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Rate the best Mac OS X

grahamperrin said:
I think he views Tiger as the best. From the same post:
Click to expand...

He stated it was his "overall favorite", not "the best". Either way I do agree with this:

sonicrobby said:
"Best" is a pretty vague judgment method
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Each version has its ups and downs, and to pick the best would be exceedingly difficult. I will stick to stating my overall favorite, which is Yosemite due to it's retina-friendly interface and recent bug fixes.
 
Mountain Lion
Yosemite
Snow Leopard
Mavericks
Jaguar - Tiger - Leopard

Apple promoted Mavericks ram performace, but at work on my iMac which still runs Mavericks it routinely collapses with multiple programs open and switching back and forth or opening a new program.
 
Traverse said:
Based on my usage:

1. Mavericks - most feature complete and usable for me
2. Mountain Lion - improved on Lion
3. Lion - barely edged out SL because of FV2, gestures, and other small improvements
4. Snow Leopard - simply rock solid

(Large gap)

5. Yosemite - less usable UI, graphical issues, bugs, but some nice new features.


I'm running Mavericks now.

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Why would you rate ML over Mavericks? Just curious.

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I suppose that's inevitable...
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It was appearance-based; call me old fashioned, but I tend to prefer the skeumorphic designs that they removed in Mavericks. I found complex detail more pleasing than blank space. Performance-wise, they were pretty much the same for what my uses were. So that was the primary influence in my decision
 
1. Snow Leopard
2. Tiger
3. Leopard
4. Mavericks
5. Yosemite
6. Panther
7. Lion
8. Mountain Lion (Lots of Sleep Issues for Me)
9. Jaguar
10. Puma
11. Cheetah
 
sonicrobby said:
It was appearance-based; call me old fashioned, but I tend to prefer the skeumorphic designs that they removed in Mavericks. I found complex detail more pleasing than blank space. Performance-wise, they were pretty much the same for what my uses were. So that was the primary influence in my decision
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I understand what you mean. Mavericks' performance outweighed the cons, but I didn't like their war on skeumorphic design. Look at Mavericks' notes app. It looks so generic.
 
Traverse said:
I understand what you mean. Mavericks' performance outweighed the cons, but I didn't like their war on skeumorphic design. Look at Mavericks' notes app. It looks so generic.
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The Contacts application was probably worse. It basically had no design at all. Not much change in Yosemite, for that matter.
 
1. Mavericks
2. Snow Leopard
3. Tiger
4. Yosemite
5. Mountain Lion
6. Leopard
7. Panther
8. Lion
9. Jaguar
10. Puma
11. Cheetah

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grahamperrin said:
Mavericks.

Image

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1818999/
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That image is completely unintelligible.

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Loops said:
...
8. Puma
9. Cheetah
10. Yosemite
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I do not for one minute believe that you actually used 10.0 or 10.1 if you rate yosemite less than them. They were unstable, completely devoid of features, had no applications, were glacier-like in their slowness and were all-around terrible.
:confused:

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sonicrobby said:
call me old fashioned, but I tend to prefer the skeumorphic designs that they removed in Mavericks.
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How is that old fashioned? That means you came along in 2011 with Lion?


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Altemose said:
1. Snow Leopard
2. Tiger
3. Leopard
4. Mavericks
5. Yosemite
6. Panther
7. Lion
8. Mountain Lion (Lots of Sleep Issues for Me)
9. Jaguar
10. Puma
11. Cheetah
Click to expand...

Although slightly different to mine, THIS is a list that can be respected!

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Traverse said:
Look at Mavericks' notes app. It looks so generic.
Click to expand...

Is it in someway less functional? noooooo....
 
Summary of ratings

I took everyone's list (those that didn't list I ignored) and calculated the average placing of each OS. Then I sorted. Here's the result:
  1. Snow Leopard
  2. Mountain Lion
  3. Mavericks
  4. Yosemite
  5. Tiger
  6. Lion
  7. Leopard
  8. Panther
  9. Jaguar
  10. Puma
  11. Cheetah

I'm not too surprised. Snow Leopard fixed Leopard and Mountain Lion fixed Lion, and their placements show that. And it also looks like the annual upgrade cycle is hurting as each new OS is rating lower than the one before. The progression: Cheetah < Puma < Jaguar < Tiger > Leopard < Snow Leopard > Lion < Mountain Lion > Mavericks > Yosemite. Basically uphill through Snow Leopard and downhill since.
 
talmy said:
I took everyone's list (those that didn't list I ignored) and calculated the average placing of each OS. Then I sorted. Here's the result:
  1. Snow Leopard
  2. Mountain Lion
  3. Mavericks
  4. Yosemite
  5. Tiger
  6. Lion
  7. Leopard
  8. Panther
  9. Jaguar
  10. Puma
  11. Cheetah

I'm not too surprised. Snow Leopard fixed Leopard and Mountain Lion fixed Lion, and their placements show that. And it also looks like the annual upgrade cycle is hurting as each new OS is rating lower than the one before. The progression: Cheetah < Puma < Jaguar < Tiger > Leopard < Snow Leopard > Lion < Mountain Lion > Mavericks > Yosemite. Basically uphill through Snow Leopard and downhill since.
Click to expand...

I'm kind of surprised that Mountain Lion was preferred over Mavericks.
 
Eithanius said:
Anti-iOS-ificationists like me will be stuck at Snow Leopard, not Mountain Lion... :p
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This could explain the steady drop in ratings since Snow Leopard as each new version gets more iosified. (Exception being that Mountain Lion was a bug-fixed Lion).
 
talmy said:
(Exception being that Mountain Lion was a bug-fixed Lion).
Click to expand...

Mountain Lion did introduce Notes as a standalone app (previously Notes was within Mail), Game Center, and Notification Center... All of these from iOS...
 
Eithanius said:
Mountain Lion did introduce Notes as a standalone app (previously Notes was within Mail), Game Center, and Notification Center... All of these from iOS...
Click to expand...

True, but it reintroduced "Save as" and had a sticky setting for not reopening applications when booting up. Two issues that caused much grief for Lion users. And speaking as a Server.app user, Lion Server was a useless disaster and Mountain Lion Server worked.
 
talmy said:
True, but it reintroduced "Save as" and had a sticky setting for not reopening applications when booting up. Two issues that caused much grief for Lion users. And speaking as a Server.app user, Lion Server was a useless disaster and Mountain Lion Server worked.
Click to expand...

The non-reopening applications on boot was added in one of the .x releases of Lion. I know in 10.7.5 that the setting sticks.
 
Of those I've used:

1. Mavericks
2. Mountain Lion
3. Snow Leopard
4. Lion
...
...
5. Yosemite


Yosemite is the only version I've had major problems with and is the only one I've ever need to downgrade from. Even ignoring the horrible design choices, the wifi issues, and the sluggish, horrible performance made it completely unusable for me.

Mavericks has been a solid, fast, reliable performer for me, and has all the features I need. Oh, and it looks amazing on a Retina screen.

Snow Leopard is worshiped here, however I didn't use it enough to rate it higher on my list. It was on my girlfriends MacBook Pro, and I didn't own a Mac at the time.
 
1. Snow Leopard. Rock solid.

2. Yosemite. (For it's iCloud, iOS, iPhone and iPad integration.)

For me, none of the others have any memorable value whatsoever.

I upgraded from SL to Yos directly. Then went back to SL after a few days, because some of my essential apps would not run.
 
Snow leopard. Still on my production machine as much as I want the newer features.
 
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