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It's a terrible OS for non-SSD users. I set up a $2000 iMac for my dad a few months ago, and it's slow as molasses in Winter.

It's an inconsistent and buggy OS. Things that worked in Tiger are broken, while things that came over from iOS seem to work. Multi-monitor support still isn't great, and if you don't mind me comparing it to 10.3, which was "lickable" like a lollipop, this is "lickable" like a flagpole in the winter.

Non-SSD users seem to be a mixed bag. What was acceptable for me is atrocious for others... Seems to be alot of differentiation between performance on similar systems and usage patterns.
 
hmm.. yeah, i see what you're saying..

i don't have time to mess around with it right now but i think cmmd-R boots the computer via the internet and not some piece of hardware inside.. at which point, you download osx and install it.. pretty sure you can't use cmmdR in the way i was originally thinking you could.. much less- use it to accomplish what you're wanting.

I'm on Comcast. The last time I had to download OSX updates for a crashed system, my download speeds dipped to 1.5 MBPS. That's glorified DSL and at the time I was paying for "Blast" which was advertised at 48MBPS. This whole reload your OS over the internet is not really practical until google fiber or fios becomes available in the backwaters of the midwest (Detroit area). Comcast has an exclusive monopoly in my town. The other choice is Uverse. I'm more than 2500 feet from At&t's "fiber cabinet" so that means it takes two copper pairs to get me a screaming 6MBPS and I gotta pay extra for some sort of booter gizmo. So I'm stuck with "fast until you really need it" Comcast. This is why I tend to make my own USB sticks even though it requires more fiddling around with each successive version of OSX.

OTOH, having no recovery partition has some advantages. I found a blog online with details on how to delete the recovery partition so somebody can't hack your Mac as easily. I don't mind having the partition, but I've got mixed feelings about taking my time to create one when it's missing. Suppose my Mavericks stick gets eaten by one of our dogs? :eek:
 
OTOH, having no recovery partition has some advantages.

i take it you don't have two computers? fwiw, i put an SSD in my mbp a few months back and installed osx via a macpro over firewire.. next time it will be thunderbolt..

seems like the way you like to install, another computer would be optimum.. at the very least, it eliminates usb from the equation.. i'm not sure if that alone is worth a $couple_thousand though ;)
 
i take it you don't have two computers? fwiw, i put an SSD in my mbp a few months back and installed osx via a macpro over firewire.. next time it will be thunderbolt..

seems like the way you like to install, another computer would be optimum.. at the very least, it eliminates usb from the equation.. i'm not sure if that alone is worth a $couple_thousand though ;)

I have several Macs but only 4 can run Mavericks and 2 of those are off at college with my kids. I suppose I could do things "over the network" from one Mac to another but I find it easier to do it this way. Gotta run. Late for an appointment I forgot about!
 
Non-SSD users seem to be a mixed bag. What was acceptable for me is atrocious for others... Seems to be alot of differentiation between performance on similar systems and usage patterns.

It's more than that though. I have a 2009 Macbook with 3gb of RAM, and my dad has a 2013 iMac with 8gb? of RAM in it and yet when I visited him last weekend I was amazed at how slow the iMac was - my Macbook is faster than his iMac.
 
It's more than that though. I have a 2009 Macbook with 3gb of RAM, and my dad has a 2013 iMac with 8gb? of RAM in it and yet when I visited him last weekend I was amazed at how slow the iMac was - my Macbook is faster than his iMac.


I am guessing you have an SSD then? In my opinion, Lion began the transition to SSD optimization! However Lion ran great on a HD and it was the same with ML. However when either was put on an SSD you could tell they were definitely optimized for it.
 
I am guessing you have an SSD then? In my opinion, Lion began the transition to SSD optimization! However Lion ran great on a HD and it was the same with ML. However when either was put on an SSD you could tell they were definitely optimized for it.

I guess that's why when I read through the forum posts by guys who have been using Macs for years complaining that Mavericks sucks/slow/buggy I'm like what? Coming from windows and using windows on this mac as well it's nothing but flawless, stable and insanely fast. W7 and OSX both use the same SSD but OSX rips W7 apart, far more responsive and quicker at everything and it really does show.
I'm glad apples pushing for SSD's as it's the future and they are coming rapidly down in price. M$ is falling behind, W8 while good under the hood was a disaster to a power user like myself - one of the reasons I switched. I'm just excited for WWDC to see all that's coming in 10.10 and iOS 8. It's great, like a free OS every year!
 
What SUCKS [for me] in Mavericks

grrrrrggghaaaaaaah!

As someone that was truly amazed and awestruck [almost reverential?] by Mac System 1.0, I find Apple's trend towards a 'Universal' OSX/iOS a seriously retrograde step [IMO].

