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Is There A Compelling Reason to Upgrade to 10.9?

Huntn

Huntn

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
May 5, 2008
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The Misty Mountains
I'm running 10.8 on a 2011 MBP (sig), I'm reminded every week or so that Mavericks is a free upgrade. As it is with 4GB RAM and lots of spinning beach balls, I'm wondering if Mavericks has more or less overhead than it's predecessor. And is there something compelling I'm missing out on? And any incompatibilities I'm missing out on? ;)

Thanks!
 
It's enhanced memory management would be a benefit to your 4gb Mac.

If there's nothing in the advertised 200 new features then I'd hold off until the apps you need to run require it.

Its been a stable fast OS for me, but YMMV
 
To me at this point there is a compelling reason NOT to upgrade to Mavericks. I am going to wait until a few more point releases to give the new os a chance to mature a little before jumping to it. Everything that I hear is that it is still too buggy at this point. This is also the reason that I never buy a mac with a newly-released os that can't be reverted; I would rather buy before the new os is released so that I have a choice.

Yes I have beach balls a lot too on 10.8 (new base i7 mini) but will be upgrading my memory next week.
 
maflynn said:
It's enhanced memory management would be a benefit to your 4gb Mac.

If there's nothing in the advertised 200 new features then I'd hold off until the apps you need to run require it.

Its been a stable fast OS for me, but YMMV
Click to expand...

Thanks for your highly useful post.

I used the link, along with your comment about it's stability to make my decision to upgrade.

Cheers :)
 
so ridiculous, people who make 'absolute' statements: "mavericks sucks", for example.. really, for many, 10.9 is a great OS, for others, not so great.

backup everything, then...try it. i can guarantee that you'll be happier...or not.
:cool:
 
I'd hold out until 10.9.2 is released, as I hear 10.9.2 solves many of the small/annoying bugs in Mavericks. We'll wait and see how it goes upon release, though, whenever it is released.

Stick with ML for now.
 
KoolAid-Drink said:
I'd hold out until 10.9.2 is released, as I hear 10.9.2 solves many of the small/annoying bugs in Mavericks. We'll wait and see how it goes upon release, though, whenever it is released.

Stick with ML for now.
Click to expand...

sure, and 10.9.3 will fix bugs up to 10.9.2. etc. ETC ad infinitum...:D
 
For me, the two big things weren't visible features, but extended battery life (for some users depending on battery life and computer model by quite a bit, an hour or so) and the improved memory management that could function like an extra 1-2 GB or so if you already have 8 GB.
 
Northgrove said:
For me, the two big things weren't visible features, but extended battery life (for some users depending on battery life and computer model by quite a bit, an hour or so) and the improved memory management that could function like an extra 1-2 GB or so if you already have 8 GB.
Click to expand...

Indeed, these are the things that made me upgrade from Snow Leopard. My battery lasts even more than it lasted on SL. That's impressive. And it functions more or less at the same speed with SL, thanks to its memory management.
 
Huntn said:
Is There A Compelling Reason to Upgrade to 10.9?
Click to expand...
Newest drivers. Compatibility with newer hardware (Thunderbolt, USB 3.0 devices). Apple used the newest compilers for all code in OS X. Potential upgraded parallel processing APIs (GCD, File I/O, and so on). And so on...

I do not trust anything < 10.x.4. So i will wait for 10.9.4.

And yes, i used OS X 10.6.0 - 10.6.6, because i had no choice with my 17" Mid-2009 MBP. Thank god, my 17" Early-2011 MBP (16 GB, no SSD @ the moment) came with Mac OS X 10.6.7 (grey disks).

Btw, thanks for the interesting question.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
Newest drivers. Compatibility with newer hardware (Thunderbolt, USB 3.0 devices). Apple used the newest compilers for all code in OS X. Potential upgraded parallel processing APIs (GCD, File I/O, and so on). And so on...

I do not trust anything < 10.x.4. So i will wait for 10.9.4.

And yes, i used OS X 10.6.0 - 10.6.6, because i had no choice with my 17" Mid-2009 MBP. Thank god, my 17" Early-2011 MBP (16 GB, no SSD @ the moment) came with Mac OS X 10.6.7 (grey disks).

Btw, thanks for the interesting question.
Click to expand...

Thank you for answering. How about overhead, higher, lower, or the same? I assume newer drivers means better performance somehow.
 
I'm glad I upgraded. I did have an iCloud problem that was affecting apps that use iCloud but it appears I've fixed that. So I'm happy with the performance on both my rMBP and my 2008 iMac. Worth the update as far as I'm concerned.
 
It depends on what you use.

