On Launchpad on Mac, you can find all of your apps, regardless of where they are installed. While you can expect few problems on Launchpad with apps installed in the Applications folder, the same can't be said for titles downloaded and stored elsewhere. Occasionally, installed apps aren't showing up under Launchpad. Conversely, you might see icons for apps that are no longer on your computer. In times like these, the Launchpad database gets corrupted.

Luckily, there's a quick fix for it! Here's how to reset Launchpad on macOS Monterey on all the best Macs!

How to reset Launchpad on your Mac

1. Go to the Finder on your Mac.
2. Hold down the Option key and click on the Go menu.
3. Select Library.
4. Open the Application Support folder.

5. Click on the Dock folder.
6. Delete all the files ending in ".db."

7. Empty the Trash on your Mac.
8. Restart your Mac.

Once your Mac has restarted, it will automatically rebuild the Launchpad database and repopulate it with an accurate count of the apps you have on your Mac.

Easy fix

As you can see, it's relatively simple to reset Launchpad on your Mac when there is a problem. Follow the steps, and be on your way!

May 2022: Updated for the latest version of macOS.

Word is spreading on info security websites that there's a vulnerability in a Unix program called Bash. Bash, or Bourne-Again Shell, is standard issue on the Mac, and at this writing, the latest version of OS X — 10.9.5 — has a version that's vulnerable to this new exploit. Should Mac users be concerned about this new security issue? Sure. Should we panic? No, and here's why...

What is Bash?

Bash is a shell — a processor that lets you type commands which then result in actions. It's been around for 25 years, and is the core shell tool used in most Linux and Unix operating systems (including OS X) found in millions of computers all over the world. It can also be used to parse scripts for other programs, like Web servers.

The exploit that's been recently discovered affects all Bash releases through 4.3 — about 25 years worth of Bash versions. So there are a lot of systems potentially affected by this flaw.

What is Shellshock?

The new bug has been nicknamed "Shellshock." The vulnerability lets an outside attacker insert extra code into a Bash command. Researchers are still trying to understand the extent of the exploit, but one of the most prevalent vulnerabilities involves web servers running Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts, a standard method for creating dynamic content on the web. An attacker uses "environment variables" containing Bash functions in them. You can read more about it here. Warning: It's pretty dense technical language.

Arbitrary code execution is a very serious problem. The worst case scenario is that an outside attacker can take over the targeted computer, access files and get it to run software it wouldn't otherwise.

Shellshock is being compared to Heartbleed, a bug involving a popular security library called OpenSSL. There's no direct correlation here, but like OpenSSL, Bash is broadly used by computers all over the Internet, so there's concern that many will go unpatched and hackers will use the exploit towards their own ends.

Back to the Mac

OS X Mavericks 10.9.5 includes Bash 3.2, a version of Bash that is vulnerable to the exploit. As this was posted, Apple had not yet released a security patch to update the version of Bash included with Mavericks.

You can test your Mac yourself using a simple command in the Terminal application.

1. Double-click on the Utilities folder.
2. Double-click on Terminal.
3. Type (or copy and paste) the following command: env X="() { :;} ; echo vulnerable" /bin/sh -c "echo stuff"

If your Mac says "vulnerable," then the version of Bash installed on it is indeed vulnerable to the problem.

But that doesn't mean that your Mac can be exploited by hackers. You'd have to be running software that is accessible to the outside world and invokes Bash when it is run. So far I haven't seen any exploits that the average Mac user would need to worry about.

What now?

System administrators and IT personnel responsible for managing Internet-facing servers need to be on high alert at this hour, patching vulnerable systems with an updated release of Bash or even using a shell program besides Bash until a better solution is available.

StackExchange has an explanation on how to patch the Macintosh version of Bash, but this isn't something I'd recommend for the lay user. For one thing, it depends on having Apple's Xcode programming environment installed on your Mac. For another, it depends on being comfortable using the Mac's command line interface via the Terminal program.

For those reasons, I'd recommend holding off until an officially-brewed fix is ready from Apple. Given the high public profile of this particular problem, I hope that won't be too long.

Are you concerned about the Bash vulnerability? Are you waiting for Apple to update security on Mavericks and other operating systems? Let me know in the comments.

It's been a busy day for Apple. After having launched iOS 8 to the public and hosting a number of updated iOS 8 apps in the App Store, the Mac-maker has now released an update to OS X Mavericks. Now, the Mac OS is at version 10.9.5, bringing with it a number of stability and performance updates.

According to Apple, the update brings better stability to VPN connections as well stability for accessing files on an SMB server. However, the feature that consumers will likely benefit the most from will be the new version of Safari that's included. With the new Mavericks, Safari 7.0.6 comes bundled.

Have you downloaded and installed the update yet?

Badges are those app notifications that show you that something is waiting for you — maybe a to-do list item is due, or maybe you have a new email. Sometimes badges can be helpful. Other times they can be really irritating. Here's how to activate them and deactivate them.

I have to admit that I find badge notifications really annoying. Sometimes they're really helpful, and I do leave them on for most things. But other times they drive me to distraction — I can't stand to see an application icon with a red number glaring at me, a reminder of some unfinished business or something I have to do.

Sometimes there are good reasons why those items have gone unfinished or unanswered, and I'm tired of my apps passively reminding me that they're still waiting for me! That's why I turn off notification badges that annoy me.

To turn notification badges on and off

1. Click on the  menu.
2. Select System Preferences.
3. Click on Notifications.
4. Select the app you want to change the badge status of.
5. Uncheck (or check) the Badge app icon checkbox.
6. Close Notifications.

That's it, in a nutshell.

There's no global setting for badges, unfortunately, so you can't turn them all on and off with a single click. But this way you can keep the distractions to a dull roar.

I hope this helps you get your badges under control. Any questions? Let me know.

OS X Mavericks introduced notifications to Mac's lock screen. Here's how to turn them off, and why it matters.

All sorts of applications display data in notifications. Default applications like Calendar, Mail, Messages and others do; social media services supported by Apple like Twitter and Facebook can as well. So do many web sites and third-party apps.

The lock screen keeps anyone who doesn't know your system password from logging in and doing damage to your computer when you're not looking, and keeping your data from prying eyes.

But most applications that support system notifications will, by default, display them on the lock screen.

This is one of those classic cases of convenience trumping security. If you're the only person who ever looks at your computer, this probably isn't a big deal for you and can potentially be really helpful. But if you're in an open office environment or somewhere else where prying eyes can see what's on your lock screen, there may be circumstances where you really don't want people seeing notifications.

How to turn off lock screen notifications in OS X Mavericks

1. Click on the  menu.
2. Select System Preferences...
3. Click on Notifications
4. For each app listed in the Notification Center sidebar, uncheck Show notifications on lock screen.
5. Close Notifications.

That's all there is to it! Once you're done.

It'd be nice if there was a global setting for this, which there isn't, of course — but that way you can tailor lock screen notifications to only include those apps you really want or need to see.

I hope this helps you improve the security of your lock screen and make notifications on the Mac a bit less annoying. Have I left anything out, or do you have any questions? Fire away.

You restarted your Mac, and now you can't log in. The Apple boot screen appears and pinwheels for a few moments, then the screen goes black. You can still see a cursor, but you can't log in and get any further. Don't panic! We have the fix! Print these instructions out or save them to an iOS device and read them from there — I'll walk you through how to recover.

What's likely happened is that a system preference called a plist file has gotten corrupted or damaged somehow. The file is called com.apple.loginwindow.plist. In order to recover, you'll need to delete the file. There's a catch, though. This method requires you to have access to another Mac equipped with FireWire or Thunderbolt.

Using target disk mode to delete a file

1. Turn your Mac off it's powered.
2. Connect the Mac to another Mac using a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable.
3. Turn your Mac on and immediately hold down the T key.
4. The screen will show you Thunderbolt and FireWire icons instead of the customary interface.
5. Your Mac's hard drive will mount on the desktop of the computer it's connected to. Double-click on the hard drive icon to open it.
6. Double-click on the Library folder.
7. Double-click on the Preferences folder.
8. Click on the com.apple.loginwindow.plist file and drag it to the Trash.
9. Empty the Trash.
10. Unmount your Mac's hard drive by dragging it into the Trash.
11. Power it down by pressing the power button.

When you turn your Mac on again, it will create a new loginwindow.plist file to create the old one, and you should be able to log in as normal.

Update!

This problem sometimes happens with OS X Mavericks 10.9.2. If you're running an out of date version of OS X, the best thing you can do to avoid having this happen again is to update your Mac to the most recent version of the operating system. So please, update.

Hopefully this fixes what's ailing your Mac. Let me know if you have any questions or run into an unexpected problem.

Beginning with OS X Mavericks Apple added the ability for web sites to push updates directly to your desktop. Such updates appear in Notification Center, and when you click on them, Safari will open and load the page. But what happens when you receive notifications you don't want anymore? Here's how to manage which sites can ping you and which can't.

First of all, if you're new to OS X Mavericks or you've never used web notifications, read up on how to get started:

• How to get notifications from your favorite websites with Notification Center and OS X Mavericks

Maybe you've seen a message from Safari that looks like this:

And maybe you've clicked the Allow button. Or maybe you've clicked the Don't Allow button. Now you've changed your mind. You want those notifications. Or you're sick of them. Either way, here's how to take care of them.

To manage web notifications with Safari

1. Double-click the Safari icon
2. Click the Safari menu and select Preferences. (Alternately, you can hold down the command button and type ,.
3. Click the Notifications button in Safari's preferences
4. Select the site you'd like to change the status of.
5. Click the Allow or Deny button as you'd like.

You can also remove sites from the list, though if you do, Safari will ask you the next time you visit the site if to receive notifications from it.

If you don't want Safari to ever ask you about web site notifications, uncheck Allow websites to ask permission to send push notifications.

You can also change the way Notification Center will inform you of new push notifications from web sites.

To change Safari web notifications

1. Click the  menu.
2. Select System Preferences...
3. Click on Notifications.
4. Click on Safari.

Safari can alert you with banners which appear in the upper-right corner of the screen and automatically go away after a few seconds, or alerts that stay on the screen until you manually dismiss them.

Get notified!

Hopefully these tips helped you get control of Safari's web notifications. If you have anything else to add or if you have any questions, let me know in the comments.

Apple has just updated OS X to version 10.9.4 with fixes for security, compatibility, and stability, as well as Safari version 7.0.5. This update fixes a number of issues, including a problem that kept some Macs from automatically connecting to Wi-Fi networks. Waking your computer from sleep is now also more reliable.

Users can download the update from the Mac App Store. Simply go to the Downlads section and hit Update or Update All. More information can be found on Apple's Support website. Come back after you update and tell us if you notice any improvements in OS X 10.9.4 below in the comments.

Source: Apple

You've installed a developer preview of OS X Yosemite, and you didn't take my previous advice to partition your hard drive. Now you're in a pickle: For whatever reason, you need to downgrade to Mavericks. How do you do it? Let's take a look.

To be frank, Apple doesn't make this process consistent and easy like they do with so much else. Upgrading your operating system, whether you're using a Mac or an iOS device, is typically a one-way journey. Even Apple warns developers not to use Yosemite on a live system until it's ready for prime-time.

But many of us give in to temptation and make decisions that we later regret. Whatever the case, you can recover, though how you can recover will depend on circumstances.

Recovery System

Some folks experimenting with Yosemite have been able to boot into the Mac's recovery system (accessed holding down the command and R keys on boot) and reinstalling Mavericks from there. I've seen it written about in plenty of places, and I spoke to a few of you on Twitter who had done it too.

I tried using this method myself on my Yosemite machine, but I couldn't get it to work. Each time it would tell me it wanted to reinstall 10.10 instead. What's more, it would hang indefinitely when it got to the authentication stage.

OS X Internet Recovery

The alternative solution is to use OS X Internet Recovery instead. Mac models introduced since OS X Lion debuted in 2011 have the ability to restore themselves as long as they're connected to the Internet. Some Mac models that shipped before Lion will work with OS X Internet Recovery too (with a firmware patch) — Apple has a list on their support site.

To access OS X Internet Recovery, hold down the command, option, and R keys simultaneously on boot.

You'll know if you're in OS X Internet Recovery if you see a spinning globe on your Mac screen, with a progress bar showing a countdown in minutes. That's Internet Recovery telling you it's downloading from Apple's servers.

Because OS X Internet Recovery is, literally, restoring over the Internet, it takes longer to work, since it has to download everything from Apple's servers to get going. We're talking about the initial recovery software plus a 5 GB Mavericks installer download. So be patient.

There are a few caveats you have to bear in mind if you use this method: First of all, you'll need to be on a network that supports Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA or WPA2) security protocol. Secondly, when the Mac restores, it will be running the version of OS X it came with, so you may actually have to upgrade again via the Mac App Store to get back up and running with Mavericks. You can read more on Apple's support site.

The bottom line

Once you've restored your system, use your preferred backup method to restore your files and applications.

One way or the other, rest assured that you can dial back your Mac to Mavericks if you run into Yosemite show-stoppers that keep you from using the new operating system software, at least for now.

Got questions? I have answers. Fire away in the comments!

The Apple TV is great on its own, but it's even better when it is paired with a Mac or iOS device that can stream video via AirPlay. That opens up a new world of possibilities, to stream content available on the Mac that isn't already available for Apple TV. Is your Mac ready to stream video to the Apple TV? Use this guide to figure it out. And if your Mac doesn't make the cut, don't give up hope — you still may be able to see your Mac's video on your TV. Read on for details.

What you'll need

• A second or third-generation Apple TV.
• A Mac capable of streaming AirPlay video to the Apple TV.
• OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or later.
• A Wi-Fi network

The following Mac models are capable of streaming video to the Apple TV via AirPlay:

• iMac (Mid 2011 or newer)
• Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer)
• MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)
• Mac Pro (Late 2013 or newer)

The easiest way to figure out if your Mac can use Apple TV is if you see an AirPlay menu appear on your Mac's menu bar. It looks like this:

The menu options are pretty self explanatory — you can mirror your Mac's display on your television using Mountain Lion; if you have Mavericks (10.9) installed you can also extend your Mac's desktop, using the TV as a second external display.

If the AirPlay menu is not visible, chances are your Mac is either too old or not running a new enough version of OS X. Check your specs and, if possible, upgrade. Remember that Mavericks is a free upgrade for anyone running a capable Mac and OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or higher.

• Is your Mac ready for Mavericks? Find out here

Let's assume for the moment that your Mac simply can't stream video to your Apple TV. What then? Well, you still might be able to hook it up to the TV, though it'll probably require a direct physical connection. What kind of connection depends entirely on the age of your Mac.

From 2008 on Apple included an interface called Mini DisplayPort that looks identical to Thunderbolt. Apple and other companies make Mini DisplayPort to video adapters that will enable you to connect your Mac to an HDTV using an HDMI cable, the same interface the Apple TV uses to connect to the Mac.

Bear in mind that the first batch of Mini DisplayPort Macs that shipped in 2009 do not supply audio over mDP. Those Macs include:

• iMac (Early 2009) and (Mid 2009)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009) and (Late 2009)
• Mac Pro (Early 2009)
• MacBook (Late 2009)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum Late 2008)
• MacBook Pro (late 2008), (Mid 2009), and (Early 2009)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008) and (Mid 2009)

When you attach the Mac to the TV using a Mini DisplayPort cable, the Mac senses the TV as an external display and acts the same way.

Hopefully this will get you going to help get video from your Mac to your TV, either using Apple TV or another method. This is a lot of information to take in, so if you have any questions at all, leave them in the comments.

As we head towards WWDC 2014 we thought it would be fun to look back at Apple World Wide Developer Conferences past, what they introduced, and what impact they made. Today let's take a look at WWDC 2013, where Apple introduced iOS 7, OS X Mavericks, new MacBook Airs, new Time Machines and the stunning new Mac Pro...

WWDC 2013 took place from June 10 to 14 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. Tickets went on sale in late April and sold out about 70 seconds later, prompting Apple in 2014 to offer WWDC tickets to registered developers for the first time in a lottery.

WWDC 2013 was a crucial year for iOS. Apple had reinvented iOS in the biggest single update since the iPhone was introduced in 2007 when it unveiled iOS 7, featuring a radical visual departure from previous releases. iOS 7 — the first version to be spearheaded by Apple's design chief Jony Ive — focused on clarity by removing unessential interface elements, shifting buttons to tinted text and simply getting out of the way of contents and apps. The entire interface was cloaked in a physics and particle engine that shifted as you moved the device, building a parallax engine into the home screen.

