The Unofficial Mavericks Review

The Unofficial Mavericks Review

 

It’s been nearly a month since the official update of Apple’s new operating system OSX 10.9 code name Mavericks was released. Apple has stopped naming their operating systems to cat’s names and started new naming strategy for OSX. Everyone has been talking about Mavericks since the day it was released. So I am not going to talk about what already has been told. In this post I’m going to review, compare and since you have already updated to Mavericks, I’m going to tell you what you should have done before upgrading to OSX 10.9.

What’s New in Mavericks?

With the new update 10.9 there are some significant changes to features, performance and battery life. Apple has introduced iBook’s, Improved Calendar, Maps, Enhanced Safari, iCloud Keychain, Multiple Displays, Finder Tabs, Interactive Notifications, Tags and Performance Improvements. To know more about these features please visit apple’s website here.

How is Mavericks?

Well from the looks of it, these are minor changes to a world-class operating system like Mac OS. However game changing apps have been introduced like maps. But these changes give a huge vantage for the user experience. For an example all these little updates are connected with the over role performance of the system. In that sense Apple has done a great job improving what already has been there. The cloud integration improvements are pretty solid and iBook’s gives a wonderful reading experience. Multiple display experience was the revolutionary change in Mavericks since Mountain Lion 10.8. Little functions like tagging and tabs gives more flexibility to the system than before. Full screen apps? Come on every other operating system on this planet provides that. I don’t see that as a big change. But now OSX got it! Little performance tweaks has improved battery life dramatically, that I can agree with. But I’m bit disappointed since before updating to Mavericks, my MacBook Pro Retina 15” showed an amazing start up and shutdown times. Approximately within or before 5 seconds my machine starts up and shutdowns. I was very happy about that since I wanted faster performance from my laptop. Key improvements like safari and calendar are good as well as updates to the iPhoto & iMovie’s apps. Bottom line is that Apples has done a great job with Mavericks and this is a new start for the apple’s operating systems in the future.

Windows 8 vs Mavericks

When comparing with Microsoft’s operating system Windows 8, Apple leads better in security and over role performance of the system. My biggest disappointment is that Microsoft sucked integrating mobile / social networking features to Windows 8. But with Mavericks Apple has done a great job integrating interacting notification like features to their notification system. On the other hand the cloud integration is better in Mavericks than Windows 8. Mavericks is based on OSX user experience without completely deviating from the original system. On the other hand Windows 8 has completely changed the way it looks integrating with the Metro UI. There are many pros and cons in both systems. I’m not going to talk about them right now. However in my previous article “Why I bought MacBook Pro Retina” I have described some of the pros and cons of OSX over Windows.

What you should have done before upgrading to Mavericks? Well there are few things you should have done even though this is bit late. Apart from all the tips other blogs might have given you (like back up your data), I will give you some unique tips.

1.#Mavericks

You should have searched for all the Mavericks related hash tags on all popular social media networks, so that you could have found the errors work around and how it would have affected your system. They are like small reviews, warnings and tutorials. Regardless of your system you must have known everything pre-installation.

2. Read developer or Alpha reviews

Well I know that no body would do this unless you are a hardcore OSX geek. I know some people already downloaded few versions of Mavericks and have tried it on their system before the major release. Even though you haven’t done it, read reviews and bugs issues by alpha users. It will help you to experience or expect Mavericks correctly.

3. Application Compatibility

Finally following the above two tips you must get to know what is going to work on your system after the update and what is not. Mostly some of the applications were not Mavericks ready and still they are not. If you had Google searched them or checked the version control on their relevant web pages, you are safe now!

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