Lessons from Mavericks

Here's what I've learned so far with OS-X 10.9 Mavericks.

First and foremst, Apple made changes which don't make sense for users, mentioned in lessons, and really decided to pull a Microsoft trick and dumb down their software taking some features and tools away and changing some to be less useful and productive. Really stupid.

Second, and almost foremost, many third-party app companies have had more than enough time to develop and test new updates or upgrades, so where are they? I've had far too many apps fail and no update or upgrade available. It's really a WTF moment with them too.

What angers me more now is that the response from some of the app companies is something you expect from Microsoft and their third-party app companies, "Just uninstall and reinstall the software, then talk to us." Really?

Ok, the lessons.

One, Safari bookmarks. Apple took away the really neat edit bookmarks page in lieu of the new sidebar, but the new edit bookmarks page is worse if you want to edit or move bookmarks when you have a lot of them, like hundreds in a lot of folders and subfolders. And there's no good third-party bookmarks editor.

Two, more of the same app. They changed adding bookmarks to the top of the folder list instead of the bottom. Why? No reason than they can and did. In additon clicking on the "+" since in the url bar doesn't always add the bookmark. You need to use the menu option.

Three, a big one here with apps. Apple added the "App Nap" option, but to disable it you have to get the info for each application (click on app and "get info" button) to set "Prevent app nap" option. This is important as this interfers with many apps, like backups, streaming, processing, etc. which will stall or bail out.

So, walk through you apps and set them to prevent app nap. This feature is for laptops and unncessary for iMacs or Mac Pros. But then check the app to make sure it runs correctly afterward.

Four, Menu Bar. Apple changed where they start on the menu bar from a nice, orderly right to left to the new purely random order. This is really stupid if you want to keep the apps in the same order after every reboot. This needs to be fixed!

Five, Menu Bar redux. Apple changed the sandbox rules where many apps which open and close the window from the menu bar don't work anymore. The app just sits on the menu bar doing nothing.

Six, Apple's Activity Monitor app. What happened to the HD disk information tool? All you get is the one HD, none of the other HD's. For that you need another app or something, or as sometimes I find, I'm missing something.

Seventh, Apple supposedly made the purge command unnecessary, requiring admin. password to invoke the command, but if you watch the memory usage, you'll see something quite the opposite. Now reboot consumes 1.5 GB's where it was a few 100 MB's you could purge.

Now the memory comes back. It's now "File Cache" which is something other than inactive memory too but still that cache eats memory like a relative's hungry family at a $5 all-you-can-eat buffet which is your computer.

Really, and sometimes you can't release the memory even after the app is closed, necessitating rebooting.

Anyway, that's the list to date. Right now, most of my menu bar apps have issues or don't work and I hate trying to get them into the order they started under Mountain Lion. And I've lost some apps, eg. Intego Backup Manager, which the company used the MS response (above) but forgot to send instructions of how to do that.