Other new features of iOS 7 included Control Center, to make it easy to access commonly-used apps and features, an enhanced Notification Center, multitasking, AirDrop and more.

By comparison, OS X Mavericks didn't have the visual pizzazz of iOS 7, but sported a lot of under-the-hood changes aimed at improving performance and efficiency, especially for laptop users. Losing the big cat moniker for the first time, OS X Mavericks is named for an infamous surf break not too far away from Apple's Cupertino headquarters.

With timer coalescing, App Nap, memory compression and other features, Mavericks makes the Mac operate more efficiently with less power and better performance. But there are some interface changes, too, like tabbed Finder windows and better document tagging. Multiple display support was enhanced, and Maps and iBooks applications have been added. Notification Center was dramatically improved with Mavericks, as well.

Cloud services got some important updates at WWDC, too. Apple introduced iWork apps for iCloud, making it possible for iCloud users to work on their Pages, Keynote and Numbers documents without needing a Mac or iOS device at all. And with pressure mounting from streaming music services like Pandora and Spotify, Apple introduced iTunes Radio.

Apple also introduced new MacBook Air laptops, the first Macs to feature Intel's Haswell CPUs, which enable heretofore unimaginable battery life for MacBook Airs - up to 12 hours of continuous use between charges for the 13 inch model. The upgrade also gave Apple a chance to incorporate 802.11ac Wi-Fi networking, with an overall speed boost of up to 3x provided you're using an 802.11ac base station. That's why Apple introduced new AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule devices at the same time.

Apple also took the wraps off a machine that wouldn't ship until late December, but one that got Mac hardware fans excited: the radically different Mac Pro, a machine presumed dead after Apple discontinued the earlier model, which languished for years.

One-eighth the volume of its predecessor and turbine-shaped to speed the removal of warm air from its unified core, the Mac Pro is a parallel processing powerhouse, featuring a Xeon processor with up to 12 cores and twin AMD FirePro workstation-class GPUs. SATA hard drive bays are gone, in their place went PCIe-based flash storage, and RAM with twice the bandwidth of the old Mac Pro.

Give it the keynote a watch and let me know — what do you think of WWDC 2013 and what, if anything, does it make you hope for at WWDC 2014?

The latest general release of Mavericks is now available for download from the Mac App Store. It was released to the general public on Thursday after a lengthy beta testing process that began back in early March. It solves a bunch of problems that have lingered for Mavericks users since 10.9 was released last fall.

4K the way it's supposed to be

OS X 10.9.3 brings greatly improved support for 4K (Ultra High Definition) displays. Few Macs are even capable of driving displays that large — right now it's limited to the new Mac Pro and the late 2013 refresh of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro. But up until 10.9.3, support for those displays was provisional. Hooking up a 4 K monitor to a compatible Mac might show you a sharp image, but the text, icons and other elements were too tiny to be useful.

Scaled resolutions in 10.9.3 look much better than before. New modes have been added to change resolution optimized for content and screen size. Using the Mac's Displays preferences works a lot more like it does on a Retina display-equipped Mac, with different scaled resolutions attributed to values like "More text" and "More space."

Tethered syncing returns

A change in syncing behavior between Mountain Lion and Mavericks created some discomfort for people who upgraded last fall: Apple removed the ability to sync contacts and calendars via USB — it had to happen in the cloud. Tethered syncing returns, but make sure to download iTunes 11.2 as well.

iTunes 11.2 also introduces another potentially unwelcome behavior: The Mac Observer reports that if you have Find My Mac turned on, your /Users folder can get hidden.

Find My Mac and the case of the missing /Users folder

Find my Mac is an iCloud setting that helps you locate your Mac if it ever goes missing, using the iCloud.com web site or iOS app. Frustrating matters, if you turn off Find My Mac after the fact, the /Users directory doesn't get unhidden. You can unhide the /Users folder using this one weird trick:

How to unhide your /Users directory in 10.9.3

Update: Apple followed up with iTunes 11.2.1, which corrects the /Users directory issue.

Mixed platform networking overhaul

If you rely of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to keep your network data secure over the Internet, or if it's mandated by your employer, take note that Apple has improved the reliability of IPsec (Internet Protocol security) — welcome news for Mavericks users who first ran into some speedbumps with this last fall.

Apple's made some other key networking changes in 10.9.3, as well. If you're working in a mixed Mac/PC environment and need to share files on Windows servers, Apple's reworked its Server Message Block (SMB) support — copying, editing and inspecting file permissions should all go easier with this release. Users requiring Active Directory authentication should see improved login speed, also.

Security Update 2014-002 was released in April; the security changes made in that release were folded into 10.9.3, as well, along with a maintenance update to Safari, bringing that to 7.0.3.

So far it's been smooth sailing with OS X 10.9.3 — I haven't run into any showstoppers or major problems, outside of the /Users directory issue I previously noted, which amounts to an inconvenience at worst, adding an extra step where none existed before. iTunes 11.2, which I'll look at more in depth separately, seems peppier than before when I'm doing iTunes searches.

10.9.3 also corrects a longstanding wake from sleep issue that would prevent the Mac from reconnecting to a Wi-Fi network if Bluetooth was active. It didn't happen to everyone but I had the problem and many other readers did. I'm glad to see this ironed out, but again I wonder why it took Apple so long to deploy a bug fix that caused Mavericks users pain.

The bottom line

To answer the question I posed at the outset: Is this the Mavericks we've been waiting for?

If you're using 4K displays and want the text and windowing to look Retina display-quality good, 10.9.3's enhanced 4K support will help. Tethered data sync support is a welcome return in this release, too.

The networking changes are long overdue — this is stuff Apple should have had nailed solid before Mavericks ever shipped, and it is, frankly, embarrassing that it's taken this long to straighten out. I earnestly hope that Craig Federighi and company don't make that mistake again as Apple grinds forth on OS X 10.10.

On balance, 10.9.3 is an overall improvement to Mavericks, and that's a good thing. Installing it seems like a safe bet at this point, outside of that change in /Users directory behavior.

As always, I encourage you to make sure your Mac is backed up using Time Machine or another method before making any changes to your Mac.

Mavericks has been updated to 10.9.3, and a peculiar thing has happened to some people who have applied the update: Their /Users directory has gone missing. More specifically, it's been hidden. Unhiding it isn't a big deal, though it does require you to use a utility that many Mac users never go near: Terminal, the command line interface for OS X.

This isn't the first time Apple's hidden essential directories from users. When OS X Lion was released in 2011, Apple began to hide the Library folder. The files in there are ordinarily meant to be left alone, so it makes a certain amount of sense to keep it hidden from view to help prevent accidents. What's more, you're still able to access it by holding down the option key while selecting the Go menu in the Finder.

Hiding the Users directory is a little more strange. If you use your Mac exclusively and haven't set up any additional user accounts, this may not be a big deal. But if you're working on a shared Mac and occasionally need to access the other user directories on your computer (say, to copy files between users), this can create a real problem.

The other curious thing about this new issue is that it isn't universal. Many people report that their /Users directory is still visible. But many others have noticed that it's no longer readily available. I'm still scratching my head on that one — it's unclear which state the /Users directory in 10.9.3 should be in, hidden or visible.

In the interim, if you have this problem, it's easy to correct. At least temporarily.

To unhide your /Users directory

1. Open the Utilities folder (inside the Applications folder)
2. Double-click on Terminal.
3. Type sudo chflags nohidden /Users then return. (If you're doing it while reading these instructions, you can copy and paste that too.)
4. You will be prompted to enter your system password. Type it in and then return.
5. Click on the Terminal menu and select Quit Terminal.

Your /Users directory will now be visible. Temporarily, anyway. /Users will disappear when you restart.

Update: Reader Yadiel Sotomayor notes that the Go To Folder... command in the in the Finder will also bring you to the /Users directory, even if it's hidden. To do so:

1. Go to the Finder.
2. Hold down the shift and command keys and type G.
3. In the text entry field, type /Users then click the Go button.

Update 2: Apple has released iTunes 11.2.1, available for download through Software Update, which corrects the problem — looks like it may have bean a bug after all. In the interest of continuity I'm leaving my bloviation about Apple's track record with hiding essential folders from users below.

I felt that Apple was nannyish when they obscured user access to the /Library folder in Lion. Assuming that Mac users are going to create more trouble for themselves by playing with the /Library folder is like hearing "children shouldn't play with matches:" Condescending at best.

I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here by assuming that this is a bug that got through at the last minute and not another attempt to restrict user access to the file system. And if there is an intentional restriction to user access, I hope to understand why soon. Hopefully Apple will give us some guidance on why the /Users directory is hidden, or will release a patch to fix it. Until then, this'll help, at least until you restart.

Did you notice your /Users directory went bye-bye with the 10.9.3 update? Is it a problem for you? Let me know in the comments.

Apple on Tuesday announced a beta seeding program that enables anyone — not just registered developers — from gaining access to pre-release OS X Mavericks software and applications from Apple. There are some good reasons to get involved, but there are an equal number of reasons to stay away from it. Here are a few.

1. It's pre-release software

Alpha, beta and other pre-release software generally has bugs or other shortcomings that can cause problems. Sometimes those problems are complete show stoppers that will shut you down hard.

Some problems that you're currently having may actually get fixed by pre-release software; after all, bug fixes and maintenance updates are a big part of what goes on with these things. But other problems may be introduced that you wouldn't otherwise experience with actual release software, because other beta participants have already reported the issues, which Apple has fixed.

2. There's no support

Good luck getting help if you need it, should you run into trouble with the pre-release software you're testing. You're potentially creating a headache for yourself and, if you're in a business or institutional environment, a headache for your IT support staff. In fact, depending on your institution's policies, you may not be allowed to install pre-release software, so if this is on a work or school computer, check with your IT staff before doing so.

That also means that you're unlikely to get a lot of help from the local Apple Genius at your Apple retail store or from AppleCare, if you give them a call. Bottom line: You run into problems, you're likely on your own.

3. You're not allowed to talk about it

This is probably the least enforced — and least enforceable — clause in the agreement. People have routinely run their mouths about Apple beta software for years — witness the avalanche of details that emerge about iOS and OS X during and after every WWDC — and Apple really does little, if anything, to stop it, except to say nothing when asked directly.

Still, according to the letter of the agreement, you're only allowed to talk about it with other beta seed participants. Apple makes blabbing about it sound ominous, too:

4. This is your only Mac

If you have only one computer you do most of your work from, please don't use it as a guinea pig. If you run into a complete show-stopper that hoses your Mac, you may be completely screwed without having to restore your Mac from a backup. Hence Apple's proviso:

5. You're concerned about privacy

You also give Apple the right to collect diagnostic, technical and usage data from you (you can opt out, but that takes a bit of extra work). None of this data is personally identifiable, according to Apple. But in an era when we're on heightened alert about NSA and countless security issues, some of you may not be comfortable sharing any data with Apple, and need to be wary.

Have you signed up for the seed program? Having second thoughts? Sound off in the comments.

OS X 10.10, code-named Syrah, us currently sprinting its way towards developer beta for WWDC 2014, which kicks off June 2. Syrah is rumored to be getting a Jony Ive-led interface refresh this year, like iOS 7 got last year. That makes a lot of sense, since part of the opportunity cost of iOS 7 getting all that attention was that there wasn't much left for OS X Mavericks. It shipped with a few rough edges, like stitched leather, shaved off but others, like green felt, remaining. 2014 should see a reversal of those fortunes, with iOS 8 getting refined but Syrah getting a more significant visual upgrade. But how far will it go? Craig Hockenberry writing on his blog, Furbo.org

Hockenberry's is not an uncommon sentiment. Apple's desire to bring iOS "back to the Mac" is what resulted in not only the aforementioned stitched leather and green felt finding their way to OS X, but also universal naming conventions for built-in apps and even the concept of an App Store. While both remain distinct platforms that require distinct functionality, the usability overlap between the two remains huge.

However, Hockenberry being Hockenberry he's taken it a step further and written a tool that "swizzles the NSFont class methods to return a different system font". With it you can see what apps designed with the current OS X system font in mind, Lucida Grande, look like in a Helvetica Neue world.

You can find more information on it, and access the tool, via the link below. Check it out and then let me know — can you see the OS X system font changing this June?

Source: furbo.org

As near as I can tell, somewhere along the way after I upgraded to Mavericks, my Retina MacBook Pro stopped working right. It wouldn't reconnect to a Wi-Fi network after waking from sleep. I had to manually reconnect it; often I'd have to toggle Wi-Fi off and on again to make it work. Turns out a wonky Bluetooth preference file was the culprit. I'm still not clear on why. Here's how to fix it.

How to trash a bad OS X Bluetooth preferences file

1. Go to your Mac's Finder.
2. Click on the File menu and select New Finder Window
3. Click on your Mac's icon in the Devices list in the sidebar
4. Open Macintosh HD (or whatever your Mac's hard drive may be named)
5. Open Library
6. Open Preferences
7. Find the file called "com.apple.Bluetooth.plist"
8. Move it to your desktop. It should copy there.
9. Remove it from the Preferences folder by dragging it into the Trash. The Mac will tell you that Finder wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this.
10. Restart your Mac.

When your Mac restarts, the problem should be resolved.

Bear in mind that what deleted your existing Bluetooth preferences. If you're using any Bluetooth devices, like some keyboards, mice, speakers and headsets, you'll need to re-pair them to get them to connect to your Mac. If this fixes your problem, you can trash the file on your desktop whenever you're comfortable.

I have it on good authority that this fixes the problem many of us have seen since installing Mavericks, but there are still some for whom this fix doesn't work. If you fall into that unfortunate category, it's probably worth your while to either visit the Genius Bar at your local Apple retail store or to call AppleCare, if you have coverage.

Has it fixed your issue? Still having trouble? Sound off in the forums!

Quick Look is a nifty utility that's baked right into OS X that lets you view a preview of a file without actually having to open it. It had some issues when OS X Mavericks was released but updates have since then fixed lag issues. On top of viewing files quickly, you can also pan and zoom with just a single key stroke. Here's how:

How to pan and zoom in the Quick Look app on your Mac

1. Click on the file you'd like to use Quick Look on to highlight it and hit the space bar to trigger Quick Look.
2. Once the Quick Look Window opens, hold down the alt - option key on your Mac's keyboard.
3. While holding down the alt - option key scroll around or zoom in and out.

That's all there is to it. It's somewhat of a hidden feature in Quick Look and one that one of our writers stumbled upon a while back on accident. Did you know about this feature? If so, do you find it useful for previewing images? And if not, try it out and let me know what you think!

4K video is coming, in fits and starts, not just to the general consumer marketplace but also to Apple products. Apple's actual support of 4K video has been a bit patchwork, but its new beta release of OS X Mavericks 10.9.3, published last week, is starting to provide some clarity to Apple's 4K strategy. What's more, it may be a clue as to what Apple has up its sleeve for new hardware releases. Let's take a look.

What's 4K?

The flat panel TVs most of us upgraded to sometime in the past few years have effective resolutions of 1920 x 1080 pixels (that's where the 1080i and 1080p designations on those sets comes from). But TV makers are pushing forward with a new standard for home television called 4K UHD, which increases resolution to 3840 x 2160.

There's still a dearth of programming available in 4K, but it's coming. While it may take a while for cable operators to get to that point, some Internet video services like YouTube and Netflix are committed. What's more, movie theaters now routinely show new movies on their digital projectors in 4K, so this transition has already happened in studios, video editing suites and post-processing shops.

Apple's been making a fairly big deal out of 4K video since 2013, when they first unveiled the Mac Pro to attendees of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). The Mac Pro began shipping in December, but it actually wasn't the first Mac with native 4K output capabilities. The Retina MacBook Pro, which was refreshed in October, could also handle 4K video through its HDMI port.

Limited initial support in Mavericks

At least initially, OS X Mavericks' 4K support on compatible machines has been limited — you could manage 3840 x 2160 resolution on a 4K display at 30 Hz — a very slow refresh rate compared to lower-resolution monitors, or 4096 x 2160 at 24 Hz (what's called DCI 4K, the 4K standard used for 4K film projection — film is projected at 24 frames per second, hence the lower refresh rate).

