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OS X Mavericks Adoption Pushing Toward 50%

JackieInCo said:
I remember a few years back that there was a news story on this site that said that 25% of iPhone users never synced their iPhones or even upgraded the OS version. I wonder if there are Mac owners who don't know that they can update the OS. I know the last several OSX versions automatically check but do the older versions like Leopard and Snow Leopard check?
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Many of the ones I deal with in games that always have issues, are the ones that didn't even know they could upgrade the OS.

Especially for many newer games, they don't even support OSX Lion, and many of those people didn't even know about ML or Mavericks.
 
mdelvecchio said:
life -- get used to it. youll find not everything is exciting. youll also find you dont need external rumors about technology to make your life exciting or meaningful.
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LOL... you didn't need to get all grumpy to reply to my post.
I'm already excited about other matters, just that in the Mac/iOS arena, there's been no excitement in a while. Almost every news article that comes out is practically useless, worthless or boring; like a "Days of our Lives" episode.

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Kebabselector said:
For me Lion is as far as my Macbook will go.
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I'd say if your Mac can't go beyond, or at least to 4 GB RAM, don't upgrade to Mavericks.
I guess people with Macbook Air are the most affected.
 
highvoltage12v said:
The mac pro 1,1 and 2,1 can run mavericks, you need a upgraded gpu and google tiamo boot efi. there are multiple forums on here talking about how to do it. I personally have a mac pro 1,1 with an 8 core cpu upgrade (flashed to 2,1) and a gtx 650ti installed.
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I know.. thats why I said that it can run Mavericks. :)

Perhaps Apple left it out because of two reasons.

1. They are to lazy to release a 64bit boot EFI for the ROM chip on the motherboard

2. They never shipped the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 with a 64 bit compatible (e.g. no 64 bit driver) graphics card standard. The 7300MGT doesn't support a 64 bit OS. :(

They could have at least released the proper firmware update or a boot.efi like Tiamo, and make it clear that a 64 bit card would be needed. Then again they don't even support a lot of the graphics card that work with out a hitch like the ATI 5770.
 
JAQ said:
I have an old G4 Mini running Lion that I use as a file server and for the occasional Classic app. I don't browse the web much with it, but TenFourFox (Firefox fork for PPC) serves well enough when I do.
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Right, but doesn't that strike you as the kind of example that would account for a 3% share, the same as Leopard?

I have yet to hear of a reason why Lion should have the exact same share as Snow Leopard. Obviously some people will use it. My surprise is that they're both at 18%.

Both Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion were basically glorified updates to their predecessors. I'd have expected them both to have more market share than either regular Leopard or Lion.
 
Fuchal said:
Wish I could upgrade my Mac Pro 1,1 :(
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Absolutely no reason for this machine, nor many others of the Intel era, not to be able to run it.

Even the later plastic MacBooks had more than capable hardware, even if the video was on the lower end of that.

Release the proper drivers and let's get going Apple. Why is it the third party solutions work fine. They are literally putting themselves into the road where there is traffic just like the jailbreaking situation, though admittedly sometimes closing some of those holes is due to an actual security vulnerability in the case of jailbreaking.
 
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My 2 macs are too old to go beyond Leopard and Snow Leopard. Since they are mission critical in my work they stay as they are.
I upgraded my iPhone 4 to IOS7 and it has become a dog (wish I waited).
My wife has a MacBook Air running Lion and we decided to upgrade to Mavericks.
During the download I googled Mavericks issues and MS Office 2011(her version) came up as being broken on many systems.
We didn't upgrade because we didn't want to deal with that kind of nonsense any more.
Why can't they support older systems across the board like they do with iTunes?
Oh I forgot... because of the iTunes STORE!
 
I'm generally a late adopter when it comes to OS X versions, despite being very technical and generally excited about new features. I have several Macs that I use (work machine + multiple machines at home). I've got one machine that I'm running Mavericks on to test it out, but all the machines that I do any real work on are staying on Mountain Lion for the time being, including my wife's MBP.

