I like Mavericks, should I upgrade but for what?

[Vapor matt]

I have a 27" iMac with i7 3.5gz and 780 and i like mavericks, what the best reason to upgrade to yosemite?

faster os?

as aim not sure i like the pure look of this new release.

 

[128keaton]

I think its faster, but the whole UI is cleaner. Safari is better, and smarter, so is spotlight. The widgets are handy as well.

 

[grahamperrin]

I would normally say, be guided primarily by the Ars Technica review of the operating system.

This year's review does appear fairly deep, at a glance, but I'm genuinely puzzled by John Siracusa barely mentioning what might have been the most widespread public complaint about the pre-release. In that area, at least, the review seems lacking.

It's a good guide – as usual, kudos to Siracusa – but for Yosemite, I should not treat that review as definitive.

Related (but not about the appearance): Anyone suffering updater's remorse?

 

[grahamperrin]

The Ars Technica review of OS X Yosemite, compared to past Ars reviews of OS X

… It's a good guide – as usual, kudos to Siracusa – but for Yosemite, I should not treat that review as definitive. …

I took the plunge, posted to Ars Technica Open Forum: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=28186613#p28186613

 

[Irishman]

I upgraded on day one for the better OpenGL for 4.x game titles.

No regrets for me.

 

[tschunde]

Don't! It will slow down your mac significantly.

If you don't believe me have a look at this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8791370

and the linked video:
https://vimeo.com/115309653

Besides the superlow performance be aware that it will look supershitty compared to mavericks on your non retina iMac.
Yosemite on the 5k iMac looks okay but not on non retina.

 

[leman]

If you don't believe me have a look at this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8791370

and the linked video:
https://vimeo.com/115309653

Besides the superlow performance be aware that it will look supershitty compared to mavericks on your non retina iMac.
Yosemite an the 5k iMac looks okay but not on non retina.

If you'd care at all to read though the posts on that site, you will find the explanation for 'low performance'

1) On Tiger, the preference panes belong to the same process space. On Yosemite, they have been isolated into their own processes and need to be loaded when the user switches the pane. Essentially, clicking on the icon in Preferences loads a whole new app. Obviously this will be slower. But it gives you better security and stability. And this has nothing to do with the UI performance whatsoever.

2) Yosemite uses a different animation effect which has the optical illusion of being 'laggy', especially in combination with the pane loading delay.

3) None of this has anything to do with performance. UI performance is about how fast the OS can react to application drawing requests. If there is no drawing request (when the pane is not loaded), talking about performance is useless.

But of course, taking an isolated, misinterpreted case as a proof for your point is much more fun than trying to think and analyse the information, isn't it? Easier as well.

P.S. If you want to find a case for UI performance regression, try mission control on retina screens. This one is a much better bet Only a shame that it has been actually substantially improved on Yosemite as opposed to Mavericks.

 

[bigchief]

I have a 27" iMac with i7 3.5gz and 780 and i like mavericks, what the best reason to upgrade to yosemite?

faster os?

as aim not sure i like the pure look of this new release.

I like Mavericks too. Many feel Yosemite was released too early for the general public, full of bugs, and by looking at this board I believe it. I'm going to wait for a couple of more updates before jumping over to Yosemite. In the mean time mavericks is working perfect for me.

 

[Badagri]

If you'd care at all to read though the posts on that site, you will find the explanation for 'low performance'

1) On Tiger, the preference panes belong to the same process space. On Yosemite, they have been isolated into their own processes and need to be loaded when the user switches the pane. Essentially, clicking on the icon in Preferences loads a whole new app. Obviously this will be slower. But it gives you better security and stability. And this has nothing to do with the UI performance whatsoever.

2) Yosemite uses a different animation effect which has the optical illusion of being 'laggy', especially in combination with the pane loading delay.

3) None of this has anything to do with performance. UI performance is about how fast the OS can react to application drawing requests. If there is no drawing request (when the pane is not loaded), talking about performance is useless.

But of course, taking an isolated, misinterpreted case as a proof for your point is much more fun than trying to think and analyse the information, isn't it? Easier as well.

P.S. If you want to find a case for UI performance regression, try mission control on retina screens. This one is a much better bet Only a shame that it has been actually substantially improved on Yosemite as opposed to Mavericks.

Is this an excuse to defend Apple no matter what?

 

[leman]

Is this an excuse to defend Apple no matter what?

No, this is an illustration that there are usually two types of explanations: the easy one and the correct one. OS X has enough of bugs and issues as it is for people to triumphantly pick up corner cases. If your main argument for Yosemite's UI performance regression is the System Preferences app, then you don't really have any arguments. You just try to justify your opinion, with no regards to facts, historical development or the intent behind the change.