The Mac Pro fared a little better, initially, as long as you paired it with one of a couple of 4K displays: The Sharp PN-K321 (which Apple offers as a configure-to-order option when you buy the Mac Pro) or the Asus PQ321Q (which is available from online vendors). Both of those displays come equipped with a DisplayPort interface that, when mated to one of the Mac Pro's Thunderbolt 2 ports, could work at 60 Hz, once you configured the display to support "DisplayPort Stream" mode. (Apple has a tech note detailing the process.)

What's more, using a 4K display on a Mac was an exercise in frustration — content on the display appeared tiny. Windows would be spread out; text was almost unreadable. 3840 x 2160 is a lot of pixels to fill. You could scale the resolution similar to how you can on a MacBook Pro's Retina Display, but only using unofficial methods — it wasn't as easy as opening your Displays preference and tweaking a setting.

Bottom line: you couldn't just hook up a 4K monitor and expect it to work, like we do when we connect most peripherals to the Mac. And even if you could, you might not get the results you were looking for, with a lower-than-expected refresh rate that might cause some flickering or ghosting.

Mavericks 10.9.3 promises relief

With the new 10.9.3 beta out last week, many of the issues surrounding native 4K monitor support on the Mac seem to have been ironed out.

First of all, the Display system preference will let you scale the resolution of your 4K display, pixel-doubling the graphics to provide much sharper, more legible text and clearer images.

If you've ever connected your Mac to an HDTV (or used AirPlay through Apple TV and opened the Display preference on your HDTV), you'll now see a similar window: you'll be able to use scale resolution on your 4K display just as you can on most HDTVs.

What's more, you can adjust refresh rate, finally getting it higher than 30 Hz, providing a more responsive experience.

10.9.3 remains something that only registered Mac developers have access to right now, but this new functionality's appearance in the initial developer beta built bodes well for it to be a key element of the next public update to Mavericks. Hopefully it'll be a fairly short beta testing cycle.

Speculating on Apple's future plans

If I were a betting man, I'd assume that this change in 10.9.3 is laying the groundwork for Apple to release its own 4K display. It's just a matter of time. Apple's sole external monitor is the Thunderbolt Display, which is getting very long in the tooth.

The Thunderbolt Display was originally introduced in 2011. It's a fantastic display — beautiful color gamut, crisp LED-backlit display with 2560 x 1440 resolution, and lots of built-in expandability, with a FireWire 800 port, Gigabit Ethernet and three USB 2.0 ports. It even has a MagSafe power connector so you can charge your laptop.

But the existing Thunderbolt Display also was developed using the design language for Apple's then-current iMac, so it employs a much thicker bezel than the iMac does now. So next to Apple's current-generation hardware the Thunderbolt Display looks old. That built-in MagSafe power connector works with only one currently-shipping computer — Apple's "standard" $1,199 MacBook Pro, which hasn't been refreshed since 2012 — requiring you to hook up an adapter (which Apple includes).

Apple doesn't want to sell third-party displays like the Sharp model indefinitely - they'll want to sell their own as soon as they can. Apple tends to keep their monitor line very sparse. I think they might just sell a 4K Thunderbolt Display in the future, thought it'd please me if they refreshed the existing Thunderbolt Display too.

What do you think? Is Apple on the cusp of offering a 4K display? Have you tried out 4K on a new Mac? Let me know in the comments.

On Tuesday Apple pushed live OS X Mavericks 10.9.2. Among the changes are improvements to Apple's Mail app. Apple's certainly moved Mail in the right direction, but it hasn't solved everyone's problems. Are you one of them?

Mail has had a tough row to hoe since the release of Mavericks last October. Users with Gmail accounts in particular have had loads of problems right from the start, not the least of which are exacerbated by Gmail's non-standard implementation of the IMAP protocol.

Apple soon released a Mavericks Mail update that was meant to the address the problem. Then Apple released OS X 10.9.1 in January, and that was supposed to help Gmail users especially, but they soon found that problems persisted.

10.9.2 tackles head-on many of the problems Mavericks users have had with Mail. Among the fixes in 10.9.2, according to Apple:

• Includes general improvements to the stability and compatibility of Mail
• Improves the accuracy of unread counts in Mail
• Resolves an issue that prevented Mail from receiving new messages from certain providers
• Improves VoiceOver navigation in Mail and Finder
• Improves compatibility with Gmail Archive mailboxes
• Includes improvements to Gmail labels

That all sounds promising, if, in some cases, maddeningly vague. Only two of these line items mention Gmail specifically, but some of the others (like Mail receiving new messages) were certainly problems that Gmail users encountered. Apple's wording suggests that the fixes weren't Gmail-specific, but perhaps were related to other problems.

Prior to 10.9.2's release, I was having trouble with Mail not retrieving e-mails in a timely fashion from Gmail accounts. I would also have pretty consistent trouble simply quitting Mail — it would hang when doing routine maintenance on various mailboxes prior to quitting. So I was quite anxious to give 10.9.2 a try as soon as it was available. As near as I can tell, the update has corrected the problems I was having.

Alas, not everyone is having the same positive experience. Users on Twitter and various support forums — including Apple's own support forums — report issues with Mail, including hanging when checking Gmail accounts, management of messages in Smart Folders, crashing and other issues that haven't been resolved after applying the 10.9.2 update. In some cases users have deleted and recreated their IMAP accounts, which has fixed problems for some but not for others.

Joe Kissell has been out in front of Mavericks Gmail trouble from the start. And he's documented a number of Mail app changes for Gmail which he's discovered in 10.9.2, so make sure to check out TidBITS.

In the interim, what's your experience with the Mail app in OS X 10.9.2? Has it fixed your issues or are you still having trouble? Let me know in the comments — I want to hear from you.

If you use OS X Mavericks with multiple displays, you may have noticed a change in the system's behavior since you upgraded: You now get docks and menus in each window. But there's a drawback: you can't display a single window between multiple displays anymore. Either the app or the window is on one display or the other, but never both. Here's a handy tip for restoring that functionality, for anyone who misses it from Mountain Lion.

To understand what's going on, let's talk about space. Well, specifically, Spaces. Spaces, in OS X parlance, are virtual desktops. Each Space can contain whatever windows you want: applications, groups of windows, however you want to organize what's happening on your Mac. You can have multiple Spaces managed on a single display to make it easier to manage complex workflows between applications, for example.

By default, OS X Mavericks maintains each distinct display as a separate Space. That's why you get the menu and dock on each separate display in Mavericks, instead of just your main display. To restore the ability to span windows between multiple displays, follow these instructions:

1. Click on the  menu.
2. Select System Preferences.
3. Click on Mission Control.
4. Uncheck the box marked Displays have separate spaces.
5. Log out or restart your Mac.

Once you've restarted, you'll be able to span windows across displays to your heart's content. This is the pre-Mavericks way of managing multiple displays, so no more menu bar or dock on the second screen.

Is Mavericks' new way of managing screens an irritation, or do you prefer it? Did this tip help? Let me know in the comments.

Apple Maps has a cool feature called Flyover that lets you get 3D views of a selected area. While it doesn't serve much purpose in a navigational sense, it's still a cool feature to play around with and has some practical use if you're trying to scope out certain areas before visiting them. Here's how to use it on your Mac:

1. Launch the Maps app on your Mac running OS X Mavericks or higher.
2. Type in the search bar either a general area or an exact address.
3. Once Maps finds it, zoom in a reasonable amount.
4. Now click on Satellite and Flyover.
5. You are now free to pan around and zoom in and out.

It's worth noting that Flyover isn't available everywhere and mainly sticks to urban areas. So if the icon is greyed out, you aren't doing anything wrong. Flyover may just not be available in that specific area. For those familiar with Google Street View, how do you think Flyover compares? Better, worse, or two different things?

The CD/DVD drive is almost a thing of the past on the Mac - only one current Mac model includes one (the "standard" 13-inch MacBook Pro). If you need an optical drive but don't have an external handy, you may still be in luck thanks to a feature of OS X called Remote Disc. Here's how it works:

First of all, you need to have a computer - a Mac with OS X 10.4.11 or later, or a Windows PC running Windows XP SP2 or later - running on the same local area network as your Mac. It can be on Wi-Fi or Ethernet, doesn't matter.

There are some limitations to be aware of. Remote Disc works for data discs only. You can't use Remote Disc to share a DVD movie over a network for example, nor can you do so for audio CDs, copy-protected content like game discs, operating system installers (either Windows or OS X), and you can't use Remote Disc to remotely burn a CD or DVD, either.

If you need to do any of those things, you'll have to use a CD or DVD drive connected directly to your Mac via an available USB port.

Anyway, to continue, here are the instructions for making this happen on the Mac. Doing it in Windows is a bit beyond the scope of what our focus here is on iMore, so I'll defer to Apple's support pages{.nofollow} for details there.

Make sure that CD and DVD sharing is turned on, on the computer with the optical drive. To do so:

1. Go to the  menu and select System Preferences.
2. Click on the Sharing icon.
3. Check the box next to DVD or CD sharing.
4. If you want to be asked permission before someone can use the drive, make sure to check the box next to Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD drive.

Once you've done so, the optical drive-equipped Mac should be ready to go. To access it remotely, go to the computer without an optical drive, then:

1. Open a new window in the Finder by holding down the Command key and pressing N.
2. Scroll down the sidebar on the left hand side of the window to the Devices list and click on Remote Disc.
3. You should see a list of computers with disc sharing turned on. Select the host computer you want to use.
4. You'll see Waiting for disc drive... while the drive spins up.

Have you used Remote Disc? Did you know how this feature works? Do you have any questions? Let me know in the comments!

OS X Mavericks has been out since October. Apple wanted to accelerate the uptake of their newest Mac operating system by offering a free update for anyone using Snow Leopard or higher. And millions of us have. Many for better, but some for worse.

Nothing is bug-free, and Mavericks is no exception. But now that it's been out in the world for a few months and already has a maintenance update under its belt, I find there are still some lingering problems that need addressing. I also did a straw poll on Twitter the other day to find out what was bugging other people. I've combined my thoughts and the feedback I got into this list of Mavericks pet peeves, and I'd very much like to hear what you think, so make sure to comment.

Continued e-mail problems and Gmail issues

Despite already having been fixed once, OS X Mavericks' Mail app is still a hot mess. The initial fix was intended to take the sting out of connecting to Gmail accounts, and indeed things did improve for some Gmail users. But many of us still aren't getting messages on time, and have to either quit the app or take Mail offline and then online again before new mail will start streaming in. Some users on Microsoft Exchange servers also report problems that they didn't have with Mountain Lion.

What's more, some Mavericks users are having other problems with Mail too — like getting the darn thing to quit (it'll hang on quit and you have to Force Quit to get it to exit).

All told, Mavericks' Mail app needs some fine tuning before it's working for everyone again.

Quick Look that isn't

Quick Look used to be a great feature that enabled you to quickly view the contents of a file without having to open an application first — you could get a sense of what is in an image, video. or text file just by pressing the space bar in Finder. Quick Look would view the image lickety-split, letting you see at a glance what was in the file.

But many Mavericks users report that Quick Look is very slow now, either taking many seconds longer to open than it used to or "beachballing" all together. It also doesn't seem to support the same file formats as Mountain Lion. Whatever the case, it's very frustrating.

The stupid power button

It used to be that if you pressed the power button your Mac, OS X would ask you if you wanted to shut down, restart or go to sleep. The default action in Mavericks changed, though, so touching the power button now causes the Mac to go to sleep right away. It's only if you hold down the power button for several seconds that you'll get the option to shut down, restart or sleep.

Our own Ally Kazmucha explains that Apple has aligned the Mac's power button to act more like the power button on iOS devices, but it's a change that I find more disruptive than beneficial.

Lingering skeuomorphism

Apple's engineers did a good job of removing skeuomorphism in iOS 7 applications. While some of the design decisions left me scratching my head — are the weird rainbow bubbles in Game Center really that much better than the felt casino tabletop? — you can't argue that at least it makes the user experience a bit more consistent and modern looking than before.

I'm convinced that Apple's UI designers simply ran out of time with Mavericks, because a few of those skeuomorphic embellishments linger — like the felt table in Game Center or the lined paper pad in Reminders. I wish Apple would get rid of them all together because they look anachronistic and patchwork.

Multi monitor support still sucks

I think it's fair to say that multi monitor support before Mavericks was crap, but I'm not altogether certain that Mavericks is a lot better. What Apple did — as a default action — was to give each monitor in Mavericks its own virtual desktop, or in OS X parlance, a Space. That's why you get your own instance of a menu and dock on each separate display.

Unfortunately, the behavior of multi monitor systems isn't entirely predictable. Users report problems with windows and folders popping up on different monitors at random, strange behavior when hooking displays up, and files or folders that occasionally disappear when dragged to the desktop.

Audio drop outs

Core Audio seems kind of screwed up in Mavericks. I get audio drop outs; sometimes no audio at all when I wake my Mac from sleep unless I restart the machine. And if you Google "Mavericks audio problems" you'll get a long list of hits from other folks who are experiencing the same issues. This isn't an insignificant issue — especially for those of us that depend on our Macs to process audio for podcasts, music production and other audio work.

Notifications can't be mapped to helper apps

Notification Center was, on one hand, greatly improved in Mavericks — you can respond to notifications on social media without being taken away from what you're doing. But if you want to get some context for what's going on, clicking on a notification will take you to the web site — Twitter, Facebook and so on.

That's fine if a web interface is all you use, but many of us prefer the added features and functionality of client software. I, for example, use Echofon for most of my Twitter interactions, since it syncs unread messages between its iOS and OS X counterparts.

There's no preference you can set and no other way that I know of to tell Mavericks to open a helper app rather than go to Safari, which inevitably means that I have to go searching for the post, reducing the usefulness of Mavericks notifications all together.

SMB problems

Service Message Block, or SMB, is a commonly used network protocol in the Windows world. SMB is quite commonly used for Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices and other devices, making it a must-have for many small businesses and home networks that rely on some kind of central file storage appliance that's not a full blown file server.

Mavericks, just as with other OS X versions before it, supports the protocol. But midway through Mavericks' development, Apple decided to switch out SMB for the later SMB2 protocol (which, despite what its name implies, is not necessarily an improved version of SMB). That's has caused a lot of users to lose connections to their servers. Yo

You can fix this a couple of different ways (using "cifs://server_name" when using the Connect to Server command from the Finder (command-K) is the easiest way), but you shouldn't have to. It's broken.

Rough smooth scrolling

Mavericks changed the way scrolling worked by drawing parts of the window you haven't seen yet; the goal was more responsive scrolling. And it works in some apps. In others it's broken entirely. 10.9.1 didn't resolve problems that some users had with scrolling in some apps. Here's to hoping the next release irons things out.

Room for improvement

Like I said at the outset, I asked on Twitter for feedback about Mavericks issues. And it's safe to say I was absolutely deluged with responses. So it's quite clear that are Mac users out there that aren't entirely happy with how Mavericks is working for them, but that's not to say it's all bad.

In fact, I still recommend that most people should upgrade to Mavericks if they can, especially if they're using laptops. The improved memory efficiency and power efficiency, tabbed Finder windows, the ability to use Maps and iBooks — there's a lot to love in Mavericks, and you can't beat the price. Just make sure you back up your Mac before you upgrade, and be prepared for a few potholes, because nothing's perfect.

How about you? Have you upgraded to Mavericks? Do you love or hate it? Regret the move? Sound off in the comments.

Note: This feature does not appear to be available as of OS X Yosemite

Not all websites just let you save passwords to iCloud Keychain. Whether for privacy or security reasons, or simple technical misconfiguration, sometimes your best efforts to stay in sync across your Apple devices will be stymied... at least at first. Luckily, Safari can often let you save passwords even if the website itself tries to stop you. Here's how to do it in OS X Mavericks.

How to force save logins to iCloud Keychain in OS X Mavericks

1. Launch Safari from the desktop of your Mac running OS X Mavericks.
2. In the top menu bar, click on Safari and then Preferences.
3. In the menu, click on Passwords.
4. Under your list of passwords, check the box for Allow AutoFill even for websites that request passwords not to be saved.

That's it! Safari and iCloud Keychain should now save and fill in logins even for sites that have requested you not store them!

