It often seems to me that the more complex things get, the more bugs there are and while new technology is in many ways fantastic, it can also be a source of frustration. Although there is much to like in OS X Mavericks on the Apple iMac or MacBook, it has some frustrating bugs too.
Mavericks has only been out a few weeks, yet Apple has already released a beta of a service pack to developers. Apple doesn't call them service packs, but each 0.0.1 update is essentially a service pack. OS X 10.9.1 is currently being tested and it won't be long before it is pushed out to the public. Let's hope it fixes some of the bugs that many people have been experiencing.
My own irritations are mainly with Finder and Cover Flow view is so unreliable I have given up using it. Select a file in the bottom part of the Finder window and Cover Flow view shows a preview in the top part. However, sometimes the file displayed is not the one that is selected. On several occasions I have been working with a bunch of images, deleting some and renaming others only to find that I had been deleting and renaming the wrong ones. I got in a terrible mess and had to rename everything back and pull files out of the Trash and start again. I don't trust Cover Flow view enough to use it.
Another useful feature of Finder is the way you can preview files. Select a file, tap the spacebar and it is displayed in a pop-up preview window on the screen. It's great for checking images, documents, PDFs and so on without having to load up an app. Only it often doesn't work in Mavericks. The preview window opens and is blank. It sometimes takes four or five attempts to preview a file. Select a group of files, tap space to preview them and there are forward and back buttons. Only some of the files don't display. You have to go back and forth several times before it appears.
Minimise an application and it disappears into the Dock icon. Click the Dock icon and it should be restored and be displayed on the screen. I was working with iMovie the other day and couldn't get it back on the screen when minimised. I had to long click on the Dock icon until the menu appeared and then select the window.
As you can see from the screen shot, it is Mavis' birthday tomorrow, but do I really need to be told eight times? This happened when I booted up and the notifications system seemed to have gone crazy for a minute.
Mavericks is also slow at times and starting up is particularly slow. It seems to take ages to get going in a morning and I have to switch on and go and make a cup of coffee while it sorts itself out, or sit staring at the screen for five minutes until it is finished. Sometimes things take a few seconds to respond too. Perhaps you are thinking I have old hardware, but it's a one year old MacBook Pro and I've still not finished the payments on it. It's not the latest, but it's not exactly old or under powered either.
I have two partitions on my Mac and I keep Lion on one and the other is running Mavericks, upgraded from Mountain Lion. Hold down the Option key just after switching on and there is a choice of which OS to start. Lion, despite being older and having more software installed, starts quicker, uses less memory and is more responsive. That's why I choose to use Lion most of the time and I only use Mavericks when I have to.
Although there are more features in Mavericks, most of the time they aren't ones I care about or need. When I need to get work done quickly, it is best to boot up Lion.
0 comments:
Post a Comment