My dis-likes, in order of annoyance [NO - there are no likes].
1). Esoteric, cryptic, dull, unimaginative grey ******** UI [darn right I'm pissed off!]
2). Preview is now complicated - WTF Apple?
3). Numbers crushed the few files I was silly enough to open, deleting 'Categories' - WTF [again] Apple?
4). Sort By in a 'Find' window is now simply dumb!
5). Loss of some useful programs that won't now run under Mavericks

Sooo....
I run Mavericks under sufferance on 1 MBP,
only because it has a Thunderbolt HDD/SSD

FWIW my Numbers opinion....
 

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In OS X Mountain Lion I could enter and exit Mission Control, Launchpad, etc. without lifting my hand from the trackpad. I could continuously do a three finger swipe (up, down, up, down, etc.) and Mission Control would open/close accordingly. In OS X Mavericks they've changed this behavior. Now I have to do a three finger swipe to enter Mission Control > lift my hand from the Magic Trackpad > do another three finger swipe. Otherwise nothing happens. Biggest annoyance I came across.

Also, the inability to force a 2D Dock at the bottom. Especially now the 2D Dock looks really nice. :(
 
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I am guessing you have an SSD then? In my opinion, Lion began the transition to SSD optimization! However Lion ran great on a HD and it was the same with ML. However when either was put on an SSD you could tell they were definitely optimized for it.

I don't! I had a MacBook Air that was super snappy™ but I sold that and moved back to a MacBook with an HDD. It's not as fast, but it's still very usable. Then I used my dad's iMac, and I was like whoa. It's just really amazingly slow to the point where it was almost unusable. Whether or not it's due to being overly-optimized for SSD's instead of HDD's or some other bug in the OS is irrelevant. All that matters is that 10.9 with 8gb of RAM on 2013-era hardware is running worse than Leopard with 2gb of RAM was on 2006 era hardware.
 
I don't! I had a MacBook Air that was super snappy™ but I sold that and moved back to a MacBook with an HDD. It's not as fast, but it's still very usable. Then I used my dad's iMac, and I was like whoa. It's just really amazingly slow to the point where it was almost unusable. Whether or not it's due to being overly-optimized for SSD's instead of HDD's or some other bug in the OS is irrelevant. All that matters is that 10.9 with 8gb of RAM on 2013-era hardware is running worse than Leopard with 2gb of RAM was on 2006 era hardware.

I have seen Snow Leopard run better on a 2006 MacBook with 2 GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM HD than a rMBP under 10.9. Granted that was the golden master copy of Mavericks and it definitely improved since then...

Granted, file copies were obviously slower. But even on horrible hardware by today's standards, Snow Leopard was always responsive. Mavericks even on 16 GB of RAM and an SSD would frequently beach ball.
 
As someone who's first Mac purchase was a rMBP with Mavericks on it, can I ask.. What was so great about Snow Leopard? It seems to be all people talk about like it's some holy pinnacle of operating systems? Really, I just don't understand the fuss?
For me Mavericks is amazing.
 
As someone who's first Mac purchase was a rMBP with Mavericks on it, can I ask.. What was so great about Snow Leopard? It seems to be all people talk about like it's some holy pinnacle of operating systems? Really, I just don't understand the fuss?
For me Mavericks is amazing.

Snow Leopard was the first Intel only OS and stripped and streamlined the code form Leopard. It was fast, stable, lean, and widely supported and accepted. It was also the final version to support running PowerPC applications under Intel hardware.

Snow Leopard came out in 2009, and people who are running Mavericks on 2009 hardware compare it to SL. You are running 2012+ hardware that either shipped with Mavericks, or shipped right before it. Your Mac is brand new and runs it like a champ!
 
Snow Leopard was the first Intel only OS and stripped and streamlined the code form Leopard. It was fast, stable, lean, and widely supported and accepted. It was also the final version to support running PowerPC applications under Intel hardware.

Snow Leopard came out in 2009, and people who are running Mavericks on 2009 hardware compare it to SL. You are running 2012+ hardware that either shipped with Mavericks, or shipped right before it. Your Mac is brand new and runs it like a champ!

Thanks for that, makes more sense for me now. I'm just glad Apple has ditched PowerPC chips and has gone for Intel - especially with Haswell being very efficient. I also like how Apple is completely 64bit - and going that way in iOS too. I mean seriously, how can M$ still be releasing 32bit OS's? I do not know of a single Intel or AMD x86 chip sold today - or within the last 5 years that doesn't support a 64bit OS. While Apple just making that jump all at once with Intel was a pretty good move.
 
Thanks for that, makes more sense for me now. I'm just glad Apple has ditched PowerPC chips and has gone for Intel - especially with Haswell being very efficient. I also like how Apple is completely 64bit - and going that way in iOS too. I mean seriously, how can M$ still be releasing 32bit OS's? I do not know of a single Intel or AMD x86 chip sold today - or within the last 5 years that doesn't support a 64bit OS. While Apple just making that jump all at once with Intel was a pretty good move.

I mean no disrespect with my statements to follow. The PowerPC was a way better chipset altogether. It was fast and outperformed all comparable Intel chips.