How to get more help with iCloud Keychain

If you have specific questions about iOS 7 or OS X Mavericks in general, check out our iOS 7 help and discussion forum or OS X Mavericks help and discussion forum. For more on Safari in specific, check out our ultimate guide:

We've already talked about how to set up and start using Finder Tags in OS X Mavericks, but what about documents that aren't stored on your computer, but in iCloud instead? It's just as easy to apply Finder Tags to new and existing iCloud documents too. Here's how:

• How to add Finder Tags to a new iCloud document or file
• How to add Finder Tags to an existing iCloud document or file

Before beginning, it's worth noting that for either of these methods to work, the app you are using must support storing files in iCloud. Apps like Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and many third party apps have support for iCloud document storage. Just make sure that before you try and save a document to iCloud, the app or program you're using supports it.

How to add Finder Tags to a new iCloud document or file

1. Launch the app that you want to create the new iCloud document in. In this case, we'll use Numbers for Mac.
2. Click on New Document. Depending on what app or program you're using, there may be different wording or other steps.
3. Once you have an open document type of your choice, click in the title field at the top in order to rename the document and add Finder Tags.
4. Once you've chosen a name (if you haven't already), just choose from existing tags or start typing a new one.
5. Lastly, make sure under the option for where the document is saved, iCloud is selected.

That's all there is to it. Just note that some programs and apps may vary slightly depending on the type of app and how the developer decided to lay out menus.

How to add Finder Tags to an existing iCloud document or file

1. Launch the app that you've already created an iCloud document within and locate it.
2. Click on the document one time in order to highlight it.
3. In the bottom menu, click on the Finder Tags icon and type in a new tag or choose from an existing one.

That's it. Your documents will now start appearing under the tag, or tags, that you've specified. Note that you can highlight multiple documents at once by holding down the command key and selecting them. This is convenient for times when you need to tag the same kinds of documents all at once in a batch.

See also:

• How to set up and start using Finder Tags in OS X Mavericks
• How to create a better workflow in OS X Mavericks with Finder Tags

If you've upgraded your Mac to OS X Mavericks, you may have already noticed that the physical power button behaves differently when pressed than it did in previous versions of OS X. As it turns out, Apple has brought some of iOS to the Mac when it comes to powering up and shutting down. Here's what's changed and what you need to know:

Video Walkthrough

How to put your Mac to sleep

Putting your Mac to sleep in OS X Mavericks couldn't be easier. Just tap on the power button. That's it. Your monitor will turn off and your Mac will sleep. To wake it up again, simply tap the power button again. If you have a passcode set on your Mac, you'll be asked to enter it in order to go back to what you were doing.

If you own an iPhone or iPad, this behavior should sound very familiar to you since it's essentially the same thing you would do to put any iOS device to sleep and wake it back up again.

How to restart or shut down your Mac

There are a few ways to shut down your Mac but the easiest by far is by simply holding the power button for about 2 seconds. A dialog pops up asking you what you'd like to do. Your options under OS X Mavericks are Restart, Sleep, Shut Down, and Cancel. Choose your option and you're done, no menus or additional mouse clicks needed.

Again, for those that use iOS, this is pretty much the same as holding down the power button on an iPhone or iPad and sliding to power off. Considering iPhones and iPads don't have a restart option, it's a little different. If they did, I'd bet this is exactly where you'd find it.

How to force your Mac to shut down

Just like any other computer, a Mac can occasionally freeze up due to an app that isn't responding or an operating system error. If this happens, simply hold down the power button on your Mac until the screen turns off. Ignore any prompts that come up. This behavior hasn't changed over time and has always remained the same.

This one is a little different than iOS but not by much. If it sounds familiar to how you'd hard reboot an iPhone or an iPad, you'd be right, minus the Home button part on iOS.

The bottom line

OS X took a lot of cues from iOS where Mavericks is concerned. The power button functionality being changed was one that left quite a few Mac users scratching their heads. Hopefully this helps explain not only how it's changed, but perhaps why Apple changed it. Whether we like it or not, it seems to be here to stay.

Just think of how you'd turn your iPhone or iPad on or off and apply the same principles to your Mac running OS X Mavericks and you'll be in good shape.

We've already looked at how to receive notifications from your favorite websites with OS X Mavericks, so now it's time to look at how to turn them off. Perhaps a website you thought you wanted notifications from sends too many, or you just don't visit a particular site that frequently anymore. Regardless the reason, here's how to get them to stop:

1. In the top menu bar on your Mac running OS X Mavericks, click on the  symbol and then System Preferences.
2. Now click on Notifications.
3. Scroll down in the list on the left hand side of the screen and find the website that is sending you notifications that you'd like to disable. Click on its name.
4. Now in the right hand panel, disable everything and uncheck any boxes.

That's all there is to it. The website is completely removed from Notification Center and should no longer alert you of anything. If you ever decide you'd like to re-enable notifications, you can do so by following the same steps again. You can alternatively just disable items you don't like such as banner notifications. This way, the website's updates will still populate in Notification Center, but you can simply browse them at your leisure and not be bothered with popup banners.

If you've found any websites that already support Mavericks notifications, be sure to let us know which ones in the comments!

Notification Center in OS X Mavericks has an awesome new feature that lets you subscribe to updates from your favorite websites so they'll feed right into Notification Center. For websites that support it, I've found it to actually be extremely convenient. Here's how to get started:

Before starting, note that a website must support updates before you can actually use them. At this time, I don't know many that do but the number should grow as sites start integrating support for the feature. For this example, I'm using eBay.

1. Launch Safari from the desktop of your Mac running OS X Mavericks and navigate to the site you want to get notifications from.
2. If you're on a website that supports Notification Center updates in OS X Mavericks, you should see a popup resembling the one below. Click on Allow. (Note that some sites obviously only ask you if you're logged into an account, such as eBay, which can send account notifications to Notification Center.)
3. That's it. You can now check Notification Center for any notifications.
4. If you have notifications, you'll see them in the respective section like below.

That's all there is to it. While there seems to be very limited support for this right now, it's one of my favorite features of OS X Mavericks and I really hope other services start supporting it soon. I've found it especially useful if you sell a lot of items on eBay and want to keep up with messages and other interactions without having to check emails or launch web browsers.

If you've had a chance to try out website notifications in Mavericks as well, let us know what you think about them in the comments! And of course, if you've found sites that support them, by all means let us know what ones you've found!

Almost two years ago I wrote a short list of things I wanted Apple to bring back to the iPad. It was following the first OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion preview, and it included things like rich text in Notes, a more spatially consistent Notification Center, and iOS version of iPhoto for iOS, per-account Mail signatures, top sites in Safari, and a better app switcher, more like Mission Control. Well, subsequent Apple events, and iOS 7 gave us pretty much all that and more. But now OS X Mavericks has shipped and we're starting the slow build towards iOS 8 so guess what? I've got a new list of Mac features I'd like to see brought back, not just to the iPad, but to iOS in general. Here they are...

1. Battery shaming

One of my favorite Mavericks features is "Apps Using Significant Energy", the drop-down menu bar feature that highlight what's hitting your system the hardest. For laptop users, it lets you quickly identify and shut down power-hungry apps that are adversely affecting your battery life. Better, it shames the companies responsible for those apps - looking at you Apple, Google, and Adobe! - into doing everything they can to make sure they don't show up in that list. An average person probably doesn't need to know the deep details, and arguably should never be booted into Activity Monitor to find out, but companies knowing that customers know is worth it. It's how you effect change.

Power hungry apps are a problem on iOS as well, as are rogue processes. Right now, there's no easy way to identify and terminate them, which leads even mainstream people to "close all apps", which is an incredibly bad solution. If iOS could identify and shame the companies responsible for those apps, like Mavericks does, it would make it much easier to know which apps you might want to, or need to, shut down. Make them glow red, add a little red battery icon to them, something, anything, just tattle on the bad corporate citizens so they're encouraged to fix their behavior faster, and we can kill them more easily until they do.

There are power hungry apps on iOS as well

2. Enhanced (local) dictation (+Siri)

In Mavericks you can choose to enable enhanced dictation - which basically means you download almost 800MB and no longer have to rely on a cloud sever to have your speech translated into text - and enjoy offline, continuous, use with live feedback. In other words, no internet connection, no problem. Just talk and your Mac will take care of everything all by itself.

Siri on iOS desperately needs this feature. Android-style natural language and context coprocessors - like the Apple M7 - would be ideal, but simply moving the speech to text engine onto the iPhone and iPad would be an incredible step forward. Imagine, you'd no longer have to worry about a network connection to do completely local tasks like setting an alarm or opening an app. It would remove a huge potential - and all-to-often real - point of failure and go a long way towards bringing Apple's service up to par with Google's.

3. Interactive (actionable) notifications

When an iMessage comes in on Mavericks the OS X version of Notification Center pops up a banner with a reply button on it. Hit that button and you know what doesn't happen? You don't get booted out of what you're doing and sent flying into the Messages app. Instead you get a reply button which, if you hit it, opens up an elegant, unobtrusive field that lets you quickly type in and send a response, right from inside the notification banner. Nirvana!

On a multiple windowing platform like OS X, it's a nice-to-have. On a single window platform like iOS, it's a must-have. It's not just because iOS, which is good at sending you to other apps if you tap a notification, absolutely sucks at bringing you back to your original app once you've finished, it that on a mobile device, I shouldn't have to go hunting for apps. They should come to me. Replying to email, tweets, or messages is one thing, quickly resetting a timer or alarm in-notification is another. We're still in the dark ages of notifications on iOS. We need to leap forward and join OS X in the sun.

4. Calendar Travel Time

In the Calendar app on Mavericks, if you set a location for an event or appointment - which can be populated from your Contacts - you can also surface the travel time it will take to get you there. With just a click, Mavericks will use your current location and the location you're going to, and offer up estimated times for driving or walking.

Populating locations based on Contacts, and especially offering up estimated travel times would be even more convenient on mobile because there's a much greater likelihood I'm actually out traveling at the time, making it even more valuable at the moment.Tap Calendar, tap add, tap Location, choose from a list or enter a new one that pull in Maps data, add travel time, and bingo. On the go and I know how long its going to take to get there.

I wonder if M7 could provide more accurate walking direction travel time estimates. If it knows you tend to lurch, stroll, strut, jog, etc.?

(Of course, the silver bullet here is pushing all of this into Siri and making it more automagically Google Now-like, right?)

5. A few more things...

There are some things we didn't get from Mountain Lion, and previous versions of iOS, that I'd still love to see in iOS 8. I'm not talking about grand things, like multiple user accounts (which iOS isn't set up to handle), Gate Keeper, which runs counter to Apple's policy for iOS apps anyway, and contracts/intents/default apps, which have already been begged for ad nauseam. but some things from last year's list, and some new ones I've thought up since.

• FaceTime Conference Calls, like the old version of iChat
• AirPrint to PDF, because I haven't owned a printer in 7 years but I share PDFs all the time.
• Unified messages, so iMessage, AIM, Jabber, even Twitter can all be accessed from the same, built-in app.

Bonus: AirDrop (a cross-compatible version)

With iOS 7 Apple seemingly brought AirDrop from the Mac to the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. What they actually did was bring the AirDrop name. Turns out, for reasons I'd argue did nothing but cause confusion, someone at Apple chose to use the same name for two totally different transfer protocols. That's why you can send data between two Macs, and between two iOS devices, but not from OS X to iOS or vice versa.

Yeah.

So, for iOS 8, it's be great if Apple either chose one, unified, compatible AirDrop implementation for both platforms, so that any data that can be shared between both can be shared between both.

Your things...?

If you're using OS X Mavericks, I'd love to hear what you'd like to see brought back to iOS. What did I forget?

Apple has posted iBooks Update 1.0.1 for Mac users who are using OS X 10.9 Mavericks. The update is available through Software Update.

The update sports typically terse Apple release notes:

If you've got a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or other kind of portable Mac that contains a battery, OS X Mavericks has made it easier than ever to figure out and keep track of exactly what's using your battery life. So if you find your battery draining quickly, one click can help you determine what the cause is. Here's how:

1. In the upper system tray in your Mac, there is a battery icon that shows how much battery you have remaining. Click on it.

2. There's a new section labeled Apps Using Significant Energy. If there are any apps listed here, these are the ones that could potentially be draining your battery faster.

3. Close down any apps that are in this list in order to save battery life.

That's all there is to it. Amongst our staff, Google Chrome always seems to be in the list. If you're experiencing the same, let us know in the comments!

OS X Mavericks has lots more social support and allows you to add Internet Accounts in just a few short steps. After adding Facebook, you can even import photos automatically to your Contacts. Here's how:

1. Click on the Apple in the upper left hand corner of your Mac's screen.

2. Now click on System Preferences.

3. From the System Preferences pane, click on Internet Accounts.

4. Now click on Facebook in the left hand panel of accounts you have configured.

5. In the lower right hand corner of the window, click on Get Profile Photos....

6. Confirm that you'd like Facebook to pull your friend's profile photos by clicking on Update Contacts in the last popup.

That's all there is to it. OS X will update your actual Contacts with photos from Facebook by scanning any phone numbers or emails in your Facebook account. If you've done this, let us know how it worked for you.

It was a long road to OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Mac OS X was first introduced as a public beta (codenamed Kodiak) in September of 2000, and beta it was - a radical departure from Mac OS 9, both in look (introducing the "Aqua" interface) and in operation. Mac OS X was built on a UNIX foundation, and was more closely related to the NextStep operating system that had been developed by NeXT, the computing company Steve Jobs founded between stints running Apple.

OS X 10.0 Cheetah gave way to OS X 10.1 Puma, and then OS X 10.2 Jaguar. Over the years Apple iteratively improved OS X, typically waiting until a major release before introducing major new features, capabilities and applications. Early on Apple cranked out changes to OS X on an annual basis, but once the company hit Mac OS X 10.3 Panther (Pinot), it slowed down, changing to a biannual upgrade cycle.

Apple wasn't standing still between those upgrades, either. By 2005 the PowerPC chip that had served as the basis for Macs throughout the 90s was pushing its limits. Fortunately, Apple hedged its bets, and had been working to keep OS X operating on Intel hardware as well. OS X 10.4 Tiger (Merlot) was the transition point, specifically OS X 10.4.4 Tiger (Chardonay). And so Apple was able to migrate successfully to a different microprocessor architecture without having to start over at square one.

Since then Apple's stayed the course. OS X 10.5 Leopard (Chablis) led to the "no new features" feature release of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which lead to OS X 10.7 Lion (Barolo). With the introduction of Mountain Lion in 10.8 (Zinfandel), it was clear that Apple was resuming its annual upgrade cycle again, to iteratively make changes to the operating system to keep up with new technology and user expectations. And that brings us to today and the launch of OS X 10.9 Mavericks (Cabernet), the first installment of the operating system not to carry a big cat's name.

To that end, Apple has run out of big cats to name their operating system. So starting with Mavericks, they've switched to a nomenclature based on places in California, Apple's home state - places that Apple says its employees draw their inspiration from.

Mavericks is actually a surfing spot in Northern California, not too far from Half Moon Bay. That's a local spot for Apple employees, to be sure - it's in San Mateo County, only about 30 miles from Apple's corporate headquarters.

Apple's renewed focus on the Mac and Mac software is promising. If past is prologue, we should get our first look at OS X 10.10 (Syrah) in 2014. What features will it have, and what California landmark will it call home? We'll find out next year.

• Read the full OS X Mavericks review
• Watch/listen to the OS X Mavericks review podcast
• Join in on the OS X Mavericks forum discussions

Last Tuesday Apple released OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the tenth generation of their modern desktop operating system. We've already published Peter Cohen's extensive OS X Mavericks review, but many of us have been using it for awhile now as well, some since the beta went live following WWDC 2013 in June. So, to bring you as many opinions as possible, we've put together a good, old-fashioned, Mobile Nations round table. Here's what all of us think of Mavericks!

Phil Nickinson, Android Central

I'm an update junkie. Can't help myself. And updating to Mavericks was surprisingly smooth. Proper dual monitor support and the battery life improvements (on the already excellent 2013 MacBook Air — thanks, Haswell!) are the big-ticket items for me. Notifications suck less. Finder tabs are nice to have, but (and I won't be the only one to mention this) they're pretty hidden. But maybe best of all — nothing broke.

As for the update cost, you can always go cheaper. It's tough to raise the price later on down the road, though. But for some reason I could see Apple releasing a major update next year, or the year after, and charging for it again. Apple can get away with it, right or wrong. This wasn't a small update, and I'd have had no problem giving up the usual $20 or so. That said, it's worth mentioning that the recent Windows 8.1 was a free update. Arguably it fixed more than it innovated, but whatever. It was free. Know what else is free? Linux updates. And Chrome OS updates. So maybe let's not break our arms patting Apple on the back just yet.

