Our biggest gripes with OS X Mavericks

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/11/after-a-month-of-use-we-dish-out-our-biggest-gripes-with-os-x-mavericks/

by shawndumas • 13 years ago

39 51 13 years ago

bane5• 13 years ago

I'm confused. Multi-monitor support in Windows worked very well from the start and it's pretty simple.

I've loathed multi-monitor support in OS X for quite a while now. Is this a case of Apple overthinking how to do things?

czk2• 13 years ago

His biggest gripe seems to be that windows can't span across multiple monitors. Seems like a result of Apple giving each monitor it's own "workspace" to prevent maximizing windows from blanking out the other screen - as well as letting you switch workspaces per-screen, perhaps they were too focused on complete screen isolation.

jasonpbecker4• 13 years ago

You can turn this off if you don't want the dock and menu bar across all screens and don't use full screen. Then it operates the old way.

I have to admit to being a bit befuddled-- I don't understand the desire for full screen when you've got big monitors attached, so either and all options have always worked fine for me. I agree it was silly that full screen meant losing a second screen-- but I don't see what's wrong with this compromise.

marbletiles• 13 years ago

Yes, it's overthinking. It's not so much about multi-monitor, which Apple has had working since the 80s, it's about the interaction with the full-screen mode they introduced in 10.7.

At first they blanked non-primary screens when an app entered full-screen, now they're offering this multiple totally-independent bodge.

bane5• 13 years ago

At first they blanked non-primary screens when an app entered full-screen

Right, which was of course a terrible idea and I hated it so much I never ended up using full-screen support when attached to an extra monitor (even if I like it well enough when I was just using my laptop on its own).

It doesn't seem to be much different from maximizing in Windows but ever since full-screen support was introduced it's been a bizarre combination of good ideas and the kind of bad ideas that only come about from never actually using the feature.

There's other issues with multi-monitor support in OS X that it sounds like they're addressing in Mavericks, but these other issues as well as loads of app compatibility ones I've been reading about are enough to keep me from upgrading.

zdw• 13 years ago

Mail is probably the roughest part of Mavericks. They removed a variety of options for display and printing, and even after the patch that fixed Gmail issues, it still forces a re-download of your entire IMAP mailbox.

It also does some weird stuff with folders - if you had an IMAP folder named "Archive", it magically became special in Mavericks, which took some people off guard.

dsirijus2• 13 years ago

Tell me about it... Just few hours ago I filed a bug report where Mail hoses up at IMAP-fetching Gmail conversations that are at GMail's theoretical limit - 100.

Spent too much playing with it last week or so, just to get the core functionality out. But hey, it works now. :)

czk2• 13 years ago

I have to agree with the power button complaint as well. I have a 2013 MBA and I frequently hit the power button during a backspace spasm. I'm not sure if it's a problem with my machine, but it won't come back on right away if I hit some keys or the power button again, I have to wait for what seems like a minute or two.

quarterto2• 13 years ago

We used to be able to use PowerKey [1] to remap the power key to something useful like ⌦. Mavericks breaks this. The ⌦ still gets sent, but the computer sleeps before anything else happens.

[1] https://github.com/pkamb/PowerKey

chiph• 13 years ago

You would think they'd remember the problems that people had with the Reset button on the Apple ][ (it was right above the Return key). They eventually put a stronger spring under it to prevent users from losing their work.

wl• 13 years ago

The article is wrong. There is a fix for the power button issue.

http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1q9dmc/mavericks_powe...

quarterto2• 13 years ago

One issue that plagues me is that full-screen apps sometimes don't take up the entire screen. They're still allocating space for the menu bar. Lo and behold, there is an invisible menu bar there. Sometimes the apps still draw a (totally nonfunctional) window title bar. This only ever happens with Sublime Text, iTerm, and Chrome Dev Tools. Id est the three apps that I spend 99% of my time in. Quick Look also has severe performance regressions. It takes ~20 seconds to open the first time. Not so quick, eh. I suspect App Nap is at fault here.

disposition2• 13 years ago

This is most noticeable for me when using VLC and there doesn't seem to be a specific set of actions that prevent the ghost menubar from displaying. I end up just doing random actions (click different desktops, unfullscreen -> refullscreen) and hope the ghost disappears.

bnycum• 13 years ago

My only real gripe is that none of my machines will sleep now and I have to shut them down. I constantly keep finding my Macbook Pro burning hot while still closed and on my desk. My iMac does the same. I haven't found a solution yet.

dsirijus2• 13 years ago

Be careful. That much heat near the display can damage it easily. Better to leave keyboard gathering dust than get hue defects on your display.

coldtea• 13 years ago

That much heat near the display can damage it easily.

Citation needed.

nmcfarl• 13 years ago

This is my problem as well – and I have no solution either.

chime• 13 years ago

I think I have the same problem with Chrome. When I open some links, Chrome loads the whole page but only shows a white background. As soon as I start to scroll, the content appears. It's pretty annoying.

knodi• 13 years ago

OS X to me keeps getting progressively worst every release.

Mac Mail is now unusable with large inboxes, spotlight is slow, the finder is still stupid (explorer is better then finder at this point). New power management in the near macbook airs is the worst.

xgarland• 13 years ago

Not only mail, but the native cal app has become unbearable, too! Used to be one of my favorite applications until about snow leopard.

summerdown2• 13 years ago

I'm still on snow leopard because I didn't like the idea of spaces going from two dimensions to one. Nothing I've read since has told me it's a must-have upgrade.

