Hi... I wonder if Mavericks will provide additional VRAM to 9400m laptops as it will do with newer Macs. So... is the upgrade worth for our 3+ years-old Macs?
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Unibody White Macbook - Upgrade to Mavericks worth?
- Thread starter brdeveloper
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I had no issues yet besides I got MacPorts broken and a few apps like TotalFinder (but it has a Mavericks-compatible version for download). That is... the system looks overall a bit slower, but it's not conclusive yet.
I had trouble installing Mavericks... it would hang at the "less than 1 minute" mark, and I had to make 2-3 additional accounts just to get on the login screen. Eventually it started working right and I was able to delete the other accounts. Also, I didn't lose anything when I installed Mavericks. I'm not sure it it's slower or not. If it matters I have the 2010 Unibody Macbook.
The "less than one minute" estimate has been wrong on the past few DP's of Mavericks as well.
Overall, Mavericks runs much better on both my MacBook's. If you're having an issue try doing a "clean install" as some developers on the Apple Forum's have said that has helped.
- Kyle
Overall, Mavericks runs much better on both my MacBook's. If you're having an issue try doing a "clean install" as some developers on the Apple Forum's have said that has helped.
- Kyle
After some hours from the installation it doesn't seem to be slower as I pointed earlier. Actually I think my first impressions was a bit negative because boot time increased a bit and some graphical effects looked a bit truncated. In general, appears to be worth upgrading.
I upgraded my mid 2010 Macbook 7,1 white unibody and all is well so far, no issues to report. It seems more responsive than ML and my battery life has increased by 90mins on a full charge. So far so good.
It is usually slower off the bat, so to say, because of Spotlight reindexing. Once that process is done, everything is good.
Definitely worth upgrading.
I would have done it since Mavericks doesn't really have any 'heavy' features that would cause the system to run slowly. Mavericks is even said to actually improve battery and system life due to compression of memory.
I always upgrade the OS. Even if Apple doesn't mention it I'm sure some of the benefits include minor security fixes or enhancements.
Overall it was worth upgrading, except (in my case) for:
- Preview app: Snow Leopard's preview is faster, doesn't blur when scrolling, keeps more space for text as the Mavericks sidebar is wider;
- Crossover Mac: I had to upgrade my Crossover license since it's not compatible with Mav;
- Beach balls randomly appear on tasks not really cpu-intensive. The beach balls disappear in less than a second though;
- Finder not really an improvement over SL's. Mav's one has tab support, but not really exciting. TotalFinder plugin is still worth as it provides cut-paste and show folders on top - tagging support is nice but could allow more customizations (like batch-tagging files inside a folder or folder tree);
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I think aluminium Macbooks support up to 8GB... read other posts in the Macbook section of MacRumors, seems there are people who upgraded to 8GB in alum Macbooks.
I have almost the exact same configuration as you, late 2009 macbook plastic, 8 GB ram, samsung 840 SSD.
I did an upgrade for the first time in a decade (I always used to clean install previously) and everything is running smoothly. I was previously using mountain lion 10.8.4, then yesterday upgraded to 10.8.5 and today did maverics 10.9.0. I'd say mavericks is almost exactly like 10.8.5. All the apps were recently updated for both OS's but I didn't have the newest iphoto so I had to bootcamp in order to use photostream. With 10.8.5, I got the newest iphoto so I could photostream. Still I upgraded to mavericks.
All the same annoyances of mountain lion are still here. Snow leopard gestures with 4 fingers don't work for the most part. You can't have right clicking and double tapping, it's one or the other. Battery monitor doesn't show hours left unless you click. But for all the annoyances, you get a stable OS, icloud syncing, and new iLife and iWork apps. Spotlight reindexing took less than 10 minutes (it's nice they give you a timer). All the old drivers I was using with printers and scanners still work, although new drivers are available. Office 2011 works fine and loads at the same speed. Scrolling in Opera seems the same speed, not much lag. Notification center is nice but still has little use for me. I haven't had a chance to try out battery life much, but it's draining a lot faster for me after restarting my mac. Maybe it's not real though. The biggest annoyance in mavericks is that the dock is no longer transparent. It looks really ugly if you have it docked to the side and seems like it wastes space as you can't really put icons behind it since the text is unreadable. I don't like that ibooks came pre-installed, but it's not a big deal. Maps is cool to have around, but you could always use google maps too. Safari is the same as in mountain lion 10.8.5. Dashboard widgets worked fine too.
If upgrading from mountain lion, you actually gain about 4-5 GB disk space. If you update all the apps, that ends up being 2-3 GB because iMovie is a 2 GB download compared to the 300 mb version of the past.
Also, I clean installed mavericks on a stock late 2009 mini (2.26 ghz, 2gb ram, nvidia 9400) and it's unusable. You definitely need 4 or 8 GB ram, but if you had mountain lion, you knew that already. Security wise, there doesn't seem to be anything different. Snow leopard seems to still get updates, so you don't need to upgrade just for security updates.
So if you have 8 gb ram, get Mavericks. It's worth it. Performance is similar to snow leopard and you get icloud. But if you're running on old stock hardware, upgrade your ram first.
Edit: Shut down speed is fast like snow leopard, a big improvement over mountain lion.
I did an upgrade for the first time in a decade (I always used to clean install previously) and everything is running smoothly. I was previously using mountain lion 10.8.4, then yesterday upgraded to 10.8.5 and today did maverics 10.9.0. I'd say mavericks is almost exactly like 10.8.5. All the apps were recently updated for both OS's but I didn't have the newest iphoto so I had to bootcamp in order to use photostream. With 10.8.5, I got the newest iphoto so I could photostream. Still I upgraded to mavericks.
All the same annoyances of mountain lion are still here. Snow leopard gestures with 4 fingers don't work for the most part. You can't have right clicking and double tapping, it's one or the other. Battery monitor doesn't show hours left unless you click. But for all the annoyances, you get a stable OS, icloud syncing, and new iLife and iWork apps. Spotlight reindexing took less than 10 minutes (it's nice they give you a timer). All the old drivers I was using with printers and scanners still work, although new drivers are available. Office 2011 works fine and loads at the same speed. Scrolling in Opera seems the same speed, not much lag. Notification center is nice but still has little use for me. I haven't had a chance to try out battery life much, but it's draining a lot faster for me after restarting my mac. Maybe it's not real though. The biggest annoyance in mavericks is that the dock is no longer transparent. It looks really ugly if you have it docked to the side and seems like it wastes space as you can't really put icons behind it since the text is unreadable. I don't like that ibooks came pre-installed, but it's not a big deal. Maps is cool to have around, but you could always use google maps too. Safari is the same as in mountain lion 10.8.5. Dashboard widgets worked fine too.
If upgrading from mountain lion, you actually gain about 4-5 GB disk space. If you update all the apps, that ends up being 2-3 GB because iMovie is a 2 GB download compared to the 300 mb version of the past.
Also, I clean installed mavericks on a stock late 2009 mini (2.26 ghz, 2gb ram, nvidia 9400) and it's unusable. You definitely need 4 or 8 GB ram, but if you had mountain lion, you knew that already. Security wise, there doesn't seem to be anything different. Snow leopard seems to still get updates, so you don't need to upgrade just for security updates.
So if you have 8 gb ram, get Mavericks. It's worth it. Performance is similar to snow leopard and you get icloud. But if you're running on old stock hardware, upgrade your ram first.
Edit: Shut down speed is fast like snow leopard, a big improvement over mountain lion.