Chris Parsons, CrackBerry

I’ve been running Mavericks on my early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro since the developer previews were released and I’m pretty pleased with the final build. One of the biggest additions for me is the proper monitor support as I am always running dual monitors when I’m home. Finder tabs is also something that I’ll use a lot. Previously that was only available through third-party apps but having it built-in is great. iCloud keychain is interesting as well but I’ll need to explore it some more. Right now, I use 1Password and that works well for me. Finally, I can say I’m pleased with notifications on OS X. As cliche as it always sounds, how they work on Mavericks is how they should have worked all along.

Overall, Mavericks is nice though there’s still some quirks in it that I hope get fixed in later builds.

Jerry Hildenbrand, Android Central

Hallelujah. Tabs in my Finder.

The install went OK, but I could have lived without Maps and iBooks on my computer. They were easy enough to remove. I really would have liked a more modular and delta-style approach, similar to the way popular Linux distributions are done. That tends to make for less down time and is easier for the end-user. The good news is nothing I use regularly seems to have broken, which is always a risk when you update any OS.

I don't begrudge anyone making money from software development, but OS X updates should have always been free. You can't use it without a substantial purchase of Apple hardware, which carries high margins in the profit department. You're paying for the software development and more when you buy the hardware. I guess what I'm saying is that the software isn't a stand-alone product — it's more like a required accessory. Try buying a MacBook with no operating system on it and see if I'm right. I'm glad to see Apple come to their senses, and stop charging even a token fee for a software update.

Ally Kazmucha, iMore

The thing I have always loved about OS X updates is that they are incremental. It’s never too much at once. I pretty much installed Mavericks and kept working just as I was 30 minutes earlier. I remember being a Windows user and the shock you’d get when half your peripherals or drivers broke when you updated to a new version. Not to mention it almost always entailed learning a brand new interface. It was an all day fiasco and I don’t miss that one bit.

So far I’m happy with Mavericks. Tying social into OS X more and bringing more of the conveniences of iOS to my Mac make me feel like my workflow is more complete than it was a week ago. I love the Maps app and the ability to ping myself directions. iBooks is nice but not something I will really use other than storing PDFs.

I only have two general annoyances with Mavericks so far. Number one was the Mail app, which in all fairness is Gmails crap IMAP implementation. That was quickly solved by using Airmail instead. My biggest one is how it handles RAW image files. I take a ton of photos for iMore and previewing .NEF files has been painful and takes a long time to generate previews in Finder’s list view. I hope this is something Apple fixes quickly. Something was broke in this transition and it’s kind of a big deal.

Other than that, I’m plugging away just as I was in Mountain Lion and all its predecessors. Sometimes too much change at once is overwhelming and when it comes to my workflow, I prefer incremental updates I can grow with. Mavericks lives up to those standards so I’m happy with it.

Peter Cohen, iMore

Mavericks isn’t as flashy as iOS 7 - Apple didn’t rework the interface like they did with their mobile OS. As a result, I’ve read more than one review that calls Mavericks boring and disappointing. Of course, I think that’s superficial nonsense. Mavericks doesn’t need a major UI rework to be useful and good. The changes to Mavericks are largely incremental. They make sense and they add some utility and efficiency to the overall experience that should be welcome to Mac users.

Tabbed Finder windows make it much easier to move files than before, and tagging is a great tool to keep track of files that are important to you without having to build an intricate hierarchy of folders to keep them. Maps and iBooks are welcome additions that put the Mac on a level playing field with iOS devices to help get you to where you need to go and entertain you in your downtime. And Calendar has been reworked to be more like its iOS 7 cousin - a flat, minimal interface. That’s not to say that skeuomorphism has been flushed from Mavericks all together, though - Game Center still uses a felt table, for example.

Plus Mavericks makes some profound "under the hood" changes - improvements to efficiency and battery life that make Mavericks a better environment for users of Mac laptops. And Apple’s decision to make it free makes it a game changer. We’ve already seen evidence that the uptake of Mavericks has been much faster than Mountain Lion was. Why? People love free stuff.

Ultimately, when you buy an Apple product, you’re not just buying a computer, a phone, a tablet, or whatever - you’re buying into an entire ecosystem. That’s more obvious now in Mavericks than ever, because Apple’s sought to erase the lines between the Mac and iOS wherever it makes sense. Apple’s showing us that they finally understand cloud services in a way we haven’t seen before - iCloud is the glue that holds the different devices you’re using together. To that end, Mavericks' tighter integration of iCloud helps reassure us that Apple sees the Mac as important and vital a part of the ecosystem as ever, and lays the path for the future.

Georgia

In what should be a huge surprise to absolutely no one, I haven't upgraded to Mavericks. I'm still running Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro (which I only use for podcasts now), and Lion on my MacBook Air (which I use for everything). That's right, the same operating systems that shipped on my hardware when I first bought it is the same operating systems I still use today. And you know what, they work for me!

Eventually I'll find the time and interest to update, maybe to Mavericks, maybe to a future version of OS X. Right now, I don't feel compelled to. That might sound unusual for someone otherwise into tech, but I'm sure I'm also not the only one.

Now excuse me while I duck and cover from your wrath!

Joe Keller, iMore

I love using OS X, and I'm always happy to install a new major release, and Mavericks was no exception. I use Safari as my primary browser, so the changes and improvements that have been made to Safari in Mavericks are very welcome, including the new Top Sites section, which is much easier to use, and the improved sidebar.

Apart from Safari, the quick-reply for notifications has been my most-used feature. It's really convenient, and I hope that it makes its way to iOS soon. The addition of a Messages button in Notification Center to quickly compose and send new messages is also a nice touch. After notifications, it's tagging. I may have gone a bit tag-crazy after Mavericks finished installing. Anything that makes moving files around easier gets a thumbs-up from me, so Finder Tabs is a nice addition as well.

Given that I buy most of my books from Amazon, I don't see myself using iBooks that much, though it's nice to have for the occasional iBookstore purchase. I'm enjoying having Maps on my Mac. I've never had major issues with Apple's mapping service, even back when it first launched, so it's addition to OS X is welcome, especially the ability to send directions to my phone.

I'm really happy with Mavericks so far. It's a solid update, and I encourage anyone who's thinking about getting it to go ahead and do so.

Richard Devine, iMore

I've been running Mavericks since the very first developer builds, and I've overall been nothing but impressed with it ever since. An iterative release perhaps, but that's a good thing to me, because Apple didn't change too much at once. I need my Mac for working, I need to be productive, so I welcome the familiarity.

I like the addition of Maps to the desktop, and it's actually drawing me into using Maps on my iPhone as well. I often do Map searches at the computer as it is, and having something there in my dock that will integrate with my phone is more useful to me than I initially thought it might be. The improvements to Finder are also a personal favorite, and I'm so happy I don't need to have multiple windows open now.

Perhaps the most exciting thing is the multiple monitor support. I haven't really put it to full use yet, but I have a 23-inch monitor on my desk that is crying out to be used in this way, but it's been plugged in to another computer recently. I briefly tried it during the dev builds and it impressed me, so I'm looking forward to deploying this in my daily workflow.

One thing that is bugging me is WiFi. Since updating my 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina to Mavericks, it has immense trouble staying connected to my home WiFi network. Perhaps just a bug, but one that wasn't present in Mountain Lion, so I'm hoping for a fix soon. All-in-all, it's a worthwhile upgrade, and since it's free, it really is a no-brainer.

Derek Kessler, Mobile Nations

So I installed Mavericks on my MacBook Pro within the first three hours of availability. Unsurprisingly the process was smooth (I was lucky and got a good download stream and didn’t have to wait too long). Because I have just the one primary computer I tend not to dabble in beta software for primary tasks, especially the operating system, so this was my first real in-use exposure to Mavericks. What’s the first thing I noticed? That reflections in the dock are more blurred than before.

Since I don’t (yet) have a multi-screen set-up running, most of the changes for me have been relatively minor. Notifications are more useful, and Notification Center itself is now less buggy to the point that I don’t feel a pang of regret if I accidentally trigger it (before doing so would seize up the Dock process and I could only switch windows by clicking on them with the mouse until Notification Center realized what was going on ten minutes later). I like the newer, flatter Calendar app but am less enamored with Memos.

The story of Mavericks is one of improvements. It’s not an overhaul of OS X (which I expect to come in the next or next next version with more iOS 7-like styling, as Calendar has demonstrated), but an improvement in ways that make things just easier and better. I haven’t had any “How did I live without this?” moments yet with Mavericks, but at the same time I’m pleased to now have it working for me. Things are better, and that’s good enough for me.

Rene Ritchie, iMore

The era of big cats is over. OS X 10.9 isn't Saber Tooth, it's Mavericks. Named after a famous California beach, it's meant to exemplify Apple's new, more home-centric signature. It's also meant to showcase the results of their yearly, iOS-style update cycle. Doing less more often isn't a bad idea on the surface. It means smaller updates, but it means we get them more often. (Apple's OS X team, however, gets much less down time between updates...) And that's exactly what Mavericks is, a timely update rather than a big one.

There's some Back-to-the-Mac going on with Mavericks, not surprisingly. iBooks is here, and about bloody time. It works well and just like you'd expect. Maps is here too, and it... works just like you'd expect. Apple still needs thousands of feet on the ground to fix Maps, but the integration with iOS is great, and makes me really want an Apple Maps for iCloud product to complete the cycle.

Safari in Mavericks is solid. I've always used Safari for my non-Google services (those get safely locked to Chrome), and i still prefer its interface and rendering engine over any other. Again, integration with iOS is top notch, and new features like Shared Links - all your Twitter friends' URLs all in one place - are great. iCloud Keychain is interesting but unless and until it implements a master password feature like 1Password, it's not useful to me. I need to be able to hand someone a device and not worry I'm handing them my logins and credit cards.

Multiple displays is sublime. I have a 27-inch Thunderbolt Display at my standing desk and previously plugging into it meant plugging out of full-screen apps, because linen. No longer! Everything works together well now, even if Dock jumping has become a bit like whack-a-mole. Actionable notifications are likewise bliss. The ability to respond to a message in the notification is something I want in iOS immediately if not sooner.

Finder Tabs and Tags are... things I do not use. I'm glad they're there, but I'm a simple dude and I haven't found a need for them yet. The under-the-hood changes, though, the App Nap and the Timer Coalescing, the Power Saver and the Compressed Memory - more of that, yes please. My 2012 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro has gained an additional 2 hours of battery life, and my 2013 13-inch MacBook Air can go all night. Or day. Amazing. (The best part is the hall-of-shame drop down that highlights apps that are poor battery citizens.)

Mavericks has some bugs and some odd behaviors, like every new version of every new version. Quick View, for example, routinely beach balls for a second before opening, and Final Cut Pro X seems to be at odds with App Nap. Those will get fixed - they better get fixed! - but overall, I'm really happy with Mavericks. It's similar enough not to interfere with my workflow, and with new stuff enough to improve it.

Well done.

Your review?

You've heard from all of us, now we want to hear from you! If you're using OS X Mavericks, give us your review!

On Tuesday evening Apple posted updates to its iWork apps for Mac - Pages, Keynote and Numbers. Featured during Apple's iPad and Mac event in San Francisco, the new versions of iWork apps sport new features, more thorough iCloud integration and an a unified file format compatible with their iOS counterparts. But there are some important pieces missing for users interested workflow automation, according to Clark Goble, who maintains Clark's Tech Blog. (Goble's post has been widely linked, so you can find a cached copy at Fireballed.org if the original doesn't load for you.)

AppleScript support went from bad to worse

If all this AppleScript talk is making your head spin, let's give you some concrete ideas of what I'm talking about. Opening the AppleScript dictionary of the old version of Pages yielded this:

Here's what opening the AppleScript dictionary of the new Pages looks like:

As you can see, the new version has a lot less functionality that the old version it replaces.

Eddy Cue pointed out on Tuesday that the new iWork apps are a complete rewrite from the replaced four-year-old versions (whose codebases are even older than that). So I'm reluctant to describe the relative absence of AppleScript support as removal, as much as it is omission. If this had been an incremental change to the codebase, removal would be a perfectly adequate word. But this isn't. The new iWork apps are totally new. And in some respects, totally different. The absence of most AppleScript functionality that was there before is what caught Goble's eye, but it isn't the only change.

And as Goble points out, even before now, iWork apps haven't been a shining paragon of AppleScript virtue. iWork apps aren't the only Apple-made products that suffer from limited automation support. On balance when it comes to AppleScript, Apple is a somewhat lousy and really inconsistent eater of its own dog food. I've never been able to figure out why.

Apple's decision to make iWork apps free with the purchase of new hardware is a shot across the bow of Microsoft, which gives away its Office software on its beleaguered Surface tablet. Clearly it helps keep Apple on competitive terms for new iPad and Mac owners who are looking for useful productivity software.

The irony is that Microsoft supports AppleScript in Office more thoroughly than Apple does in its iWork apps. Perhaps that shouldn't be any terrific surprise, as you're likely to find Office in most business environments, especially corporate locations where IT departments are capable of whipping up and supporting AppleScripts to improve the productivity of the workers they support.

Getting back to iWork for a moment, clearly the priority on this release wasn't on workflow automation, or making sure iWork apps had every feature and function they did before - it was on aligning the Mac version of iWork much closer with its iOS counterpart, and creating a common user experience that translates well between devices.

Apple's succeeded on that point, and they've made plenty of embellishments to make some users looking for new features and functionality happy. But AppleScript and other long-standing features are gone. Take a look at this thread about Pages{.nofollow} on Apple's discussion site alone to get a sense of what diehard Pages users are saying.

Consumers versus professionals

I work part-time at an Apple reseller. "Does this include Office?" is one of the first questions I get from customers who come in looking at the iPad or the Mac. Up until now, I've had to say no, and then either try to sell them a copy of Office for the Mac or explain to them about the iWork apps and the Mac App Store. It's much easier to explain that Office isn't included, but Apple's own Office-style apps are (and they're capable of reading and producing Office-compatible files). It's one less barrier to entry for prospective buyers of new iPads and Macs.

Entry level consumers, by and large, aren't interested in AppleScript. It's too techy for them, it requires too abstract an understanding of how applications and the system work with one another. But that lowest common denominator consumer doesn't represent the entire spectrum of Mac users. A lot of people depend on Macs to help run their businesses efficiently. And for many of them, workflow automation represents improved productivity, better return on investment, and better usability. It's about getting better results with less process. AppleScript support can be a key differentiator for those customers.

Reversing the course

To be clear, unless you've done something unusual with your iWork installation, you should still have the old apps inside an iWork '09 folder in your Applications folder, and they should still be functional (at least they are in the two machines I've upgraded with the new software - as in all things, your mileage may vary). If you've upgraded to the new releases and you don't like them, you should still be able to use the old ones - albeit with the limitations they've always had, and without the new features like round-trip iCloud support between OS X and iOS.

But this whole issue unveils a more fundamental problem: by neglecting AppleScript support in iWork apps, Apple underserves customers who would otherwise use their products - not just big companies with IT departments, but freelance workers who want to save time, small and medium-sized businesses that benefit from workflow automation tools, and others. AppleScript may be techy, but it's pretty democratic - anyone who wants to use it should be able to use it.

Mavericks is plainly aimed at helping people who use Apple devices every day to get the most out the experience - besides the relatively mild interface adjustments and new apps, the underlying operating system has been bolstered to improve efficiency and performance.

If Apple's iWork developers aren't already hard at work restoring some of this functionality, they should be, for exactly that reason. By excluding AppleScript - and, quite frankly, dumbing down the apps - Apple's gone the exact opposite direction with iWork - they may have improved some core functions (like iCloud sharing and file interoperability) while completely demolishing others in the process, making it less efficient to use the new iWork apps.

I'm not one to trumpet the "iOSification" theory, that Apple is trying to make the Mac the same as iOS devices - in fact, I've been an outspoken critic of that idea. And I don't think that's the case here.

What I suspect happened is that Apple needed to streamline development of the new iWork Mac apps by making them as similar as possible to their iOS counterparts. They took the path of least resistance, and we're left with less capable software that's prettier to look at.

That's not something that Mac users should just roll over and accept. Our Macs are more capable than our iPads. And we should insist that developers of Mac apps - Apple and third-parties alike - help us get the most out of that experience, not get in our way.

