My MacBook Pro is Useless Thanks to Mavericks

[Piercussion]

Hello, All.

Yesterday morning I woke and booted up my shiny MacBook Pro to find something very odd happening. It seemed that every action I performed took 20+ seconds to be executed. I had been experiencing other anomalies from the time I upgraded to Mavericks. Has Apple created a non-stable OS or perhaps something else?

It didn't take long for me to decide to call Apple Technical Support on this. I knew something wasn't right and needed a resolution quickly. Luckily, I was connected to a knowledgeable support representative in Austin, TX. After several hours of questions and diagnostics he became intrigued as to the problems I was experiencing.

The preliminary diagnosis was a running, hidden process taking up a humongous amount of resources. The Apple rep was stunned and bewildered. They bombarded me with tasks to produce various diagnostic logs and even sent me the Capture Data app, which has never been able to successfully finish.

Has anyone else had similar experiences using Mavericks?

 

[Shrink]

Hello, All.

Yesterday morning I woke and booted up my shiny MacBook Pro to find something very odd happening. It seemed that every action I performed took 20+ seconds to be executed. I had been experiencing other anomalies from the time I upgraded to Mavericks. Has Apple created a non-stable OS or perhaps something else?

It didn't take long for me to decide to call Apple Technical Support on this. I knew something wasn't right and needed a resolution quickly. Luckily, I was connected to a knowledgeable support representative in Austin, TX. After several hours of questions and diagnostics he became intrigued as to the problems I was experiencing.

The preliminary diagnosis was a running, hidden process taking up a humongous amount of resources. The Apple rep was stunned and bewildered. They bombarded me with tasks to produce various diagnostic logs and even sent me the Capture Data app, which has never been able to successfully finish.

Has anyone else had similar experiences using Mavericks?

Nope...works pretty well for me. Aside from some problems with Reminders (not really an ELE), it's working fine.

 

[HenryDJP]

No, mine has been fine. Could use a software update though but everything is fine. You should do a full reformat. You may have some corrupt files from various softwares that happened during the upgrade or incompatible files from the previous OS.

 

[sjinsjca]

There's clearly something wrong. Mavericks is a speed demon. Whatever is happening to your machine is not because of Mavericks.

I'd be interested in seeing a screen-shot of what Activity Monitor tells you is sucking up CPU cycles and disk access. So odd.

 

[Piercussion]

If indeed there are corrupt files on my Mac then an OS should be robust enough to handle these appropriately rather than rendering my Mac useless. I did not see this until after upgrading to Mavericks.

Also, how am I supposed to know where the corrupt files are? After hours of diagnostics nothing showed up.

 

[madsci954]

No OS is perfect, so it can run into problems. If you have a backup, I'd do a clean install at this point, and run it with none of your files to see if things improve. Then migrate your files back after you know everything is stable.

 

[Piercussion]

No OS is perfect, so it can run into problems. If you have a backup, I'd do a clean install at this point, and run it with none of your files to see if things improve. Then migrate your files back after you know everything is stable.

Thanks, madsci. I plan on doing that. I've used computers for 36 years and have never experienced this type of problem.

 

[aggri1]

I am also having a horrid time with Mavericks, on a 2011 MacBook Pro. In my case, it is worst when an external USB drive is connected.

There is quite a lot of dicussion on the 'net about Mavericks-related performance issues.

 

[LV426]

If indeed there are corrupt files on my Mac then an OS should be robust enough to handle these appropriately rather than rendering my Mac useless. I did not see this until after upgrading to Mavericks.

Also, how am I supposed to know where the corrupt files are? After hours of diagnostics nothing showed up.

That's just wishful thinking. There are infinitely many ways that things can go wrong, and countless corner cases. What you have is a bit of bad luck. Just imagine the following hypothetical trivial scenario: you have an app that checks for the weather every so often, the rate being defined by an entry in a configuration file. The file gets corrupted (through some general fault or maybe even by the app itself), and the app then polls the internet for data every 5 milliseconds. Your computer will run like a dog. How's Mavericks supposed to be a magic bullet to solve that kind of issue? It can't.