The MBP I installed Mavericks has been rendered unusably slow after the upgrade, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to downgrade to Mountain Lion and maybe even dual-boot Linux to allow for a more lean environment. Granted, it is a pre-unibody early-08 15", with only 4GB RAM, and a 5400 RPM HDD, but it was running ML fine. Now it often takes minutes to startup apps. I'm waiting all the time for it to complete tasks so much that I can never actually accomplish anything on this laptop.

Usually my work machine is the last to get an OS X update out of all my machines. One of my coworkers upgraded to Mavericks on day one and he keeps telling me about various bugs he's experiencing (often with 3rd party software). I really could use the new multi-monitor features (using 4 displays right now), but ML works so well I don't want to mess with it.

For my home machines, staying on ML means I can't upgrade FCP X or Aperture any further, but that's ok, I'm happy with the versions I'm stuck at. I might buy a new Mac later this year which will force me into whatever the latest OS X is.

I started using Macs at 10.4. Leopard (10.5) and Mountain Lion (10.8) were the only releases that I think were worth upgrading when they were first released, and the rest needed bugs shaken out. Leopard because it was just so much better feature-wise, and I didn't have any issues with it (though it was a PPC machine that I upgraded). Mountain Lion because it was basically just Lion with bug fixes and some nice new apps, so not as much potential for breakage. Even Snow Leopard, now considered rock solid, was buggy for me and I ended up downgrading back to Leopard until the bugs were shaken out.

What's annoying is that I now periodically get notifications to upgrade to Mavericks in ML. Maybe there is a way to turn those off?
 
whooleytoo said:
For some people, there aren't many reasons to upgrade. I'm on 10.6 and very happy with it, the only feature I'd love is Airplay mirroring but my Mac doesn't support.

And every upgrade introduces risks and/or associated costs. I use Parallels a lot, and many/most OSX upgrades require a paid upgrade; so upgrading to Mavericks certainly wouldn't be free. And I don't want to risk any upgrade to Parallels since it's what I work on and can't afford much downtime if there are issues.

So maybe the problem is - older versions (such as 10.6.8) are too good to justify the risk of leaving!
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People like you are why Microsoft is in the XP crises. It doesn't matter how much you like it, you must upgrade to stay relevant. Your unwillingness to pay for upgrades is your problem. Software marches on and developers deserve to be paid for the upgrades they make to their product.
 
Stretchdcanvas said:
My 2 macs are too old to go beyond Leopard and Snow Leopard. Since they are mission critical in my work they stay as they are.
I upgraded my iPhone 4 to IOS7 and it has become a dog (wish I waited).
My wife has a MacBook Air running Lion and we decided to upgrade to Mavericks.
During the download I googled Mavericks issues and MS Office 2011(her version) came up as being broken on many systems.
We didn't upgrade because we didn't want to deal with that kind of nonsense any more.
Why can't they support older systems across the board like they do with iTunes?
Oh I forgot... because of the iTunes STORE!
Click to expand...


Even iTunes isn't fully anymore. No iRadio in 10.6.8. Laughable.
 
sualpine said:
There are these magical little fairies in your computer called "API"s and they can't suddenly appear in your old operating system.
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Read my earlier post in this thread for the other part of this comment. I've been using OS X since before it went public and have various professional certifications that indicate I know exactly what I am talking about. Thanks though. :rolleyes:

Sure they can, a 10.6.9 software update or proper hardware drivers for hardware that is perfectly capable of running the newer OS.
 
Lucky736 said:
Read my earlier post in this thread for the other part of this comment. I've been using OS X since before it went public and have various professional certifications that indicate I know exactly what I am talking about. Thanks though. :rolleyes:
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Then you'd know exactly why new features need new OS's.
 
So fragmentation, almost 60% of all users using OS that launched more than 18 months ago, over 30% on outdated unsupported (i.e. insecure) OS.