If you've upgraded your Mac to OS X Mavericks, you've probably noticed a few changes to the Safari browser as well. The Top Sites section of Safari in Mavericks is a great place to store your favorite sites for quick access anytime you'd like. By default Safari will start choosing the sites you visit most but if you want to control what sites show up and what don't, and in what order, you can easily do so. Here's how:

• How to quickly rearrange the order of web pages in the Top Sites section
• How to pin or delete web pages in the Top Sites section

How to quickly rearrange the order of web pages in the Top Sites section

1. Launch the Safari browser from the Dock or Applications folder on your Mac running OS X Mavericks.

2. Click on the Top Sites icon in the menu bar if you aren't there already.

3. To move a web page tile to a different position, simply click and hold with your mouse or trackpad and drag it to the position you'd like it in.

4. Once you have it where you want it, release the mouse or trackpad.

That's all there is to it.

How to pin or delete web pages in the Top Sites section

1. Launch the Safari browser from the Dock or Applications folder on your Mac running OS X Mavericks.

2. Click on the Top Sites icon in the menu bar if you aren't there already.

3. Hover your cursor over the site you'd like to pin or delete.

4. Click the pushpin icon in order to pin that site in place so it always shows up there. Click on the x icon in order to delete it from your Top Sites section.

Your changes will be saved immediately.

Google has never had anything approximating what you could call a normal IMAP implementation for Gmail. However, under Mail in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and previous versions, many of us learned to work around and otherwise live with it. No longer! OS X 10.9 Mavericks changes the way the Mail app works, and in doing so, is less forgiving of Gmail's idiosyncrasies than ever before. Joe Kissel on TidBITS:

Gmail in Mail over IMAP has always been a pain for me. I never hid All Mail, so that's not a problem now, but it uses a ton of disk space and up until recently kept generating simultaneous connection and bandwidth usage errors.

I have a paid Google Apps account, so on iOS I simply use Exchange for Gmail via Google Sync, which works much, much better, and faster. Sadly, Google doesn't seem to allow for Exchange connections on OS X.

So, unless and until Apple changes Mail for Gmail's sake, or Google figures out how to better serve IMAP, we'll stay caught, painfully, in the middle.

Check out Joe's article for some small amount of relief, and if you're struggling with Gmail in Mail.app, let me know how it's going for you.

Source: TidBITS

OS X Mavericks brings with it an all new Maps app. If you use an iPhone or iPad, you're probably already familiar with it. One of the best features of Maps for Mavericks is the ability to ping directions right to any iPhone or iPad associated with your Apple ID. Here's how:

1. Launch the Maps app from your Mac running OS X Mavericks.

2. In the top navigation, click on Directions.

3. In the Directions menu that's now on the right of the screen, enter in the directions you'd like to send to your iPhone or iPad.

4. Once you have a route selected and directions on the screen, click on the Share icon in the top main menu and choose the device you'd like to send the directions to.

5. Check your iPhone or iPad for a push notification.

That's all there is to it. Your iPhone or iPad don't even need to be on the same WiFi network in order to receive directions since Maps pulls from any device that's associated with your Apple ID. You can also use this method to share directions many other ways including through email, iMessage, AirDrop, Facebook, and more.

If you've upgraded your Mac to OS X Mavericks, you can now open tabs in Finder just like you do in your browser. This is a much more convenient way to manage Finder windows than in previous versions of OS X where you had to have multiple windows open. Not sure how? Follow along and we'll help you get started with Finder Tabs.

1. Launch a Finder window if you don't already have one open by clicking on Finder in your dock.

2. In the top menu, click on File and then click on New Tab. Alternately, you can also just use the keyboard shortcut Command + T to do the same thing.

3. A new Finder window will open that you can begin to use.

That's all there is to it. You can open as many Finder Tabs as you'd like within one single Finder window. Now go enjoy a less cluttered desktop!

Over the course of the past decade, we've seen many changes to OS X - some iterative, some significant. OS X's newest incarnation, "Mavericks" or version 10.9, is a bit of both. It doesn't significantly rework the user interface like Apple did with iOS 7, though there are some nice tweaks. Apple did make a number of changes under the hood to improve performance and efficiency, however, especially for mobile users.

Note: Some of this material was originally published in our Mavericks preview but was incomplete and outdated due to Apple's non-disclosure agreement (NDA). It's been fully updated, expanded upon, and refined here into our full on OS X review. Enjoy!

OS X evolution

It's been a long road to get here. Mac OS X was first introduced as a public beta in 2001, and beta it was - a radical departure from Mac OS 9, both in look (introducing the "Aqua" interface) and in operation. Mac OS X was built on a UNIX foundation, and was more closely related to the NextStep operating system that had been developed by NeXT, the computing company Steve Jobs founded between stints running Apple.

Over the years Apple has iteratively improved OS X, typically waiting until a major release before introducing major new features, capabilities and applications. Early on Apple cranked out changes to OS X on an annual basis, but once the company hit Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther," it slowed down, changing to a biannual upgrade cycle.

Apple wasn't standing still between those upgrades, either. By 2005 the PowerPC chip that had served as the basis for Macs throughout the 90s was pushing its limits. Fortunately, hedged its bets, and had been working to keep OS X operating on Intel hardware as well. And so Apple was able to migrate successfully to a different microprocessor architecture without having to start over at square one.

Since then Apple's stayed the course, and with the introduction of Mountain Lion in 10.8, made it clear that it was resuming its annual upgrade cycle again, to iterative make changes to the operating system to keep up with new technology and user expectations. And that brings us to today and the launch of OS X 10.9 "Mavericks," the first installment of the operating system not to carry a big cat's name.

To that end, Apple has run out of big cats to name their operating system. So starting with Mavericks, they've switched to a nomenclature based on places in California, Apple's home state - places that Apple says its employees draw their inspiration from.

Mavericks is actually a surfing spot in Northern California, not too far from Half Moon Bay. That's a local spot for Apple employees, to be sure - it's in San Mateo County, only about 30 miles from Apple's corporate headquarters.

Compatibility and updating

OS X Mavericks comes pre-installed on the new Macs introduced on Tuesday's Apple Event. It's also available as a downloadable update for free from the Mac App Store.

Mavericks works on any 64-bit capable Mac (with 64-bit EFI). Supported models include:

• iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

Installing Mavericks will require a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.7 or later with the Mac App Store installed. You don't need to have Lion or Mountain Lion installed to upgrade.

OS X Mavericks interface updates make an easy, productive transition

Tabbed Web browsing has been a staple of Safari for a number of years - instead of cluttering up your desktop with more windows, hit Command-T to create a tab, instead. It's neatly consolidated inside your existing Safari window but gives you an entirely separate Web page to work from. When you're multitasking or if you need to compare information on different pages, tabbed web pages are a great time saver.

The same basic concept has been employed for Finder Tabs. Instead of creating multiple windows to clutter your desktop, everything stays in one window instead. You can create different Finder Tabs to keep track of anything you'd use a Finder window for - documents or specific folders you're using, AirDrop, the Desktop and more.

In fairness, Finder tabs have been the domain of third-party utilities for some time, but that requires that users install a separate program to enable the capability. This brings that feature to the masses once and for all.

You've been able to assign color labels to Mac files since time immemorial, but tagging is new to Mavericks. It's another big time saver, and it will help you instantly find files and folders you're looking for - not just for local files on your Mac, but for stuff you've stored in iCloud, too.

Tagging lets you attach metadata to your files to make them easier to find - color tags, of course, but also specific keywords that will help you locate things later. You can use descriptive words - "home," "work," "important," "contract" - whatever you might need - then use those tags to find content later. If you lose documents in folders inside of folders nested like Russian matryoshka dolls, this may be a better way for you to find what you need later. What's more, tagging is supported in save dialogues, so you can add tags when you first create files.

OS X Mavericks brings iPad-style iBooks to the Mac - only better

Apple's ebook reader software, iBooks, was first introduced when the iPad debuted in April 2010 and later became available for other iOS devices with iOS 4's release. It's never been essential software - Apple offers it as an optional free download from the App Store rather than including it with every shipping iOS device - but it's an obvious killer app, especially for the iPad.

Now it's come to the Mac, and it's largely unchanged from before. All of the features you're already familiar with from iBooks are present: you can search, you can bookmark pages, adjust font and type size, even switch page color from white to sepia or to night mode, which inverts the color scheme to white type on black pages (less intrusive if you're lying in bed next to someone who's trying to sleep). There's also a scrolling function if you'd prefer not to have to manually flip pages using the mouse, trackpad or keyboard.

You can do things with iBooks on the Mac that you can't on the iPad or iPhone, however. You can have multiple books open simultaneously, for example. Need to compare or contrast source material from two different textbooks? No problem. Mavericks' iBooks lets you highlight passages and attach notes - a feature you can find in the iOS version too - but rather than burying the notes as popups that run in the margin of the book, a Notes pane that runs along one side of the page. This makes it much easier to refer to notes you've added or attached as parts of highlighted sections.

iBooks in Mavericks syncs with iBooks in iOS, so you'll see the same library selections. And you can import PDFs and ePub books, too.

OS X Mavericks Maps help you - and other apps - find your way

Maps in Mavericks looks and acts very much like its iOS counterpart. In fact, it uses the same datasets. The difference is in the size of the screen you're looking at it on, the speed of the network you're downloading data from (Wi-Fi, versus whatever your cell service provider has available), and the rendering power of the computer behind it.

The three of those things combined make Maps on Mavericks a real pleasure to use. When you zoom in to an area, it very quickly renders and populates with points of interest, and it's lightning-fast to respond to search queries too.

Opening the Maps application should look instantly familiar to anyone who's used it on iOS. You can pinpoint your location, look at your surrounds in a 2D view, switch to 3D if you prefer, or combine satellite and 3D imagery to use the "Flyover" feature Apple pioneered in iOS 6, where cityscapes are rendered in photo-realistic 3D.

A Search field lets you find specific addresses, but it can be also used to find points of interest. So if you want to locate a restaurant, museum or shop near you, enter whatever info you're looking to search on and Maps will try to locate something nearby.

Once you've plotted the location of your destination, You can add it to your Bookmarks list (synced between the maps apps of any other OS X or iOS devices connected through iCloud), get directions or add it to your Contacts database.

Like Maps on iOS, Maps for Mavericks provides point to point directions, and will show you real-time traffic conditions. If traffic's bad, Maps can suggest alternate routes. Once you've got your route plotted out, you can send them in a message, e-mail the information, post it to Twitter or Facebook if you've connected those services, add it to Contacts, bookmark it, or send it to your iPhone.

Maps also introduces some much-welcome support for mapping functions into other applications. Take Calendar, for example: Now when you type in an address for a new appointment, Calendar uses that map data to locate the address, show you a thumbnail map (which opens the Maps app) and can even pad your schedule with travel time.

Maps illustrates a couple of very important points that Apple isn't stating directly but wants to underscore. One is that Maps integrates really well into other Mavericks apps, like Contacts and Calendar. Presumably, there will be other ways to integrate that connectivity into other apps, too, because like iOS Maps, Maps in Mavericks doesn't directly support mass transit travel information.

Secondly, Maps does its best to erase the division between iOS and OS X. You can send map data to your phone, for example. And bookmarking a map in the Maps app will sync that bookmark to the Maps app on any other device, iOS or OS X, connected via iCloud.

Apple's also publishing a Map Kit API for third-party app developers who want to integrate Maps data into their own applications. They've even provided a very handy example of how this works with the reworked Calendar app, which lets you plot travel time and embed directions.

OS X Mavericks debuts a familiar-looking Calendar

While Mavericks doesn't have the top-to-bottom flat interface makeover that iOS got when iOS 7 debuted (one can only imagine the howls of outrage from Mac users if such a thing had happened), there are some improvements to reduce the evidence of "skeuomorphism" in Mavericks app design. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Mavericks Calendar app, which is very similar to what we see in iOS 7.

The familiar deskpad interface with its torn margin is gone, and it its place is a sleek and simple design that Apple calls "streamlined."

From the top down, the next obvious change is the placement of the navigation buttons and the date - they've been reversed in weekly, monthly, and yearly views, to give you a clearer visual cue to show what time period you're looking at.

Also gone is the one pixel-wide table grid that's used in Mountain Lion's Calendar for Week, Month and Year layouts. Days in Mavericks are instead separated with white space, with a one-pixel border to separate them vertically. The net result is a cleaner, less cluttered look.

Continuous scrolling is a new feature in Mavericks Calendar. In the monthly view, this means that you can scroll vertically from week to week (the current week gets a colored horizontal line across the top to help you return to it quickly; you can also just click the Today button). In Mountain Lion Calendar, you can horizontally scroll, in weekly or daily views. The scrolling in daily mode is abrupt, replacing each day's events as you scroll; weekly will snap to the next week's events. Now it's smoother and more continuous.

The new look and feel of Calendar will be a welcome change for users who are increasingly accustomed to gesture-based controls for all aspects of the OS X interface, but Calendar gets some really functional enhancements, too. The Inspector is where you'll see the greatest changes. Calendar's Inspector now ties into that data to provide you with a small map showing your meeting location. That's only a thumbnail, though, so if you need walking or driving directions, you can click on the image and the Maps app will automatically open and plot the way.

OS X Mavericks lets you connect to your Facebook account, and if you've said yes to events you've learned about through Facebook, they'll be displayed on a separate Facebook Events calendar.

OS X Mavericks Notifications become interactive - do more with less effort

For years, Mac users who wanted to consolidate notifications from various applications had to rely on third-party apps like Growl to get the job done. That changed in 2012 when Apple rolled out Mountain Lion, which incorporated the iOS-like Notification Center for the first time.

But Apple's implementation of system-wide notifications was sorely lacking: while it provides you with regular status updates through pop up windows and collects them all in a sidebar you can view using a trackpad or mouse gesture, Mountain Lion notifications don't provide any sort of interactivity. So when a tweet comes your way you want to respond to, you still have to open your Twitter application and do it yourself.

Mavericks is taking a big step in the right direction by offering one-click interactivity with notifications. Now when a notification pops up from e-mail, Messages or FaceTime, you can respond without breaking stride in whatever you're doing.

Apple's doing more than that, however - they're bridging connectivity between iOS and OS X Mavericks. So if you have an app running on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad that sends you Push Notifications, you can now get those Push Notifications on the Mac.

Notifications also rounds up your alerts when your Mac is asleep, so when you wake your computer you'll get a list of all notifications that have happened directly from your Lock Screen. If you're concerned about people spying stuff they shouldn't see from your Mac's Lock Screen, worry not. The Notifications system preference pane remains in place in Mavericks, now with additional features, like the ability to customize whether an app will show notifications when the display is asleep or locked.

Apple's also published a spec that Web developers can use on their own sites, which make it possible for you to get push notifications from the site just as if it were an app running locally on your Mac. This is great for news hounds and others who want to stay up to the minute with breaking information on web sites. It'll be interesting to see how wide spread it gets used.

OS X Mavericks Safari speeds up and gets more social

Calendar isn't the only app to lose some real-world imitation. The pseudo-3D gallery interface for Top Sites is gone in the new Safari, replaced with a flatter look that complements Apple's new flat design philosophy. There are some functional changes, as well - you can add sites from your bookmarks, and you can rearrange top sites by clicking and dragging thumbnails around.

A new plus button has been added to Safari's toolbar, which provides one-click bookmarking. And a new Sidebar interface consolidates bookmarks and your reading list, making it easier to locate links you'd like to follow. Web pages you've marked to visit in your reading list will now scroll consecutively, so as you finish one web page, another one will load automatically.

A third tab is added to the new Sidebar called Shared Links, and that provides a social component that's new to Safari: links shared by people you follow on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also retweet links you're visiting directly in Safari.

Apple's worked hard to make JavaScript on Safari run faster than Chrome or Firefox, while improving memory efficiency over both those alternative browsers as well. What's more, Safari uses the CPU much more efficiently than the competition, as well, so you won't burn through battery charge quite as quick as you might with other browsers.

All told, Safari is faster, more efficient and easier to use than before - and instantly familiar to millions of Mac users who depend on it for their everyday web use.

OS X Mavericks new iCloud Keychain feature fixes web password management once and for all

You need secure login credentials to be able to engage in e-commerce and other online activities, but keeping passwords straight can stump even the most advanced computer user. At best, you forget and need to reset your password every time you visit an infrequently-accessed site. At worst, you end up using an insecure password that opens you up to identity theft and other modern problems. Apple's fix for this is iCloud Keychain.