 

[Piercussion]

That's just wishful thinking. There are infinitely many ways that things can go wrong, and countless corner cases. What you have is a bit of bad luck. Just imagine the following hypothetical trivial scenario: you have an app that checks for the weather every so often, the rate being defined by an entry in a configuration file. The file gets corrupted (through some general fault or maybe even by the app itself), and the app then polls the internet for data every 5 milliseconds. Your computer will run like a dog. How's Mavericks supposed to be a magic bullet to solve that kind of issue? It can't.

i appreciate the reply, LV.

I am conceptualizing your scenario...

Like I said...I've been using computers for 36 years and have never had this kind of problem.

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BTW, I completely formatted my Mac drive and have installed Mavericks straight out of the box. So far it's running verrrrrrrrrrrryyyy smoooooothlllllly.

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It really is a shame that a user has to rebuild their Mac to work with a previous OS version...

 

[pastrychef]

I haven't done a clean install since about 2006 when I made the transition from PowerPC to Intel, all I have done is upgrade from one version to the next along the way, and Mavericks has been fantastic on my Mac.

 

[Gochugogi]

I installed 10.9 on my 2013 Mini, 2009 Mac Pro and 2007 iMac during the first few days of the release. Probably not smart to do all three the first week but Mavericks has been an extremely stable, compatible and fast OS for the Mini and Mac Pro. The iMac suffered through Spotlight indexing and after that was okay--no delays or instability.

I had Carbon Copy Cloner dups of my HD in case it all went to crap but everything turned out fine. I wouldn't do an OS upgrade without a clone to reinstall. My only glitch is my FW drives won't sleep so I switched them to USB and they sleep fine. Hopefully Apple will fix the FW sleep bug in 10.91...

 

[old-wiz]

I have a 2008 24" iMac, currently running Mavericks, never did a clean install, and it still runs fine. No slowdowns. However, I don't add any 3rd party system extensions since they tend to create a mess. My iMac has 4 gb ram and 320 gb HDD. I don't remember what it shipped with but I've upgraded to Snow Leopard, then Lion, then Mountain Lion, then Mavericks and all have been upgrade installs.

 

[LV426]

Like I said...I've been using computers for 36 years and have never had this kind of problem.

A run of good luck, I'd say.

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It really is a shame that a user has to rebuild their Mac to work with a previous OS version...

The overwhelming majority of users have upgraded without issue, so the above statement is not generally true.

Like I said before, you got unlucky, for whatever reason.

 

[rantanplan41]

Me too

Mavericks has also made ALL my Macs useless.

My iMac, my two MacBooks Pro and my Mac mini. All of them take 20+ secs to run any task. When I restart the machine it gets a bit better, but just a few minutes using it, the coloured ball shows, and shows, and shows itself all the time.

So, it's not bad luck... There is certainly a big deal of a problem. And, I tried to all, including clean installs.

Back to Mountain Lion is my last resource...

 

[Piercussion]

Have you done all of the following troubleshooting steps:

1. Repair disk permissions
2. Repair disk using Disk Utility (command+R) then choose Disk Utility
3. Clear ~/Library/Cache files
4. Start in Safe Mode then shutdown
5. Reset NVRAM and PRAM - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

 

[Jimmy James]

It runs nicely on my 2007. I think you have a particular issue.

 

[Piercussion]

The bottom line is that there are probably literally hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of people that have problems with Mavericks and think it is a sucky OS. Those of you that don't have problems...Great! But for those of us who it has affected have a right to complain. Shame on Apple and I'm pissed! There is a new major release coming out soon. Hopefully it will address some of the main problems.

 

[padapada]

There may be a solution in the "mavericks: slow finder/beachball" thread

 

[RolyPolyBird]

Has anyone else had similar experiences using Mavericks?

When you talk about hidden processes does it show up as kernel task in activity monitor? If so google "kernel task 100%" in google, many of us have the same problem. I am betting this is why its taken so long for the latest update to be released.

I am not sure this is your problem, but many of us have it and it makes the computer nearly unusable. For me a fix is to put my macbook to sleep then out of sleep and that usually gives me at least 30 minutes of use before I must repeat. Sometimes sleep and un-sleep does not work and a restart also doesn't work as the Macbook can't close the process, so in those cases I do a forced restart. No issues before updating to Mavericks. This is affecting all sorts of hardware, there are already some epic threads on the apple support forums about it, nobody has come up with a permanent fix. The theory is it has something to do with how Mavericks is handling audio.

