OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)

This entry is going to be short (by my standards) since there isn’t much I can write about with regards to Apple’s next version of OS X.

As usual, I’m under a non-disclosure agreement with anything that pertains to OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) that hasn’t already been publicly disclosed by Apple.  Thus what I will say at this juncture until the operating system is actually released, will be limited to what was already mentioned/shown at WWDC 2013 and on their website.

I had a lot of personal involvement with both OS X 10.7 (Lion) and OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion); primarily their server variants (even though Lion Server represented the beginning of this products neutering).  There were design decisions which I did not agree (since they did impact both my workflow and productivity) with which led to my continual running of Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro.  On my MacBook Pro, I have a dual boot system with Snow Leopard and Lion (mainly for regression testing – though I upgraded Mavericks directly over Lion for testing an in place upgrade).  On my Air, I had no choice but to run Mountain Lion since that was the minimum system (I also use this as a test system – the 2013 11″ Air that was just released is going to replace this once it ships).  On my 2007 Mac mini, I run Tiger Server as part of my self-made router/firewall while on a newer 2010 mini, I run Snow Leopard Server (which is the last ever version of OS X Server I will ever run since both Lion and Mountain Lion Server are just too neutered for my needs).

Initial impressions of 10.9 are far more favorable compared to both Lion and Mountain Lion when they were initially unveiled.  Two specific features are promising for me; Finder Tabs and Tags.  Regarding the former, there have been 3rd party software like Path Finder and TotalFinder which offered tab functionality.  Path Finder was just too busy interface wise (plus the last time I used it, there was no way to set custom views).  TotalFinder occasionally had some glitches but showed the promise of a tabbed Finder windowing system if implemented correctly.  With this feature now being built-in, it integrates and works well with drag-and-drop, consolidating a separate set of tabs (via drag-and-drop), while also working along side standard Finder windows.  Unsurprisingly, there are some issues with the initial implementation that should (hopefully) be ironed out by release.

Tags is just a no-brainer since it is user defined meta-information which is used to quickly categorize your data/information, allowing for quick access from both the Finder sidebar and via search.  One of my previous requests in some past beta seed was the ability to “tag” files in the sense of a checkbox which would allow you to then do something with it; like for all selected/tagged files, move/copy/delete them.  This implementation is much better since I can now just tag stuff that I wish to delete with a useful phrase like “to trash”.  And once I’ve tagged a whole bunch of them, can quickly search for them and trash them en-mass at anytime I prefer.  From a workflow perspective, both of these will fit well for me.

The inclusion of Maps and iBooks on the Mac are nice pluses (hopefully both will be well debugged enough by release).

I’m still not a huge fan of Mission Control (compared to the old Spaces) but I plan on revisiting any possible refinements made to the system in 10.9.

What’s going to intrigue me more are the underlying changes which eek out performance from the hardware.  I know that Snow Leopard (on my Mac Pro) isn’t optimal compared to the underlying enhancements included in both 10.7 and 10.8.  Some of user facing changes I mentioned above though are actually favorable towards me actually considering finally moving on from Snow Leopard.

Until the operating system is released though, this will basically all that I’ll be posting about OS X 10.9.