Apple's taking the tried and true functionality of the Keychain utility that's already in the OS, and moving it to iCloud. iCloud Keychain remember AirPort passwords, for example. Web-based passwords are now front and center in iCloud Keychain. Safari will help you generate secure passwords that you don't have to remember - iCloud Keychain fills them in for you whenever they're needed.

iCloud Keychain also retains credit card information, so you don't have to haul your card out from your wallet (or commit its number to memory) to place an online order anymore. The only piece of information you will have to remember is the security code that's imprinted on the back side of your card.

Apple doesn't want your keychain info to get into the wrong hands, so that data is heavily encrypted. Additionally, Mavericks will really push you to lock down your Mac with a password that needs to be entered when your system wakes from sleep, to make sure you're really you. And iCloud Keychain works between iOS and OS X (provided you've updated to iOS 7.0.3 or later).

I can't help but wonder if a Touch ID technology is in development for the Mac. After using it on the iPhone 5s, I'd love to see iCloud Keychain on the Mac paired with a fingerprint reader - it'd make life a lot more convenient.

OS X Mavericks finally gets multiple displays working the way they should

Apple's 2011 release of Lion introduced "full screen" mode for apps, which messed up the Mac's long-standing ability to display multiple screens at once. Going full-screen would reduce one monitor to displaying a pattern while the other one showed the app in edge-to-edge glory. Don't even get me started on Spaces in Lion - that was a tooth-grindingly irritating endeavor.

Now, with Mavericks, when you go full-screen on one monitor the app will, predictably, take over the display. But the second monitor is unencumbered. You can go full-screen with another app on that one, or just use it in regular windowed mode if you prefer. Also, each monitor can have its own menu bar. That's a big advantage that you've never been able to do in OS X before without using third-party software. Less moving the mouse from screen to screen, finally!

Mission Control, OS X's built in window management utility, now shows you an overview of what's running on each display. And you can easily rearrange the location of apps on each display by clicking on its thumbnail and dragging it to a new screen.

AirPlay Mirroring is great if you have an Apple TV connected and it's visible to your Mac over Wi-Fi, but Mavericks takes it a step further: now you can use your TV as an entirely independent display.

All told, multiple monitor systems finally work the way they're supposed to with Mavericks.

The Dock is available in any screen to screen - so if you move your cursor to the bottom of the screen (or wherever you've designated the Dock to appear), the Dock will be available.

OS X Mavericks brings major boosts to efficiency, for Mac users on the go

There are certainly some nice changes to Mavericks to make it easier to use and more functional, but that's only scratching the surface of what Apple has changed here. Because the real meat of Mavericks' changes are under the hood. They're things you'll never see, but they're significant improvements to efficiency that will help your laptop battery last longer than before.

Timer Coalescing is a practical example. A mainstay of Windows for a while, Timer Coalescing helps keep your laptop's battery working longer by putting the processor to sleep whenever it can - and when I say "whenever," I mean in the split milliseconds when it's not doing anything else.

In the space of a few seconds, your CPU will spike in activity many times. This is not only because of the applications you're running, but also because of all the other housekeeping tasks needed to keep OS X up and running. In between those moments, your Mac's CPU enters an idle state, where it's not doing much of anything.

To wake from that idle state requires power, and using power means the battery of your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro won't last as long. Timer Coalescing changes that by grouping together those operations, so instead of constantly flickering between an idle state and operation, the CPU stays idle longer. It may only stay idle for a fraction of a second, compared to a few milliseconds, but over minutes and hours, that idle state adds up. The net result is that your Mac's CPU uses less power. A lot less power.

App Nap is another great battery booster. Sometimes in the course of your day, you'll open one, two, three, half a dozen Mac apps without thinking about it. If you have lots of RAM installed on your Mac and you're not working from battery power, this can be no big deal - but every little bit helps when you have to manage resources like power and CPU activity. OS X Maverick's built-in App Nap function helps better manage what's going on when you have a bunch of apps open.

App Nap automatically slows apps down unless they're being used at that particular moment. As soon as you bring the app front and center, bringing that window forward, App Nap speeds right back up as if nothing's happened.

If there's one thing that can absolutely kill your Mac laptop's battery, it's a runaway Flash process. Load up web pages with Flash objects and you can hear your fans whir up to top speed as they try to cool off the processor, which chomps through your battery reserves at a terrifying rate.

Outside of using a Flash blocker - or not installing Flash to begin with - Mavericks takes a more measured approach. Unless you're give Safari permission, it doesn't arbitrarily load Flash content on a web page anymore. Instead, Safari displays a static preview with a graphic laid on top that says, "Click to Start Flash plug-in." Once you've told it to use Flash, Safari goes ahead and loads the content. Otherwise, the Flash content is paused.

Finally, Mavericks employs some very nifty memory compression technology to help get more from less. If you open a lot of applications, or if some of your apps need a lot of memory, your Mac will slow down. Way down. That's because your Mac runs out of physical RAM to allocate. OS X isn't in the habit of saying no, though, so what it does is create a swap file that gets written to your Mac's hard disk. That swap file contains the contents of inactive memory. Reading from that swap file and writing to it takes time, and that slows the Mac down.

Apple has ameliorated some of the effects of swap memory in machines like the MacBook Air, which uses flash storage instead of a conventional hard drive. The MacBook Air has pretty limited amounts of RAM compared to other Macs but can still run a number of applications simultaneously quicker than Macs with conventional hard drives, thanks to the speed of flash storage. And newer MacBook Airs can go even faster, with speedy PCIe-based storage.

Not all Macs have flash storage, however. And even solid state drives have their limits. The speed of SATA and PCIe interfaces are less than the direct path between the CPU and the installed RAM, creating a bottleneck.

Mavericks' memory compression technology takes a different approach here. It looks at apps and proceses that are running, and may be sitting in memory but not actually using memory. Mavericks figures out which processes are active and which are inactive. It then compresses the memory that the inactive applications have allocated, which frees up more RAM. That keeps your Mac from having to write content out to and read from swap files.

This doesn't have any direct benefit on battery life, but it makes a big difference when you're doing things like waking your Mac from sleep, for example - that happens half again as fast as it did with Mountain Lion. Systems under load are faster, documents open quicker, and inactive applications start up faster than they did with Mountain Lion. These are tangible improvements that make a Mac running Mavericks feel snappier than ever before.

OS X Mavericks bottom line

Apple is in a completely different place with Mavericks than it had to be with iOS 6 - iOS 6 was tired-looking, and it was bursting at the seams with changes that were long overdue. Mavericks, by comparison, takes a finely honed operating system and makes it even better than it was.

That's not to say that Mountain Lion was perfect (Mavericks isn't either). But all of the enhancements to Mavericks in this release, from the new apps to the changes to the Finder to under the hood details that improve efficiency and performance, all just make sense. It moves Mavericks in the right direction, and makes the Mac iteratively better than before.

Whether or not some of the functionality of this new release will pay off for Apple still remains to be seen. Web site push notifications, for example, are entirely dependent on support from web developers, who can be a very finicky bunch. And iCloud Keychain's promise of of set-it-and-forget-it is very appealing, iOS 7 is only now just getting the feature.

There are a lot of very compelling reasons to download and install Mavericks, from the obvious - the new Maps and iBooks apps, a new and improved Safari, and tabbed Finder windows and tagging - to the not-so-obvious, like Timer Coalescing and App Nap.

The bottom line is that if you're interested in seeing your Mac work more efficiently and seeing yourself work more efficiently, Mavericks will help you catch the perfect wave.

Apple will soon roll out a new version of the operating system that powers its Macintosh computers - OS X 10 "Mavericks," the first version of OS X that isn't named after a big cat. (Apple's using place names in California from here on out.) We don't know exactly when Mavericks will ship but we're hoping for more details soon.

iOS 7 was introduced by Apple at the WWDC 2013 keynote on June 10th. The interface hasn't been overhauled nearly as dramatically as iOS 7, but there are still some key changes that should benefit users, whether they're experienced or new to the platform. But what really makes Mavericks special is under the hood - a variety of changes designed to improve the overall efficiency of the operating system to help extend battery life on laptops like the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, changes designed to make Macs wake from sleep faster, and do more with less memory.

Note: This preview is based on publicly available information from Apple and our own analysis of that information. No NDAs were broken during the course of this writing. And because we're previewing pre-release software, this information is subject to change as Apple continues to develop the software. We'll address those changes in future updates.

Calendar

Mavericks introduces a brand new version of Calendars that finally eschews that skeuomorphic design that mirrors what old desk calendars used to look like (no more stitching or twee torn page fragments on the top). But more than just the look and feel of Calendar has changed - some new functionality has been added like integration with Facebook and schedule padding to help make sure you've given yourself enough time to get to your next appointment.

• Complete Calendar preview

iBooks

For a long time the iBooks app has been the exclusive domain of iOS. It's a bit crazy, considering you've been able to get Kindle and Nook ebooks on your Mac for years. Apple's finally remedying that with Mavericks' release, when iBooks is finally available for the Mac too.

• Complete iBooks preview

Safari

With a new operating system release comes a major new version of Safari, Apple's web browser. The new release of Safari makes a variety of changes under the hood designed to improve performance and efficiency, along with user interface changes like a new Top Sites interface and a new Sidebar interface, and new feature like one-click bookmarking and Shared Links.

• Complete Safari preview

iCloud Keychain

Password management is a bona fide PITA, something that's absolutely necessary to protect yourself from identity theft and other problems, but something none of us can do effectively on our own. Apple's trying to make it easier with a new feature that will bridge the gap between OS X and iOS called iCloud Keychain.

• Complete iCloud Keychain preview

Multiple Displays

Macs have had multiple display support since forever, but Apple backslid a bit with the release of OS X Lion, thanks to the release of full screen apps but poor integration for the feature for Macs running multiple monitors. They've finally fixed that in Mavericks, and made some other key changes that make multiple displays easier to use than ever.

• Complete multiple displays preview

Notifications

Mountain Lion introduced Mac users to system wide notifications - something that up until then had only been possible with the use of third-party utilities like Growl. But Notifications in OS X were sadly one-way - interrupting you to tell you when something was happening, but not enabling you to do anything about it unless you launched the app. That changes in Mavericks, when notifications go interactive.

• Complete Notifications preview

Finder Tabs

Tabbed Safari windows can be a huge a time saver, so it's a wonder that the same feature isn't already built into OS X's Finder. Apple's remedying that with Finder Tabs in Mavericks, which work the same way. Drag and drop content from one window to the other, organize using different view styles and more.

• Complete Finder Tabs preview

Maps

iBooks isn't the only iOS-specific app that's headed for OS X. Apple has also created a Maps app that will debut with Mavericks. After a tumultuous year for maps on iOS, Apple has straightened out a lot with its data set and is ready to unleash the technology on Mac users.

• Complete Maps preview

OS X Mavericks Server

Any new release of OS X is accompanied by a new release of OS X Server. Mavericks is no different, and Mavericks Server is in the works. The new release makes it easier than ever for Mac and iOS development teams to create software together; improves the download and delivery of software through the App Store, Mac App Store and iTunes, and more.

• Complete Mavericks Server preview

Timer Coalescing puts your CPU to sleep when it's not in use

In the course of any given minute, your Mac's CPU may be called on to do thousands upon thousands of calculations necessary to keep all the apps and systems operating. But believe it or not, there's a lot of down time between those events where the CPU is doing nothing, just being vigilant for the next event. Why waste power if you don't need to? Timer Coalescing improves CPU efficiency by forcing it into a lower-power mode whenever possible. And the energy savings are spectacular.

• Complete Timer Coalescing preview

App Nap boosts battery life

Among the many battery-saving technologies in Mavericks, App Nap is one of the most important. It's easy to open a bunch of apps and then forget about which ones are running, because you're not using them at that particular moment or they're hidden behind other windows on your desktop. App Nap helps keep those applications from running down your laptop's battery by making them dormant, then waking them up again when you need them.

• Complete App Nap preview

Safari Power Saver stops Flash from ruining your day

Adobe Flash isn't something Apple really wants you to use - it isn't installed by default on shipping Macs anymore. But sometimes Flash is still a necessary evil, thanks to the countless web sites and web-based tools that still rely on the archaic multimedia technology. That doesn't mean that Flash needs to be a CPU and battery-draining hog, though. Apple's made the use of Flash on web sites optional with Safari Power Saver, which prevents Flash content from loading until you tell Safari it's okay.

• Complete Safari Power Saver preview

Compressed Memory helps maximize memory use

Applications get launched and they allocate memory, but don't always use it. Sometimes that memory will get written out to disk as a swap file, and that can slow things down even on a Mac equipped with Solid State Drive technology like a MacBook Air. Compressed Memory in Mavericks helps overcome that issue by doing a better job of managing the inactive memory apps are using.

• Complete Compressed Memory preview

2D games get a boost with Sprite Kit

"Retro" games that take their cues from the console and arcade games of yore remain a perennially popular pastime, especially as some aging Mac users want to return to their roots. Apple has introduced new tools to help game developers create 2D games and bundled it into an API it's calling Sprite Kit.

• Complete Sprite Kit preview

Map Kit encourages third-party integration with Apple Maps

Maps are coming to Mavericks and so is Map Kit, an API that enables third-party developers to integrate map data into their own applications. iOS users already see the benefits of this from third-party apps that use map data for their own use - apps that route and schedule information for mass transit systems, for example. Such apps are sure to follow once Mavericks is available.

• Complete Map Kit preview

Website push notifications help you stay on top of what's happening

Apple's making a lot of changes to Notifications in Mavericks to make them more useful and interactive. They're also making available a new way for web developers to keep you in the loop when content changes on their sites. Website push notification makes it possible for you to receive updates like changes to your flight schedule, stock fluctuations and sports scores without having to keep Safari or any other web browser open.

• Complete website push notification preview

LinkedIn integration provides Single Sign-On simplicity

LinkedIn is the largest social network specifically for professionals, with well more than 230 million registered user accounts worldwide. You can post your resume to it, look for job leads, and network with other professionals in your industry. Apple's making it easier than ever to share information between your Mac and LinkedIn by integrating it the same way Apple's already done for Twitter and Facebook.

• Complete LinkedIn preview

AV Kit helps developers transition from old, busted QuickTime technology

QuickTime is the multimedia technology Apple first introduced in the very early 1990s. While QuickTime Player remains a core part of the application software Apple offers on every shipping Mac, the underlying media delivery technology has changed radically - it's now called AV Foundation, and bears very little resemblance to the QuickTime of old. AV Kit is a new Mavericks API that will help developers transition away from the last vestiges of QuickTime while still providing users with easy access to media controls and editing capabilities.

• Complete AV Kit preview

Plus More!

Every time Apple launches a new version of OS X it's a newsworthy event. Mavericks is going to be a big help to mobile Mac users looking to get the most out of their laptops and to everyone else, too, with improvements to the core user experience, new applications and other changes. Please stick with iMore as we keep you up to date with what's happening, and join our discussion forums where you can chat with others about what Mavericks means for you.

• OS X Mavericks: Everything you need to know
• OS X: Help and discussion forum

iOS gave Apple an opportunity to rethink the way application developers should support and deliver media content on Apple devices. The result of that is a framework called AV Foundation, which debuted on the Mac with OS X 10.7. Now Apple's continuing that effort with new Mavericks technology for developers called AV Kit.

AV Foundation effectively replaces QuickTime by completely reorganizing the way developers work with media content on the Mac, providing a framework that's more compatible with today's computers and today's operating system, more intuitive to work with and better, all around.

When I say "QuickTime," I'm talking about the underlying programming technology and system frameworks. Don't worry: QuickTime .MOV files aren't going away, any more than the industry-standard .MP4 format that uses QuickTime as its basis, or even QuickTime Player, the app that lets you play back movies. What is going away is the crusty old C language code used to control media playback.

In its place is AV Kit. AV Kit lets developers working with Apple's Xcode development environment to integrate media playback, editing and other features without having to write a lot of code to do it.

Here's how Apple explains AV Kit in its public-facing site for developers:

There isn't a lot more public information to share with you about AV Kit at this point, so we'll get back to you once Mavericks is public and details about some of the underlying technology are a bit more accessible.

In the interim, consider AV Kit like so much of the other advanced technology in Mavericks: it's there to improve efficiency and get more from less effort.