I have tried everything from zeroing the drive, doing all the hardware resets, not plugging anything but the power cable into the macbook, and it still returns to the same problems.

- Mac user since the late 80's and disappointed at Apple's ****ty communication on such issues. This has become a pattern of how Apple treats its customers. If it wasn't for the learning curb, investment I have made into the OS and apps I love I would switch to Linux.

edit: Some users have mentioned that keeping the audio in and out ports free takes the issue away, but for many (including myself) it doesn't help. Its confirmed to be affecting MacBooks, Macbook Pros, iMacs and Mac Minis of various generations.

I am also disappointed that none of the Mac news sites covered this, its affecting a lot of people.

 

[gglittle]

The bottom line is that there are probably literally hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of people that have problems with Mavericks and think it is a sucky OS. Those of you that don't have problems...Great! But for those of us who it has affected have a right to complain. Shame on Apple and I'm pissed! There is a new major release coming out soon. Hopefully it will address some of the main problems.

More than likely your statistics are reversed. " ... literally hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of people that have NO problems ... ", while the few with problems voice their problems on MacRumors or other forums.

Three Macs here are running 10.9.1 beta 6 with no issues. The same with 10.9.

 

[Piercussion]

Do a Google search on Mavericks problems, Fanboys

All you Fanboys need to do a Google search on Mavericks problems. Yes, I have a MacBook Pro with Mavericks and can join the other thousands of Mac users that thinks Mavericks sucks. I've been a PC user more of my life than a Mac user. Maybe that's your problem. Please...if you intend to sit here and defend Mavericks you need to wake up and get out of denial. Fanboys, no need to reply to my post.

Piercussion

 

[dmccloud]

All you Fanboys need to do a Google search on Mavericks problems. Yes, I have a MacBook Pro with Mavericks and can join the other thousands of Mac users that thinks Mavericks sucks. I've been a PC user more of my life than a Mac user. Maybe that's your problem. Please...if you intend to sit here and defend Mavericks you need to wake up and get out of denial. Fanboys, no need to reply to my post.

Piercussion

First of all, what gives you the right to talk down to people who disagree with you and deride them as "fanboys?" The fact of the matter is that in the Mac userbase AS A WHOLE, the response to Mavericks has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, Apple's satisfaction and reliability ratings INCREASED in the most recent PC World Customer Satisfaction Survey. Protip - all you'll find via Google are complaints because NOBODY STARTS THREADS TO BRAG ABOUT HOW GREAT THINGS ARE. And before you start calling me a "fanboy" too - I've been using computers for 32 years now, mostly on the Windows side. But the Mac platform is far more stable and reliable than anything Microsoft has thrown out there since DOS 6.0.

The moment you assume that anyone defending Mavericks is in denial, you lose all credibility because you're basically saying "I know everything and you don't." You're also saying you don't want to be called out for your inaccurate misrepresentations of the general opinion of Mavericks when you say "no need to reply to my post.", which indicates you're unwilling to defend yourself beyond insulting those who disagree with you.

 

[groove-agent]

worst OSX Ever

Been using OSX since 10.3 - Mavericks is the buggiest OSX ever. I have a late 2013 MBPc and it runs noticeably slower. Tried a fresh install - same thing. Tried mountain lion again and it ran smooth and peppy as it should. it makes my new computer run as sluggish as the 6 year old MBP it replaced. SHAMEFUL.

I hate how Apple makes you upgrade to Mavericks in order to get the iLife and iWork updates. LAME. I'd stay with Mountain lion if I could - for now I have to put up with the sluggishness to get the features and updated software. I wonder if it has to do with the compressed memory and running software that isn't optimized for it.

Isn't Mavericks a beach in California? Maybe that's why the OS is full of beach balls?!?

 

[SIGNATURE-R]

Bad Mavericks mac

If you have Apple Care have them Swap out your Laptop for a new one. I think you might have just brought a bad machine. Its VERY RARE with apple but it not impossible.... Processor might have issues with the upgrade... I upgraded my machine with no major issues I had Safari popup issues FIXED THAT. Now it's flawless. This reply is for : PIERCUSSION