I'm also still on ML. Too risky imho to upgrade production machines.
 
thundersteele said:
So fragmentation, almost 60% of all users using OS that launched more than 18 months ago, over 30% on outdated unsupported (i.e. insecure) OS.

I'm also still on ML. Too risky imho to upgrade production machines.
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Anyone that isn't on 10.9 doesn't understand the marketwide new model for software releases. Going forward, it's a yearly thing across the board. Every year, there's a new release for iOS, Android, OS X, and Windows. None of the three companies are going to release new features to old versions when the new expectation is that you upgrade yearly. You don't like it, too bad. It's the way the whole industry evolved.
 
Understandable. Anyone with a Core 2 Duo should stick with Mountain Lion. Mavericks eats all RAM on a machine older than those with an i3 processor.

Runs awesomely on an i7, though ;)

I hope they solve all the bugs with dual screen soon!
 
attila said:
Understandable. Anyone with a Core 2 Duo should stick with Mountain Lion. Mavericks eats all RAM on a machine older than those with an i3 processor.

Runs awesomely on an i7, though ;)

I hope they solve all the bugs with dual screen soon!
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It has been proven with empirical evidence that Mavericks is better at managing RAM then Mountain Lion ever was.
Mavericks uses as much RAM as it can for performance and battery life reasons.
High RAM usage in Mavericks is expected and intended/on purpose.
Please see:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/#compressed-memory
And please stop spreading misinformation.
 
Don't forget that this is a web statistic. Browsing the web is likely to include more modern systems as this is a consumer field, not a professional field. Many workstations with older systems are not even connected to the Intenet anymore (also because of security reasons). So I guess, the older systems are still equally relevant (if not more) than the newer ones.

And just think about the fact that only in the newer versions, safari starts to reload pages automatically, hence producing more hits on webpages...

Someone said already it: Snow Leopard for life.
 
Fuchal said:
Wish I could upgrade my Mac Pro 1,1 :(
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Me too. Staying with snow for the foreseeable future. They could at least offer lion for free for the rest of us high end mac pros.

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whooleytoo said:
For some people, there aren't many reasons to upgrade. I'm on 10.6 and very happy with it, the only feature I'd love is Airplay mirroring but my Mac doesn't
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Air Server works like a champ in snow.
 
Waiting...

Update the Mini, Apple, and you will have a new Mavericks user.

Until then, 10.5 Leopard forever!
 
attila said:
Understandable. Anyone with a Core 2 Duo should stick with Mountain Lion. Mavericks eats all RAM on a machine older than those with an i3 processor.

Runs awesomely on an i7, though ;)

I hope they solve all the bugs with dual screen soon!
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It definitely does eat through RAM on older machines.

sualpine said:
It has been proven with empirical evidence that Mavericks is better at managing RAM then Mountain Lion ever was.
Mavericks uses as much RAM as it can for performance and battery life reasons.
High RAM usage in Mavericks is expected and intended/on purpose.
Please see:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/#compressed-memory
And please stop spreading misinformation.
Click to expand...

It's not misinformation. Mavericks is better at managing RAM to a certain extent as long as the machine has enough RAM and a powerful enough CPU.

That article shows that the RAM management is only good up to a point when compressing memory to half of it's size once the system's demand for RAM is met by the amount installed. Then, you have an extra 50% of your physical RAM turned into virtual memory. On "older" C2D systems, Mavericks use on basic tasks will hover around 4-5GB from what I've seen and is normal at this point for pretty much every machine. There should also be minimal "memory pressure" at this point until the physical RAM is being used.

Once the physical RAM is used and then compressed (and then the virtual RAM is used) then the SWAP is going to be used. Older systems with slower CPUS and less RAM will not run Mavericks as efficiently as newer machine with iWhatever CPUs. They also won't have enough RAM and will still need the compression algorithm in Mavericks to be used more quickly than those machines with more RAM.

I would say that upgrading to Mavericks on anything older than a 2009 machine is a mistake.**EDIT** Unless of course the machine in question is a MacPro.
 
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