OS-X 10.10.3

Well, I updated the Mac Pro to OS-X 10.10.3 and the iPhone 5s and iPad Air to IOS 8.3. So what have I seen so far.

First, it's the same thing with OS-X updates now, after finishing the installation you have to reboot it again, wait, and reboot again (3rd time) where it will level out the initial state of memory and cut the error messages, which are still numerous but different now.

After that, it's the same thing, each update eats, er. uses, slightly more memory, especially file cache, which isn't counted as memory usage now, just some type of temporary memory for OS-X, apps, files, etc., except OS-X seems to love it more.

And other things?

For one, bluetooth to the iPhone still doesn't work. It didn't connect for a long time, and reccyling the power on the iPhone, it conected then disconnect, and never connected again. Bluetooth to the iPad took two shots to connect and it did without disconnecting after a few minutes. So nothing changed.

Two, Time Machine backups are slower for unknown reasons. It used to copy 15-20+ GBytes per hour, now it's 5-10 GBytes per hour. I hope this improves, because without settings to manage it, it's just a user who eats cpu for 10 minutes every hour.

Three, Apple's favorite tool is still the spinning rainbow wheel, especially Adobe CC apps, eg. Photoshop, which takes 2-3 times longer to open the same file. The CC 2014 app is twice as large for memory than PS CS6, which is still my main photo editor.

Four, iTunes can't count. When you connect an iPhone or iPad and go to the setup in iTunes for it, the statistics bar on the bottom is wrong. It worked in 10.10.2 and relatively closely matched the usage stats in the device, but now it's way off by 2-3 times per catagory, especially free memory. Don't rely on it for accuracy.

I haven't cranked up the apps to fully check 10.10.3 yet, which is when some errors begin. Several things I do with my setup which other may not or don't want to use. For one, I turn off Spotlight by excluding all the HD's (4 internal and 3 external) from searches so it's effectively doing nothing.

This was in part from a problem of a Spotlight runaway rebuilding process. OS-X 10.10.2 has a problem with lsregister which also was a runaway process, but a command kills the process and it returned to normal. I haven't seen this yet, but an alias is ready to kill it if necssary.

If you don't use a terminal window or know how to use command line tools, get familar with them as they can help debug and resolve problems. You have to be careful what you do as administrator, but you can do a lot without breaking anything.

You do by researching the error message and the related fixes reported, which are usually commands. If 3 or more Websites offer the same command and they cite the usage and caution with the command, then you can put some measure in the command you won't do any harm and especially not break anything beyond repair, or requiring reinstalling OS-X.

And don't be afraid to reinstall OS-X. I had to do that 3 times with 10.10.2 because the console window would stop reporting messages in real-time and there is no fix other than the sledgehammer aproach to blugeon the Mac with a new installation.

That's it for now. I'll report what I see as thing happen, but for now, 10.10.3 seems better than 10.10.2. But that comes with the caveat all bets are off once you stop reading this.