Waiting has costs too. Some stuff didn't get "fixed" in 10.8 and is better in 10.9 (in my case, multiple displays, desktops and full screen mode).

Some stuff is worse. Mail and gmail still hate one another.

Overall I'd say it's one of Apple's most six-of-one type upgrades, which is fine.

Just depends which parts are most important to your computer use. Overall I'd say that the basic system stuff is faster and more efficient, although I certainly can't point to benchmarks.
 
Performance with 4GB RAM on 10.9 is better than under 10.8. See http://www.apple.com/osx/advanced-technologies/ - specifically the "Compressed Memory" section.

There are some real gems in the 200 new features - multi-monitor support is fantastic, including the ability to use Apple TV as an external display. Battery life is improved with App Nap. Safari 7 performance is great.

Main reason not to upgrade: If you use 3rd party hardware or software, check with the manufacturers for compatibility issues before pulling the trigger.
 
10.9 has been extremely stable for me, at least on my 2013 Mini (i7) and 2009 MacPro. All my apps, even "vintage" ones like Quicken 2007, Bias Peak Pro and CS5 work great. The only gotcha I've experienced is flaky Firewire support: drives and audio interfaces work fine but none of my FW drives will spin down via Energy Saver or ejecting. I switched them all to S L O W USB to avoid overheating. No issues with my old MOTU Ultralite FW audio interface. If you don't use FW I can't think of any reasons not to upgrade.
 
If you have a desperate reason to want old apps you can't afford to update yet to no longer work, long for the loss of saved searches in your Finder toolbar and desperately want to have features you never though you needed before in exchange for losing functionality you take for granted. Upgrade immediately.
 
I'm on 4GB and am happy (mini c2d 2.0 GHz). Initially there was a lot of beachballing, which others have reported too, and I thought I had made a big mistake. However after 24 hrs, this had gone and the system has settled down. It has been as stable as it has ever been. I haven't noticed any additional features at all, if I am honest, except that memory appears to be handled differently. But as I say, this appears to be nothing to worry about, everything is stable.
 
I have a 2011 MBP 17" and Mavericks runs extremely well. I do have 8GB RAM and do not have the beach ball issue many have..

In fact I really have no complaints and my mac performs far better than it has since I bought it.
 
[[ Is There A Compelling Reason to Upgrade to 10.9? ]]

Not really.

Only do it if you want to.

If your current OS and apps are running well, and you don't NEED to upgrade, you can stay where you are for now...
 
Fishrrman said:
[[ Is There A Compelling Reason to Upgrade to 10.9? ]]

Not really.

Only do it if you want to.

If your current OS and apps are running well, and you don't NEED to upgrade, you can stay where you are for now...
Click to expand...

you could make that statement at any time...and be running 10.4, or 10.3, photoshop cs2. etc.

sort-of a non-statement, really...:rolleyes:
 
I bit the bullet and upgraded to 10.9. My motivation was the hope of better memory management and less spinning beach balls.

So far so good, my Windows 7 Bootcamp partition is still functional. I should of timed my old start up time to compare to my new start up time but I did not. The MacOS still takes quite a while to start up compared to Windows. As I said before, I have 3 external hard drives hooked to my 2011 MBP for a total of 8 partitions. I have no idea what impact this has on the OS. I'm going to use it for a couple of days before I report back on the Spinning Beach Ball (SBB) situation. Of note I did see a couple of beach balls on start up with the new OS...

It's looks like this model, 2011, 15", 2.2 Ghz intel Core i7 (model:MacBookPro8,2) can have memory added to it. I'll have to check it and see if there is access for RAM upgrades. If possible, but not 100% confirmed, I think this would correct the SBB issue. I'm not sure if this is a unibody model, but does that have an impact on RAM upgrades? Thanks!

Update: The answer is that "do it yourself" Ram upgrades are possible on this model. Looks like this video and this memory is what I want. :D

Question: After MacOS updates, are temp/installer file automatically flushed? If not, where can they be found?
 
Last edited:
Huntn said:
I'm running 10.8 on a 2011 MBP (sig), I'm reminded every week or so that Mavericks is a free upgrade. As it is with 4GB RAM and lots of spinning beach balls, I'm wondering if Mavericks has more or less overhead than it's predecessor. And is there something compelling I'm missing out on? And any incompatibilities I'm missing out on? ;)

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Not yet full of bugs and slowness wait until fifth release its the new apple policy.
 
Huntn said:
Question: After MacOS updates, are temp/installer file automatically flushed? If not, where can they be found?
Click to expand...

Yep... the installer is deleted and gone at the end of the install. You need to either copy it out of the Applications folder before the update or redownload.
 
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