For example, the PowerPC G4 running at 867 MHz would easily beat out a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4. Granted these are in the old days of like 2001 or 2002, but it goes to show. The G5 was very much a great competitor to the Intel Xeon processors at the time.

In fact, the G5 processors beat out most Core Duos and a few Core 2 Duos. The problem was heat and energy consumption. IBM couldn't make a G5 run at 3.0 GHz cool enough for a PowerMac G5. Even the 2.5 and 2.7 GHz models needed to be liquid cooled to provide appropriate cooling. They were also power pigs in comparison to the performance they put out, and that drove Apple to Intel.

If they could have made the PPC run cooler and not be such an energy pig, then they would have certainly stayed with them. While I respect the fact that they moved to Intel, they should of worked closer with IBM and Motorola to develop a low voltage G6 in my personal opinion.

Happily posted from my dual 1.8 PowerMac G5! :D
 
What makes you think I haven't already done that?

And what makes you think I'm trying to assume you have not done that...?

It's just a suggestion, you don't have to be rude on that...

----------

Snow Leopard was the first Intel only OS and stripped and streamlined the code form Leopard. It was fast, stable, lean, and widely supported and accepted. It was also the final version to support running PowerPC applications under Intel hardware.

Snow Leopard came out in 2009, and people who are running Mavericks on 2009 hardware compare it to SL. You are running 2012+ hardware that either shipped with Mavericks, or shipped right before it. Your Mac is brand new and runs it like a champ!

Because Snow Leopard does not have those iCloud junks that caused graphics choppiness, and slow startup and shutdown...

And Snow Leopard is about the only OS X that runs perfectly on Intel-based Macs, like Tiger to PowerPC-based Macs...
 
And what makes you think I'm trying to assume you have not done that...?

It's just a suggestion, you don't have to be rude on that...

----------



Because Snow Leopard does not have those iCloud junks that caused graphics choppiness, and slow startup and shutdown...

And Snow Leopard is about the only OS X that runs perfectly on Intel-based Macs, like Tiger to PowerPC-based Macs...

Well, Tiger was pretty good on Intel Macs too!
 
Decided to upgrade to Mavericks a few months back, and I quickly decided to go back to Snow Leopard. Although, I guess it was faster and used less memory, some of the "features" were too annoying for my taste. For example, Apple decided I really didn't need those scroll arrows on the side of my pages and that I should be using a mouse with a scroll wheel. Thanks! Then there was the getting asked for my password for EVERY FRIGGING thing. Seriously, a PITA. I forget some of the other issues, but eventually, I couldn't stand it and luckily I didn't backup to TM, so I was able to get my MBP back to its original SL OS.
 
I mean no disrespect with my statements to follow. The PowerPC was a way better chipset altogether. It was fast and outperformed all comparable Intel chips.

For example, the PowerPC G4 running at 867 MHz would easily beat out a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4. Granted these are in the old days of like 2001 or 2002, but it goes to show. The G5 was very much a great competitor to the Intel Xeon processors at the time.

In fact, the G5 processors beat out most Core Duos and a few Core 2 Duos. The problem was heat and energy consumption. IBM couldn't make a G5 run at 3.0 GHz cool enough for a PowerMac G5. Even the 2.5 and 2.7 GHz models needed to be liquid cooled to provide appropriate cooling. They were also power pigs in comparison to the performance they put out, and that drove Apple to Intel.

If they could have made the PPC run cooler and not be such an energy pig, then they would have certainly stayed with them. While I respect the fact that they moved to Intel, they should of worked closer with IBM and Motorola to develop a low voltage G6 in my personal opinion.

Happily posted from my dual 1.8 PowerMac G5! :D

Cool, if you enjoy using PowerMacs. I always thought they looked great seeing them in stores. Well the P4 was never Intel's finest achievement. While they've definitely begun to stagnate a little since Sandy Bridge (awesome over clocker) their drive for efficiency seems to be really paying off. Haswell' efficient architecture + Broadwells second gen FINFET 14nm process will really let apples MacBook Pros and Airs shine I feel.
 
Cool, if you enjoy using PowerMacs. I always thought they looked great seeing them in stores. Well the P4 was never Intel's finest achievement. While they've definitely begun to stagnate a little since Sandy Bridge (awesome over clocker) their drive for efficiency seems to be really paying off. Haswell' efficient architecture + Broadwells second gen FINFET 14nm process will really let apples MacBook Pros and Airs shine I feel.

At this point in the game, if Apple stayed with PPC I wonder where we would be. I will say that at the time, the G5 beat out the Xeons which were Intel's high end server and workstation chips. We cannot do a comparison to what we have now but only what it was like in 2005.

I definitely think Apple made a good choice going with Intel, but I think PPC if given more time to be worked on would have been a great choice as well. Either way, Intel is the leader and it is some remarkable chipsets they put out with Haswell and Broadwell.
 
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