The biggest thing I'm happy about is the old version of itunes. I can see podcasts in a grid and group them by album rating.

jasonpbecker4• 13 years ago

Yeah, I am really annoyed with 1D versus 2D. However, if you're using a laptop, battery life from Mavericks alone makes it a killer upgrade.

geofd• 13 years ago

My complaint is a strange delay that affects the command line, in iTerm and Terminal alike. My coworker also has the same issue. It's quite tedious to type faster than the computer; over the network, I can understand; but locally, with a machine that's not stressed?

I can't help but think the new App Nap is to blame for this, but I have no proof.

maccard• 13 years ago

Now that you mention it, the first time I logged in on mavericks, I noticed a delay, akin to using msysgit on windows. I did fix this, I think by altering some of the parameters passed to the login command. Breaks a lot of other functionality, but it works.

terhechte• 13 years ago

I have the same issue. Though I've only installed Mavericks on my Macbook Air 11" so far, and I thought that it would be an issue with the machine's limited speed. This delay really bugs me and I hope that it is something software that can easily be fixed.

frenger2• 13 years ago

I'm having real issues with the windows of certain specific apps (Chrome especially) either vanishing or retreating to the edge of the screen and becoming unmovable each time I lock the machine/it goes to sleep. Really annoying. Hopefully a bugfix soon!

p.s.: a fix I've found is changing the screen resolution (and back again) each time you unlock. hmmmmm.

DavidPP• 13 years ago

I have the exact same issue, it's driving me crazy. I'm wondering where the issue lie as my partner as the same setup (same version of macbook air/same monitor) and doesn't seem to suffer from that issue.

The biggest difference is that I updated while he did a clean install.

frenger2• 13 years ago

I think clean install must be the answer tbh - I upgraded too. I'll let you know if I try it, maybe over the weekend.

purephase• 13 years ago

The scrolling issue is very annoying. Sounds more like a Chrome issue though as other apps appear to be okay.

bnastic• 13 years ago

Apple really dropped the ball with multi monitor support since introducing the full screen mode. Seems like they have their sight squarely on laptops (with no external monitors) where it works really well (with swipe gestures etc.).

NFS issues... sigh... I'm so used to them that I stopped noticing. Getting Linux and OS X to agree on exporting/mounting NFS shares is why people hate computers.

MetaCosm• 13 years ago

Using samba is legitimately less painful.

specto• 13 years ago

Access speeds to my SAMBA server are so bad since Mavericks I had to switch to NFS. Even with the workaround to disable Apple's version of sambaV3, I still have issues.

easytiger2• 13 years ago

I couldn't get NFS to work. Really wish i could happily live with Linux on a MBPr. But the h/w complexity is proving very hard to support. Might be time to give it another whirl soon.

Also they keyboard layout is fucking stupid. It really upsets me when i'm coding. Going from a standard UK keyboard to an Apple abomination of a UK keyboard is highly mentally disturbing for my small brain.

bombtrack• 13 years ago

Suffered the same problem. I'm getting around it by using cmd-k, then using cifs://server/share to connect instead.

justinsb• 13 years ago

Personally I hate the "slide" animations when e.g. launching a new full-screen window. It takes about a second, but any keys I press during the animation seem to go into a blackhole (repro: full-screen chrome, open new window, start typing 123456789; typically 1-4 or 1-5 are lost).

Other than that, pretty happy (though I don't use many of the Apple apps).

ricardobeat• 13 years ago

I hadn't noticed the power button migrating into the keyboard until now (still have a 2010 MBP), that's a real step backwards in design / usability.

ptaffs• 13 years ago

OSX(n) release fails to fix all other OSX(n-1) problems. Ho-hum.

booop• 13 years ago

The past couple of years have seen some major fuckups in the desktop OS space for usability.

Windows 8, and now this. Although this is no where near as bad.

easytiger2• 13 years ago

And ubuntu and kde 4

aclevernickname• 13 years ago

So how's 2007 treating you?

Don't worry, by 2013, KDE 4 is a better and more stable UI than OS X. :)

lucian1900• 13 years ago

Actually, the new multi-monitor support is great! Besides fixing the silliness (blanked second screen), this one can support screens of different DPI but similar apparent size.

myko• 13 years ago

Yeah this is much improved over the old system.

Except when hooking IBOutlets up between monitors and the little dialog disappears, which can be annoying as hell. But even with that irritation it's miles ahead of how it was previously.

swombat• 13 years ago

In Mavericks, pushing that power button automatically puts the computer to sleep, no questions asked.

Wtf, really? That was one of the features I used to show as a sensible difference between mac and PC... that a windows pc will just shut down your computer if you mistakenly touch the power button while handling it, whilst a mac wouldn't...

darrenkopp• 13 years ago

What happens when you press the power button is configurable in windows, and I would guess that by default it shuts down on a desktop and sleeps on a laptop.

The problem here is that Apple put the power button above the delete button and you end up sleeping your computer very often just because you miss the delete key.

zimbatm• 13 years ago

It's not as bad. No work data is lost since it's just a sleep. Cycling back to working mode takes ~2s + the time to enter the password if you have a screen lock.

cwbrandsma• 13 years ago

My gripe is how the Magic Mouse works on Mavericks. On Lion it worked really well, now it flips out all the time. I get scrolling when my fingers aren't moving a lot, especially right to left. But I cannot tell you how many times I've tried to click on something...and only have the mouse move the page down just-a-bit, moving the link away from the pointer.

Our biggest gripes with OS X Mavericks

Related Stories