On the other side of the coin, some of the people who say they are not running into any real issues may just not be bothered by something they're running in to. In my book "no real issues" is different from "nio issues". True that there are many people who are having no issues with Mavericks, but there are enough people having issues, that I advise people to make sure all their software and devices are compatible and that they should have a full backup before they upgrade just in case.
well of course, thats true to a certain extent also. and the best advice would always be to read up on it and make an educated decision based on similar setups/uses as to whether or not to upgrade. as you pointed out, what i don't see as a big deal, others might. but this is not something that ANYONE can put in universal terms, so you have to go by the quantifiable things like # of users reporting issues vs # of total users. If you limit yourself to reactions based on worse case scenarios, you are being arbitrarily cautious. Nothing will make 100% of the people happy. With reviews, you will always hear the negatives more than the positives but that doesn't mean they're the most common, or the most relevant, as you've pointed out. So here are some of my specifics so the OP can make more of an educated decision, beyond the fact that they're already confirmed for themselves on another machine that Mavericks is running fine:
I have spent an average of 8-10 hours per day on my machines since installing Mavericks on launch day. I am a motion graphics artist and video editor, using Adobe After Effects, Illustrator, Premiere and Photoshop on a daily basis, extensively. Outside of that, I have been a Mac user for about 10 years and have used Tiger, Panther, Leopard, Mountain Lion (I skipped Snow Leopard and Lion because of a late switch to an Intel Mac) and now Mavericks. Each of them have had their particular quirks, and each has had a feature that I wish Apple never got rid of. And for sure, the machine has always run most stably with the .3 and .4 iteration of each release. But that never stopped me from wanting to check out the latest and greatest features, so I upgraded to Mavericks on release, and despite a few setbacks with some After Effects plugins, and some annoying bugs in Photoshop, I still managed to keep making a living off my systems. So when it comes to the average user, who undoubtedly will be spending less time on their machine than I do, I can fully support the decision to install Mavericks. If you have any intention of staying current with technology going forward, I highly recommend you get used to being a bit more flexible with your demands for perfect software. With Wall Street and 17 year old kids calling the shots, things are only going to change more rapidly each year. If you choose not to keep up because you are scared off by the complaints, you risk making it an even harder transition to the next release. So maybe you'll be put off by a few things at first, but having an open mind will give you a much better experience in the long run than having those inevitable quirks be magnified by a predisposition.