 

[Sirious]

Yosemite an the 5k iMac looks okay but not on non retina.

I agree, but it is very usable and that's all that counts for me.

 

[Badagri]

No, this is an illustration that there are usually two types of explanations: the easy one and the correct one. OS X has enough of bugs and issues as it is for people to triumphantly pick up corner cases. If your main argument for Yosemite's UI performance regression is the System Preferences app, then you don't really have any arguments. You just try to justify your opinion, with no regards to facts, historical development or the intent behind the change.

It's not just system preferences. There's Youtube videos all over from simple About System dialog beach balling to small sluggish things on this years Mac's.

 

[cincygolfgrrl]

My 2013 iMac came with Yosemite preloaded. It works great, no issues. I'm sorry that I replaced Mavericks with Yosemite on my 2011 MacBook Air. The MBA is too old to take advantage of Continuity and seems a little slower than it was with OSX 10.9.

That said, I like the way 10.10 looks on the MBA so I plan to nuke & pave with Yosemite. It's mostly a travel machine these days -- a clean install with only apps I'd use on the road with appropriate files in DropBox or iCloud will likely make it faster.

That's the long way to say it's personal preference. If you're able to take advantage of Continuity 10.10 is a good deal. If not, go with your gut.

 

[ItWasNotMe]

...
1) On Tiger, the preference panes belong to the same process space. On Yosemite, they have been isolated into their own processes and need to be loaded when the user switches the pane. Essentially, clicking on the icon in Preferences loads a whole new app. Obviously this will be slower. But it gives you better security and stability. And this has nothing to do with the UI performance whatsoever.

And on Yosemite, every time you move from a specific preference, back to the overall screen, the log is cram-packed with dozens of messages that read

"<date> <time> com.apple.preference.universalaccess.remoteservice <pid>: CGContextRestoreGState: invalid context 0x0. This is a serious error. This application, or a library it uses, is using an invalid context and is thereby contributing to an overall degradation of system stability and reliability. This notice is a courtesy: please fix this problem. It will become a fatal error in an upcoming update."

Sloppy, sloppy release

 

[leman]

And on Yosemite, every time you move from a specific preference, back to the overall screen, the log is cram-packed with dozens of messages that read

Finder has the same. And I think I have seen it with Mail as well. My guess would be that these apps are using some APIs that have been deprecated or maybe there was a change in API but the app code was not updated.

That said, this is just a minor bug and it does not seem to have any negative effects whatsoever. It also happens with Mavericks btw, but in other apps. Still agree with you that this is sloppy. Apple should have the resources to do these things properly. They can always hire more software engineers.

 

[pickaxe]

On Tiger, the preference panes belong to the same process space. On Yosemite, they have been isolated into their own processes and need to be loaded when the user switches the pane. Essentially, clicking on the icon in Preferences loads a whole new app.

This sounds like crappy optimization. Unless you can explain why isolating signed 1st party preference panes is desirable for the user.

2) Yosemite uses a different animation effect which has the optical illusion of being 'laggy', especially in combination with the pane loading delay.

This also sounds like crappy optimization.

3) None of this has anything to do with performance. UI performance is about how fast the OS can react to application drawing requests. If there is no drawing request (when the pane is not loaded), talking about performance is useless.

Nope. That's one definition of UI performance, and by no means a popular one. If the animations used to run at 60fps, and now on hardware that is orders of magnitude faster is nowhere near that, then we have a problem.

taking an isolated, misinterpreted

Nope, half of Yosemite's animation are like that. As for the misinterpreted part... that's just condescending Apple apologist nonsense.

P.S. If you want to find a case for UI performance regression, try mission control on retina screens. This one is a much better bet Only a shame that it has been actually substantially improved on Yosemite as opposed to Mavericks.

so suddenly jerky animations ARE "UI performance regressions" even though you just claimed they aren't?

Anyway, Mission Control is another stinker. It has NEVER performed well since it's inception and has certainly not improved at all from Mavericks to Yosemite, that's just placebo at work. Many paragraphs can also be written about its viability compared to Expose+Spaces, but that story has been retold too many times.

At the end of the day, OS X animations have been super smooth ever since CoreAnimation was introduced and up till 10.6, with a noticeable regression with 10.7 and another huge regression with 10.10.
Same for iOS. iOS 4 was very well optimized, even on terribly outdated hardware like iPhone 3G (caveat: Apple intentionally disabled wallpapers and shadows to achieve parity with newer hardware).
The only conclusion is that nowadays Apple has worse programmers, worse management or both. Which is a huge shame seeing as Apple's budget has gone way up.