Are you a developer who relies on QuickTime? What do you think of AV Foundation? Talk to me in the comments.

Whether you're looking for a job or looking just to connect with colleagues in your field, LinkedIn has become the place to do it for millions of users worldwide. Now Apple is building support for LinkedIn right into Mavericks to make it easier for you to connect.

LinkedIn is a professional network - part Facebook, part Monster.com. You can post your resume and search open job listings, but you can also connect to groups of professionals with common interests or backgrounds, reach out to influencers who might be able to help your career, and more.

To that end, LinkedIn has been wildly successful, building a user base of more than 200 million since its inception in 2002. Not everyone uses it, but like many social networks, you get out of it what you put into it.

Single Sign-On to the rescue

If you've ever set up a new mail, contacts or calendar account in Mountain Lion, you'll be able to link LinkedIn with your Mac the exact same way. Simply enter your user account information one time and OS X Mavericks will take care of the rest. It's Single Sign-On (SSO) for LinkedIn, and it works the same way as Facebook and Twitter connectivity does.

Third-party developers can then tap into those credentials to pull information from LinkedIn or to post new info to LinkedIn. Apple's provided a hook to LinkedIn through Notifications, for example, so you can post updates to LinkedIn without having to open a new browser window and start a LinkedIn session. What's more, Safari now displays a sidebar with links from your important social networks, including LinkedIn.

Lowering barriers to information

In so many ways, OS X Mavericks is about lower barriers between you and the information and services you need. Maps can send information to your iOS device, for example. Notifications lets you respond to emails, messages and more without needing to stop what you're doing and run a separate application. LinkedIn integration is another practical example of that barrier-lowering.

Not everyone wants or needs LinkedIn, but for people who have found it to be a useful resource, OS X Mavericks is making it easier to use.

Are you a LinkedIn user? Or have you avoided it altogether? Do you think single sign-on support for LinkedIn is a useful feature? Let me know what you think.

Sure, 3D games are cool, but there's been a strong push over the past few years to produce killer games with "old school" appeal - games that reference the 2D platformers, puzzlers and action games of old. After all, many gamers these days grew up in the shadow of Nintendo consoles - heck, some of us old farts even had Ataris, back in the day - and feel really comfortable playing those types of games.

Apple is answering the call by rolling its own frameworks for 2D game development, which it calls Sprite Kit. "Sprites" in 2D game development parlance are the animated characters you see in a computer game - the character you control, the bad guys, the bullets and missiles, and all the other elements of a scene in a game that's overlaid on top of the background.

But Sprite Kit controls a lot more than just characters in games. It's a complete engine for managing things like in-game physics. It also provides a particle system that helps developers produce more realistic effects like fire, smoke and explosions. That can save developers a lot of time from having to learn how to do these things using low-level technology like OpenGL, the graphics open standard that OS X supports.

Here's what Apple says on its public web page for Mavericks developers:

Why Sprite Kit is a good idea

There are plenty of "middleware" offerings from software development companies who make money by licensing their technology to game developers who want to develop titles, but don't want to "roll their own" low level technology to handle things line in-game physics and animation. Some of those licenses are available at low cost, too, or in some cases, free, depending on how many copies of the game are sold.

But that technology is, by and large, not custom-designed specifically for OS X and iOS. Sprite Kit's different is that it's home-grown by Apple, so developers can expect better integration with Apple's Xcode development environment and better support at the core operating system level.

That's a net win for developers who begin to use the new technology, since maintaining compatibility with new operating system releases and changes to core Apple technology can be a real pain.

Sprite Kit won't have all the same features as more mature and robust game development engines will, at least not right off the bat. But it'll be enough for game developers to produce some compelling titles right away, and just like other core OS technology and development frameworks, Apple's certain to improve it over time.

Bridging the gap between iOS and OS X

In so many ways, Apple is trying to sensibly erase the line between using an iOS device and using a Mac - we see this in Mavericks technologies like iCloud Keychain, which just work regardless of which device you're using.

Sprite Kit exists very much in that realm - it's a technology that will be supported both by iOS 7 and Mavericks, to make it easier for developers to move in between those worlds, creating games that can run on any Apple-branded device, instead of limiting themselves to a single market.

Are you a Mavericks developer? Are you going to use Sprite Kit to create your games? Or do you prefer to use a third-party game engine technology? Let me know.

If you open a lot of applications, or if some of your apps need a lot of memory, your Mac will slow down. Way down. That's because your Mac runs out of physical RAM to allocate. OS X isn't in the habit of saying no, though, so what it does is create a swap file that gets written to your Mac's hard disk. That swap file contains the contents of inactive memory. Reading from that swap file and writing to it takes time, and that slows the Mac down.

Apple has ameliorated some of the effects of swap memory in machines like the MacBook Air, which uses flash storage instead of a conventional hard drive. The MacBook Air has pretty limited amounts of RAM compared to other Macs but can still run a number of applications simultaneously quicker than Macs with conventional hard drives, thanks to the speed of flash storage. And newer MacBook Airs can go even faster, with speedy PCIe-based storage.

Not all Macs have flash storage, however. And even solid state drives have their limits. The speed of SATA and PCIe interfaces are less than the direct path between the CPU and the installed RAM, creating a bottleneck.

Improving memory efficiency

Apple set out to do things a bit differently in OS X Mavericks, and they've come up with a memory compression scheme that does the trick. Here's how it works:

At any given time, dozens of different processes - applications, background tasks and more - may be running on your Mac. A lot of them you may have absolutely no awareness of, unless you open the Activity Monitor app in your Utilities folder - they're not items that appear in your Dock, and there's no way to interact with them directly.

These processes and the apps you're running may be sitting in memory but not actively using memory. But they're there, and they're grabbing a little piece of your Mac's available RAM. Cumulatively, they take up space and create the potential for slowdowns.

Apple has engineered Mavericks to be aware when your Mac is reaching its physical RAM limit. And when it does, Mavericks leaps into action and figures out which processes are active and which are inactive. It then compresses the memory that the inactive applications have allocated, which frees up more RAM. That keeps your Mac from having to write content out to and read from swap files.

According to Apple, compressing and decompressing memory happens "almost instantly," so there's no slowdown and therefore no downside for the user. Apple says that with memory compression on Mavericks, they're seeing 1.4x speed increases in system reponsiveness under load, when opening documents or reactivating inactive applications, even on machines equipped with fast SSDs.

Your Mac has to write out swap files when it goes to sleep and it needs to read the when it wakes up. There's also a big improvement in the time it takes a Mac to wake from standby - 1.5x faster, compared to Mountain Lion.

It's yet another way that Mavericks promises to improve efficiency compared to Mountain Lion and what's come before, which means a faster and better user experience for you.

Have you seen your Mac slow way down as it manages big swap files? Do you think Mavericks will make a big difference for you? How much RAM does your Mac have? I want to hear from you, so please let me know in the comments.

With the rise of HTML 5 and the dominance of the iPad as a web surfing tool, use of Adobe Flash is on the wane, but it's still used by thousands of sites. Apple's done its part to try to move progress forward by leaving Adobe Flash out of the default configuration of newly shipping Macs, leaving it to customers to decide if they want to enable the technology on their own systems. But once it's on, Adobe Flash can cause other issues on your Mac. Now Apple's doing something about it, thanks to Power Saver, a feature coming to Safari with OS X Mavericks' release.

Even the more conscientious Mac user is bound to miss it once in a while when a web page laden with Flash content loads. All of a sudden you're watching your battery meter drop rapidly and you notice the MacBook is running really hot, and oh, that noise - the fans have gone into high gear trying to get heat away from the motherboard.

Using a Flash blocker extension is one option - and it's one that many of us use quite successfully. But that leaves web pages looking ugly, with gaps or spaces where there should be content.

Apple's come up with a different solution for OS X Mavericks, and they're calling it Safari Power Saver. The new feature of Safari running on Mavericks wrests the Mac's CPU out of Flash's hands and puts it back in your control.

Here's how Apple describes{.nofollow} Safari Power Saver:

The way it works is simple: unless you're give it permission, Safari doesn't arbitrarily load Flash content on a web page. Instead, Safari displays a static preview with a graphic laid on top that says, "Click to Start Flash plug-in." Once you've told it to use Flash, Safari goes ahead and loads the content. Otherwise, the Flash content is paused.

The difference? Apple says it a Mac CPU running Safari Power Saver can use up to 35 percent less power than before.

We'd like to think we're living in a post-Flash world, and more and more that's the case. But some web vendors still stubbornly cling on to older technology because they're unable or unwilling to make the transition. Until the day we can finally drive a stake through this vampire's heart, Flash is something that many of us will have to live with. Safari Power Saver makes it a bit easier to deal with today's reality.

I'm really interested to hear from you: Do you currently use ad blocking software with Safari? Have you done away with Flash all together? Do you think that Safar Power Saver is going to help you? Please tell me in the comments.

Sometimes in the course of your day, you'll open one, two, three, half a dozen Mac apps without thinking about it. If you have lots of RAM installed on your Mac and you're not working from battery power, this can be no big deal - but every little bit helps when you have to manage resources like power and CPU activity. OS X Maverick's built-in App Nap function helps better manage what's going on when you have a bunch of apps open.

Here's what Apple has to say{.nofollow} about App Nap:

"Power drops right down. That's extending your battery life," explained Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi. "...It's really gonna help your battery life."

Here's the scenario: You've opened up iTunes, Safari, and Mail. You're listening to music while surfing the Web and composing an e-mail to your client about the project you're working on.

If you have Safari loaded with a web page that has any sort of Flash content on it - an in-line ad, say, or a game or video - you'll watch your CPU drop to its knees as it tries to pay attention to that and everything else you're trying to do. All of a sudden your Mac gets hot, and you hear the fans kicking into high gear to get all that heat away from the sensitive parts therein. And that's when you begin to notice that your battery life is falling off faster than water through a sieve.

Enter App Nap. This cool new technology built into OS X Mavericks knows when you have an app whose window is hidden behind another app. If that app is idle and not actively engaged in some task - App Nap will automatically slow the app down. As soon as you bring the app front and center, or bring that window forward, it speeds right back up as if nothing's happened.

The net result? You save battery life. Apple's tests showed that CPU energy use can be reduced up to 23 percent using App Nap.

App Nap, along with Timer Coalescing and other new "under the hood" features in OS X Mavericks, promise to make your Mac laptop's battery last longer and work more efficiently. What technology in Mavericks are you most excited about? Let me know in the comments and visit these links for more.

• OS X Mavericks: Everything you need to know
• OS X Mavericks: Discussion forum

Of the many advanced technologies being introduced in OS X Mavericks, one of the most useful for Mac laptop users is Timer Coalescing. It's an energy-saving technique that promises to extend battery life on your Mac laptop by forcing the laptop's CPU into a low-power mode whenever it's available.

Here's what Apple says{.nofollow} about Timer Coalescing:

Managing CPU traffic

In the space of a few seconds, your CPU will spike in activity many times. This is not only because of the applications you're running, but also because of all the other housekeeping tasks needed to keep OS X up and running. In between those moments, your Mac's CPU enters an idle state, where it's not doing much of anything.

To wake from that idle state requires power, and using power means the battery of your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro won't last as long. And right now, in Mountain Lion and earlier revisions of OS X, your Mac isn't doing it as efficiently as it could be.

That means power is getting wasted, and your Mac laptop is draining its battery faster than it has to be. That's because many of those low-level operations are spread apart, over milliseconds, but it adds up pretty quickly.

Timer Coalescing changes that by grouping together those operations, so instead of constantly flickering between an idle state and operation, the CPU stays idle longer. It may only stay idle for a fraction of a second, compared to a few milliseconds, but over minutes and hours, that idle state adds up. The net result is that your Mac's CPU uses less power. A lot less power.

In its tests, Apple compared Mountain Lion and a development build of Mavericks running on a production MacBook Air. They discovered that Timer Coalescing can reduce CPU activity by 72 percent.

The way Timer Coalescing works, you won't notice any difference in performance. The operating system is just grouping together the tasks that need to happen to make it run more efficiently. And there's nothing you need to do to get it working - it's built right in to Mavericks.

Apple has a nifty interactive graphic on its web site{.nofollow} that will show you how Timer Coalescing works.

I don't know a single Mac laptop user who doesn't wish their device didn't last longer on a single charge. And in fairness to Apple, nothing they can do will make the battery last long enough for everyone. But Timer Coalescing goes a long way to improving battery life without negatively impacting system performance - I think we can all agree that it's a huge step forward.

Is Timer Coalescing an important feature for you? Have you used other operating systems (like Windows 7) that support Timer Coalescing? Let us know what you think in the comments, and click these links for more Mavericks info!

• OS X Mavericks: Everything you need to know
• OS X Mavericks: Discussion forum

OS X Server, using the same underpinnings as OS X, provides server-strength file sharing capabilities, database publication (including contact and calendar functionality), live video streaming, e-mail service, wiki and Web site publication, iOS device management, and more. It includes powerful open source software like Python, a popular scripting language, PostgreSQL for Structured Query Language (SQL) database support, and Apache, a popular open-source web server.

Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, offered nary a word about OS X Server during his keynote presentation introducing Mavericks at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco last month. Should you infer from that a disinterest in server software coming from Apple's senior management? No. In fact, the opposite is true. They're very interested in seeing OS X Server do well, because it's crucial to the entire Apple ecosystem.

Working hand-in-hand with OS X on desktop and laptop Macs

The history of Macs as servers is almost as long as the Mac itself. Apple has sold server products for years - even in the pre-OS X "Classic" Mac OS days. Up until fairly recently, however, OS X Server remained the rarified domain of corporate IT departments. In January, 2011 Apple discontinued its rack-mountable server product, the Xserve, and IT jocks (and analysts) panicked - it seemed like Apple was pulling up stakes out of the enterprise space all together.

How wrong we were.

Turns out the Mac mini has had smashing success as a server, for the lucrative Small to Medium Business (SMB) market and also as a workgroup server for small to medium-sized groups of employees in corporate environments. The diminutive laptop is available in a server-specific configuration with two internal 1TB hard disk drives for $999. But you can install OS X Server on any Mac you might have lying around that's running up-to-date operating system software.

That's because Apple also radically changed the way it sold OS X Server.

As recently as Apple's release of Snow Leopard, Mac OS X v10.6, the company sold Snow Leopard Server separately from the "regular" operating system. $499 netted you a single server installation with support for unlimited users.

An incredible value

Now OS X Server is actually included with the regular operating system. You can buy a server management application for $19.99 as a download through the Mac App Store.

That's not changing with OS X Mavericks - you'll still be able to buy a separate management app through the Mac App Store. Apple continues to build the core capabilities into the regular consumer operating system.

Here's what Apple has to say{.nofollow} about OS X Server in Mavericks:

A friend to iOS devices as well

In other words, OS X Server in Mavericks is pretty much going to be a continuation of what we've seen - enhancements, rather than a major upheaval, designed to facilitate better workgroup communication in areas where OS X Server is really useful - teams of programmers working together on projects in Xcode, Apple's development environment for OS X and iOS applications alike, for example. Or businesses that are leveraging iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad among their employees, whether it's standard-issue policy or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Caching Server 2 promises to reduce wasted employee time by hastening the speed at which OS X Server will download content from iTunes, the Mac App Store or the App Store for iOS.

But don't think OS X Server is only good for Macs, iPads and iPhones. It's built on the same open standards and proven technology as the rest of OS X. It is OS X. It's a good corporate citizen that plays well with Windows PCs, Linux boxes and other various and sundry computing devices, too.

Some pundits and analysts erroneously think that Apple doesn't care about the enterprise space - those blowhards don't see Apple selling server hardware to compete with Dell, IBM and other companies, and assume the company is MIA. Nothing is further from the truth - Apple's been here all along. It's just that they have a very different handle on the market than most of the other companies in enterprise computing do. $20 gets you everything you need to get OS X Server off the ground. Compare that with the costs of server racks and blade systems and specialized server software used in other venues. It's a remarkable difference.

Are you in IT? Do you depend on OS X Server either as a user or an administrator? Or is this all rubbish that you don't care about? Talk to me in the comments, please, I'd love to hear from you. And please follow these links to find out more about OS X Mavericks or to have a conversation with other users about what features you're looking forward to most.

• OS X Mavericks: Everything you need to know
• OS X Mavericks: Discussion forum