“This is still early, early days for OS X 10.9, and Mavericks will likely change and shift much more before it’s released this fall. It’s clearly not going to be the total aesthetic overhaul iOS 7 is, though, and that’s okay. It’s a simple, familiar operating system, even less of a change than Mountain Lion, just with nips and tucks and a whole lot fewer sheets of weirdly torn paper. It has its bugs, sure, but it’s also corrected a number of bugs that somehow made it into the final version of Mountain Lion, and even at this early stage is impressively stable and fast. It’s gotten rid of a lot of the design issues that plagued many Mountain Lion apps (except for Game Center, which is still hideous), in favor of a cleaner, softer look that is far easier on the eyes.” Hard to complain, really.
I don’t use OSX so don’t know how much of an improvement this is, but I was impressed that they’re adding in some features for power users. I was under the impression that Apple really didn’t give much of a damn about power users, in that it seems it’s either their way or the highway when it comes to what kind of options you get. (Which in iOS, is basically none.)
As Jobs said a while ago, desktop is a new niche, a popular one but a niche it will become. That was before the iPad, so I guess he was right (after all, the best way to predict the future is to cause it). So, who will use that segment? Power users.
Apple also treated its most loyal users, the graphists/video producer/content designer very badly in the last 6 years with slow release cycle with the old Apple pro apps, big time failure with rewrites like FinalCutPro X and lack of good hardware. So I guess they want some good PR from the evangelists out there.
I use OSX as my secondary OS for some apps, it does work fine. I hate the WM and some GUI guidelines, but it is an OK OS. Not any worst for a Power User than Windows 7. Linux is still better as you can <s>waste</s> spend time configuring everything.
OS X and iOS are two completely different animals. You get everything with OS X (FreeBSD/Darwin userland, full access to the CLI, ability to change any preference you want, etc). Most of the preference files are easily edited to change options the GUI doesn’t allow you to change, and it’s not bogged down with Windowsisms like the registry. It’s a marked contrast to iOS, probably because OS X came about when Apple desperately needed to make a come back. Jobs couldn’t afford to be unfriendly to any potential users. I’m sure Apple would just love to lock OS X down, but the top dogs there are smart enough to know that if they do that they will lose damn near every OS X user they have, save perhaps those who would need OS X to develop for iOS. I for one hope they don’t try it, as I’ve not found another os that gets out of my way and fits my workflow the way OS X does.
MacOSX has reached the point where the only thing left to do is to keep refining it (pretty much where Windows is).
I love the ideas and tech surrounding optimising power management and squeezing every ounce of power (electric) out of a CPU by aligning threads/calls.
Love the new clean look and am really looking forward to installing this on my Mac.
My only problem i have with MacOSX is it’s networking. I hope they can fix it by making it multithreaded and this is really at the user level.
When ive been connected to various shares, usually SMB. If i get disconnected from the shares, i.e. when i go home from work i forget to eject the network drives, when MacOSX finally catches up and realizes that the shares can’t be found it will beachball until it ejects them. Sometimes this can lock up the whole UI. It seems ridiculous that it does this.
I know i should eject the shares but sometimes it’s easy to forget, I hope they can do something where MacOSX will remedy this in the background instead of beachballing.
My old moan about the Filesystem seems to have been fixed as i haven’t experienced a problem with the file system since leopard/snow leopard era.
1) OS X has a fully threaded networking stack:
https://www.apple.com/media/us/osx/2012/docs//OSX_for_UNIX_Users_TB_…
2) The issue of shares has nothing to do with the networking stack being threaded or not-threaded and everything to do with Finder not handling the issue in a graceful manner – what version are you using btw because I haven’t see that sort of behaviour in years but then again it might only show its head if one has multiple network shares mounted rather than just one or two.
3) The filesystem I think they’ve going to be using Core Storage to improve HFS+ without undermining compatibility so basically you get the HFS+ personality that applications expect but under the hood it is an entirely different beast.
Edited 2013-06-28 04:44 UTC