 

[Badagri]

And on Yosemite, every time you move from a specific preference, back to the overall screen, the log is cram-packed with dozens of messages that read

"<date> <time> com.apple.preference.universalaccess.remoteservice <pid>: CGContextRestoreGState: invalid context 0x0. This is a serious error. This application, or a library it uses, is using an invalid context and is thereby contributing to an overall degradation of system stability and reliability. This notice is a courtesy: please fix this problem. It will become a fatal error in an upcoming update."

Sloppy, sloppy release

The irony.

 

[leman]

This sounds like crappy optimization. Unless you can explain why isolating signed 1st party preference panes is desirable for the user.

Benefits include potentially improved system stability and simpler overall architecture. But its academical. There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches. The important thing is to recognise that the perceived performance regression is the change in the architecture and not a global performance regression.

I also surely agree that the optimisation is crappy. They should at least load the nib and its data completely before displaying it. Now it works like this: user clicks on the icon, the plugin process is being loaded (results in a wait time), the nib is displayed and only THEN is the data connected to it (which results in a quite awkward looking initial animation). And the cross-fade animation certainly does not help here.

Nope. That's one definition of UI performance, and by no means a popular one. If the animations used to run at 60fps, and now on hardware that is orders of magnitude faster is nowhere near that, then we have a problem

How do you know that the animation is running less then 60 fps? Because it does not look smooth to you? An animation can be running at 1000fps and look jerky if the transitions are not timed in a proper fashion.

so suddenly jerky animations ARE "UI performance regressions" even though you just claimed they aren't?

I claim that the issue with the Preferences app is not the UI performance but the method how the panes are loaded and displayed. The performance of a bunch of badly optimised apps is not indicative of the general capabilities of the OS. App Store app and its ungodly resize performance is a prime example of this.

Anyway, Mission Control is another stinker. It has NEVER performed well since it's inception and has certainly not improved at all from Mavericks to Yosemite, that's just placebo at work.

Mission Control does involve some quite intensive work (like displaying all the visible windows in real-time), so it will obvious have some performance issues, especially if you have a large number of open apps. And yes, it did improve in Yosemite. It used to lag strongly on Mavericks for me, but is very fluid on Yosemite if I have less then 20 or so windows open. It also seems to depend on the app — eg. something like Preview or Steam seem to slow it down considerably.

The only conclusion is that nowadays Apple has worse programmers, worse management or both. Which is a huge shame seeing as Apple's budget has gone way up.

Their attention to detail is definitively slipping, no arguments here. The are a lot of small glitches that simply should not be there. I do disagree with your statement about the ongoing performance regression though, Yosemite definitively performs noticeably better on my retina machine than Mountain Lion or Mavericks did. I do have a Snow Leopard machine at work for running some database software and I honestly can't say that its any smoother than my rMBP. But experiences vary.

 

[Irishman]

The irony.

YouTube: video

The irrelevance.

 

[Badagri]

How?

http://www.marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-ground

 

[aliensporebomb]

Question

The answer to your question is:

-Does your stuff work?

Do you want your stuff to NOT work well?

Then upgrade.

If your stuff works and you want it to keep working, DO NOT UPGRADE.

-Disgruntled musician/photographer.

 

[TheBSDGuy]

If I were you I would split the partition on my main drive, allow about 135GB for Yosemite, then install it that partition without removing Mavericks. This way you could test it out yourself and see if you like it, see if it performs to your satisfaction, etc..

Many people have had problems with it as you can observe in the feedback section of the App Store for Yosemite 10.10.1. Many people dislike the appearance of it as witnessed by the "Yosemite Looks Terrible" thread on this site, which is without a doubt is the single biggest complaint thread I've ever seen about an OS X release. Many of the "staunch defenders" use lingo that, quite honestly, sound like the typical lingo you get from a marketing rep trying to sell you something you may not like or may not need.

If you try it and like it, stick with it. If you don't, you could just delete that partition and reclaim the space. Or, if you wanted, you could keep both.

 

[alex0002]

You might want to check this thread and the link to an article (in german) on macwelt.de:

http://www.macwelt.de/produkte/Yosemite-vs-Mavericks-Was-den-Mac-schneller-macht-9010562.html

Here they compared Yosemite with Mavericks, with most of the tests done on a 2011 Mac Mini. This was a performance review, so they didn't consider fonts or other non measurable aspects of UI performance.

Overall Mavericks was significantly faster at booting and program loading and also had an advantage over Yosemite in web browsing performance.

They also found that memory usage was higher in Yosemite and recommend that people should upgrade to 8GB (if not already), although I would have liked to have seen the actual memory pressure screenshots from Activity Monitor under the same conditions.

On the other hand, Yosemite was faster in the 3D gaming test and also faster in some of the Audio/Video processing tasks.

 

[jms969]

I am now a happy camper, I rolled back to mavericks last night and no more wifi issues!!!

&*%^ Yosemite!!!