavericks has been optimised for SSD's and some folk were complaining about it not working too well with normal HD's . Having an SSD already installed - that didn't really seem to help in my case.

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

I agree completely with all your points. I have a feeling something's wrong with the internal code of Mavericks, causing spordiac slowness and sluggishness. I strongly doubt Apple has intentionally made Mavericks slower on HDDs vs. SSDs as a way to "upsell" customers into buying SSD's. Apple has never intentionally made Mac software slower on older hardware, AFAIK. Even some with SSDs, as you can easily see unhappy rMBP owners attest to, have noticed weird behavior with Mavericks, even with 10.9.2 installed.

My plan is to hold out and use ML, then when 10.9.3 comes out, I'll ask and see if the issues mentioned in my OP were solved. If not, I guess I'll stick with ML until 10.10 comes out later this year (presumably). I hope 10.10 will be the next ML - it's definitely odd that every other release of OS X seems to be buggier and more rough around the edges compared to the previous 'good' release (think of this way: Leopard, bad; SL, good; Lion, bad; ML, good; Mavericks, bad; and then 10.10 = ?). I heard that developers are assigned to be working on every other OS X release - for example, the same developers who worked on Lion were also on Leopard; the same developers who created ML also were responsible for SL. Maybe that explains why, or it could just be a rumor.

My gut tells me 10.10 will be better and more refined upon release, other than the alleged flatter UI having a few .0 bugs. Could be wrong, though. What are your thoughts?

Mavericks has had a massive uptake ( helped probably by it being given away free ). On forums such as this, one tends to hear about all the bad experiences & not the positive sides of the coin. I do actually know people running it who are VERY happy & have few complaints. I think that there are probably plenty of them around ( quite a few of them new to macs and therefore not aware of what went before )

My experience was that i upgraded when it was released and downgraded back to Mountain Lion after 10.9.1. To me the OS just didn't seem finished & suffered from overall slowness / too many beach balls / wifi glitches etc. Nothing i have heard about 10.9.2 has made me want to try again. Possibly 10.9.3 will cure some of the stuff. All i do know is that my workflow needs stability & i wasn't getting it form Mavericks.

Its odd that every other Apple OS released, seemingly suffers from major problems. Like yourself i found it an enormous relief to return to a finely tuned OS, which to me is Mountain Lion. I am now going to wait for 10.10 ( probably the 2nd update ). In the past i have always upgraded at the new release, accepting there will be minor problems ( as with any new OS ), but in future i shall wait a while before updating. Mainly because downgrading can be a right PITA.

I notice that you have a Momentous XT HD. I read somewhere that Mavericks has been optimised for SSD's and some folk were complaining about it not working too well with normal HD's . Having an SSD already installed - that didn't really seem to help in my case.

 

[Gochugogi]

I didn't didn't experience spordiac slowness and sluggishness but, instead, my Mini i7 and Mac Pro (2009) felt a bit faster. Indeed it's a stable and sleek OS. However, I did suffer a bug in OS 10.9, 10.91 and now 10.92: FW drives don't spin down and sleep properly. They wouldn't spin down at all under OS 10.9 but have improved a little under 10.92: will spin down during system sleep or when ejected but not when plugged into a FW hub or when not active use. Sadly I'm stuck with USB 2 since FW turns my external drives into hotplates...