Mavericks

[clightfield24]

I just spent 4 hours uploading pictures and syncing iTunes stuff and I downloaded mavericks. I hit install and it restart it and it says it's installing Mac OS X.. Did I just lose everything?

 

[maflynn]

No Mavericks upgrades your computer, it does not do a clean install. You data is safe.

You should always have a backup of your data however just because bad stuff occurs

 

[AndyK]

If you want to do a clean install you can make a bootable OS X USB drive and use that to do a fresh install.

Otherwise, the install you did is more of an "upgrade" on top of your old version of OS X, which leaves all your personal stuff / apps in place.