Update to Mavericks worthwhile?

[phphoto]

I have Mountain Lion installed on my new iMac and wondered if there is any real benefit to updating to Mavericks. Is it compatible with Canon Eos Utility (I shoot tethered) and also Toast 10? I also have Photoshop CS6 which I assume will be ok but what about printer drivers etc? Everything works fine at the moment so should I just stay where I am? Thanks.

 

[xspicer89x]

I have Mountain Lion installed on my new iMac and wondered if there is any real benefit to updating to Mavericks. Is it compatible with Canon Eos Utility (I shoot tethered) and also Toast 10? I also have Photoshop CS6 which I assume will be ok but what about printer drivers etc? Everything works fine at the moment so should I just stay where I am? Thanks.

I LOVE MAVERICKS..It..is...AMAZING!

Have mavericks installed on my 13-inch mid-2012 non-retina macbookpro (750GB harddrive, 16GB ram, 2.9GHz i7 processor). I did not do a clean install, simply upgraded from mountain lion.

There are many real benefits to upgrading to Mavericks:

+1 for the true multitasking on multiple monitors and the non-broken mission control, this alone makes the upgrade amazing (at least for those of us running multiple monitors often--and using multiple desktop/spaces). First off, the menu bar is not confined to your primary display, neither is your dock. Second, mission control now works the way it should on two monitors and between spaces (truly being able to drag and drop from expose to anywhere, to be able to move desktops to the left of the first space, to drag desktops between monitors, etc).

+1 for app nap and ridiculously LOWER cpu usage...Noticing BIG differences here, especially with photoshop, lightroom, and finalcutpro. And my laptop has been staying much much cooler during excessive usage..even while gaming or messing around with photo/videos editing--with all my other apps "open" in the background--my laptop has remained relatively cool (compared to heating during excessive usage in ML).

+1 for the RAM usage...on ML I rarely maxed out my 16GB (I would open activity monitor and see so much free space, then often found myself asking why I had bothered upgrading from the stock 8GB)...on Mavericks, mostly all of my RAM is actually being used (whether its just file cache or not)...and I MOST CERTAINLY NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE. The responsiveness is absolutely amazing. What is a beach ball? Waiting for an app or file to load? Never lol. Windows and apps open as soon as I click them, its like flying with no lag..it really does feel like a revolutionary step forward (at least from previous experience with ML) +1 for going from sleep to wake before I finish opening the lid of my laptop lol.

Then of course there's the aesthetic things like new ibook and map apps, the finder tabs, safari notifications, quick replies for texts and emails from the notification center, etc. I would have to say the safari notifications are pretty good, especially if you subscribe to forums and want updates without cluttering your email. Not all websites work, but a fair many do. The quick-reply from an incoming notification is VERY efficient...now when someone messages you, there is a "type to message" bubble right in the banner of the notification, allowing you to reply without opening the messages app. Reminds me of BiteSMS on jailbroken iOS.

As for the battery, the differences Ive experienced when gaming or watching/editing videos are nothing major (at most an extra 30-60mins). However, I have noticed fairly big differences when working at school; running ML, my laptop never had the hope of lasting all day at university working, studying and researching (so pretty much having bunch of Iwork apps, bunch of pdfs in preview, and safari with a million tabs lol) without a charge. Now on mavericks i can last the day (basically getting an extra 1-3hours) doing the same things I was doing without having to worry about my battery dying (im guessing the appnap of safari and preview helps a lot lol).

I don't use the programs you mentioned (other than cs6) so i'm not certain about their compatibility. However a quick google search would suggest you may be in luck with the canon utility (http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52383356), but not the toast.
Some users have reported problems with printer drives, however I myself have had no problems.

Sure mavericks could use some app updates to fix some of those inconveniences that some of us have come across.. but when it comes down to it, I want my system to run fast and with efficiency. When I'm in full work mode, I dont want my train of thought interrupted by a brief rage-out at a spinning beachball--may just be my low attention span but these sorts of work-flow interruptions kill my productivity. I also dont want my computer wasting resources on apps im not currently using, but I always want to be able to open and access anything I might need in a flash (especially if I have recently used it--ex: a large photo or video album), I dont want to ever have to wait or see a beachball. The RAM efficiency of Mavericks is enough reason to overlook some of those inconveniences so many people having been complaining about IMO.

However, if the apps that are necessary for your workflow are not yet compatible with mavericks and you cannot find a suitable replacement that is, then it may be in your best interest to wait. I myself absolutely love the new OS and believe its a nice step forward; I've been using it since the first GM build and havnt had any sort of complaint with Mavericks as some users have. All the apps I use are compatible with Mavericks (developers have been fairly good at getting the updates out and fixing bugs and compatibility issues pretty quick), so i have had nothing bad to say .

Cheers

 

[Sital]

I have Mountain Lion installed on my new iMac and wondered if there is any real benefit to updating to Mavericks. Is it compatible with Canon Eos Utility (I shoot tethered) and also Toast 10? I also have Photoshop CS6 which I assume will be ok but what about printer drivers etc? Everything works fine at the moment so should I just stay where I am? Thanks.

I didn't run into any problems with compatibility or printing when I upgraded, but I don't know about the Eos utility. Honestly, if someone had upgraded my MBP without telling me I probably wouldn't have noticed. I don't doubt that Mavericks is amazing for xspicer89x, but for me it feels the same.

Just so I can immediately contradict myself, the quick reply for messages is nice, but if the received message is too long it can't all be viewed in the notification window so I end up opening Messages anyway to see what I'm replying to.

 

[slide023]

@XSpice

You've got a nice machine there. Any OS might fly with a 2.9 GHz i7 Quad core processor. I can not refute your list. And am happy it's working out for you. You make a lot of good points as to why to upgrade.

As bad as I want to move to Mavericks which I've done several times until I see the beach balls ....I that is so redundant, but is so irksome to me; I almost want immediately roll back to ML which I do.

I'm using a mid 2012 MBA 1.8GHz 4GB RAM.

As a side note I posted in the Apple Support forums asking is Apple going to fix spinning beach ball issue with 10.9.1 update? And now I can not find that post to save my life. In fact as soon as I log in, go to Google and find the post..it say's I'm unauthorized to view the page. But I've tried other ways of viewing it, it's just not there. I don't know if it's been removed or not.

Mavs was fast enough for me on my MBA. Just waiting for bug fixes.

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[phphoto]

Thank you everyone for the informative replies, especially xspicer, very much appreciated. I do like some of the features that have been explained but I think I will hold off for a while until the next update and then take the plunge.