I've been running the GM of OS X 10.9 Mavericks for about a week now. I don't
expect much to change between now and the actual release, so I thought I'd
write up a couple thoughts quickly. This is by no means a [Siracusa
review][sr], so don't expect double-digits of pages.
Mavericks is somewhere between a utility/background release (see Mountain Lion)
and a feature release (Lion, though I wasn't happy with the majority of these
iOS-inspired features). There is a lot of things that are happening in the
background that I'm happy to see - the [Advanced
Technologies
page](http://www.apple.com/osx/preview/advanced-technologies.html)
on Apple's Site indicates that there is a great deal of under-the-surface
changes that improve battery life across the board. However, things like iBooks
and Maps are welcome additions from iOS, and Finder's improvements are things
that power users have been looking forward to for years. The most welcome of
these feature additions is the [new
Calendar](http://www.apple.com/osx/preview/#calendar), which takes some needed
visual cues from iOS and turns out looking like a proper (and powerful) desktop
calendar should look like.
The full-screen changes are really great, and while I'm not sure how they
compare to other full-screen implementations in Windows and Linux, it fits all my
use-cases for full-screen apps and I imagine it'll do the same for most other
users. Apple has also done a great job in introducing the iCloud Keychain - password
security is, for me, taking care of by 1Password .
Apple has mimiced Agilebits' software in classic Apple fashion, which is
a pretty good move for the safety of most Mac users.
I'm in an admittedly rare position as this is one of the first times I've run
a new Mac operating system on a up-to-date piece of hardware. I bought my first
Mac halfway though Tiger's lifespan, and my previous MacBook Pro was purchased
a quarter-way through Snow Leopard's. Mavericks is, then, built especially for
my device, which has the nice benefit of improving battery life in a noticable
fashion. While I certainly haven't done any testing, it seems as though my
battery has increased in average capacity by a solid forty-five minutes to an
hour. The entire system also seems to be running faster, though this could be
due to my fresh install and not to the operating system itself. This is
a pretty inaccurate metric as it is almost entirely personal speculation,
but I imagine I won't be the only one noticing this on official release.
Apple hasn't officially announced a release date for Mavericks, and I can't
even offer an educated guess as to when it will be, either. Historically, Mac OS X
release dates have fallen in summer time, either at the end of July or August.
The last fall release ([10.5
Leopard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOSX_Leopard)) was late October, and
Apple's rumored [Oct
22](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/10/08/apple-ipad-oct-22/2947433/)
event may be a perfect time to announce a relatively quick release date (easier
given OS X's online release via the MAS). I would guess late October, early
November, given these facts and the GM's rock-solid performance.
Overall, I'm pretty satisfied. I think that OS X has been ignored a little bit
in favor of iOS, but I can understand why.
Desktop OSes are familiar territory - there may be a "future OS" team at Apple,
but the advent of multi-touch is fairly recent, and any of those advancements
being baked into the OS is likely only coming to fruition as early as OS
X 10.10.
[sr]: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/