OS X Mavericks problems that drive me nuts — how about you?

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.

Peter Cohen
122 Comments
  • Biggest problem for me, as everything else, (that I used), seemed fine; How to locally sync an iPhone with OS X Mavericks? iCloud is NOT an option. Google that - it's about the loss of Sync services.
  • Sync over wifi, am I missing something?
  • Try Syncing Contacts and Calendars without iCLoud.
  • Gotcha, you're comment wasn't real specific.
  • Yeah, sorry about that. Not sure why they took it away without providing an elegant solution to replace it.
    There were plenty of Douchebags on that thread that attempted to explain Apples great, (it's better for all of us), solution.
  • I think they want everyone to use iCloud now, rather than have several, competing, solutions. You don't say why iCloud is not an option for you?
  • Never really found it reliable. Make changes on the Mac and then I'd click sync and I'd see that the icon in Calendars, and also that the Little Snitch menu bar indicated outbound traffic, but no or not all changes appeared on my phone. I then felt like I couldn't make further changes or leave the house and expect to rely on what might have been in my iPhone Calendar as I didn't know if the previous ones had stuck. USB Sync though was immediate, and in my case virtually aways perfect, (there was the odd conflict which was easily sorted). My work didn't mind using private devices as long as they were secured, (once you enabled Exchange certain other measures came into play also), but they will NOT allow me to upload to a remote third party server.
  • I believe that is the reason why they stopped that syncing behind the scenes. If you haven't tried it recently you might want to give it another shot. I've found no problems like that anymore with the syncing as I believe there is really only one master now, the Cloud version.
  • You missed the last section of my post, (probaby as I edited it later). But before I had two options, now I'm down to one. Once bitten twice shy too. But I suspect that soon I'll capitulate if they, or other devs don't come up with something soon.
  • The syncing is almost there..., but there are times when it just isn't on.
    Kind of like when my wife is talking to me, I hear here but there are just somethings that I miss. The iCloud with Pages, Keynote, and numbers is a problem. If you want to share it on the cloud. it has to stay there. And unless you make a copy, you have to rely on the cloud to make sure your doc is saved. Not too keen on that. Not too mention, I like to have my OWN copy on my box.
  • hey i have faced the same problem but i resolved the problem with the help of this link.
    http://www.microsoftsupportchat.com/blog/post/Is-there-any-way-NOT-to-sy...
  • I jumped at the opportunity to upgrade to Mavericks for the behind-the-sceens optimizations that it offers, however, I have had some of the issues that you have addressed in your extremely encompassing list, Peter.
    I've also had issues with apps that I use frequently for content creation that crash often now too.
    But, hey, what can little ole me do but wait for fixes and carry on until then?
  • Mail, period. It's gotten to the point where I've given up on it, and am handling almost all email on my iOS devices using mailbox. eagerly, eagerly awaiting the mailbox client for mac os, as I can't stand the google web mail interface...
  • Have you ever tried to use MS Outlook? I mean, it offers a great solution, and up to today it has not disappointed me. The Mail.app was always letting me down regarding inbox management and responsiveness. The Outlook.app, on the other hand, provides you great management, and also offers a great responsiveness and server sync times. Up to now it hasn't crashed and the power consumption is relatively low.
  • Swiping left on launchpad stalls when using the trackpad. Annoying
  • I have that problem too. Very annoying.
  • The biggest problem I have with Mavericks is that I can't run it on my old G4 :p Tax return this year means it's finally time for a new Macintosh.
  • SMB and Webdav give me the worst headaches.
    Finder does not use the correct http headers when copying files over webdav, causing most webdav servers to ignore the request.
  • The quick look is my biggest pain point. When looking at raw image files, it's terribad.
  • Sorry Allyson, but is terribad worse than gigabad? Sorry, my bad.
  • I really haven't had any of these problems (of course, I don't use anything by google except search, so the gmail problem is absent). And, as far as the Quick Look, all I do is top the space bar and it works fine--but maybe you mean something different?!
  • The quick look being slow drives me crazy, I constantly use it in my job, I am seriously regretting installing mavericks. It is particularly slow on my mid 2012 Retina MacBook Pro, but not as bad on my mid 2012 MBA.
  • I just love hearing about all these problems in the land of unicorns and rainbows. ;-)
  • I’d still rather use Mavericks than the latest MSFT fail. Maybe Window 8.2 will sell their garbage tablets that are occupying countless warehouses. All software has problems. Windows, doubly so. :)
  • No question. But "Windows sucks more" is cold comfort. ;)
  • I have recently been having issue with scrolling on the App Store and other apps. It has gotten really annoying but at the same time it is easy to avoid the App Store for now. As for the other apps that this happens on, luckily I don't really use them often so.
  • So far no mail problems, but at times when I close everything out, and tell the computer to shut down, it does not, and nothing is showing on the screen except the wave wallpaper. I have to do a force quit. The strange thing if I shut down, my habit is to hit enter, and it usually shuts down, but at times gets hung up. If I shut down, and just let the pop up count down, and not hit enter, it always shuts down normally. Never had this problem in mountain lion. At times I get the scrolling problem. Sent from the iMore App
  • Until they fix multiple monitor's many issues it is currently crap. The screwed up dock randomly pops up on other screen and defiantly sticks there. There should be an option for menus on all monitors or 1, but never dimmed out. And not remembering where an app should open? This is perhaps the most annoying "feature" as it invariably requires dragging and resizing to put the window back where it was when you last closed it. Then there is the app that opens with 75% of it hidden off screen....looking at you Mac Mail. I suspect like many, I have multiple monitors because I use them for specific productivity tasks and not just to pick up chicks. The full screen thing works, but most everything else about it doesn't and that costs me time (money). Messages seems to still be a hot mess. Sometimes things come in on all devices, other times they don't. Searching and scrolling is strictly forbidden unless you like laggy, jerky screen movements and exceptionally slow response. Does Safari have narcolepsy? Is Safari now supposed to stop or slow down a download if it does not have focus? I have ATT internet which means that I get 1/6th the bandwidth that I pay for. To watch a Youtube video I generally have to start the video, pause it, do something else as I wait for it to cache, then start playing the video. Since Mavericks came out it seems the download caching only works if Safari retains focus.
  • Installed Windows 7 two months ago. Problems solved.
  • Oh, wow, that was so witty....and original.
  • Oh ... the unmitigated, pedantic hell of the Windows experience. Die-hard fan for 15 years. Then because of Windows 8 and the ease of Mac gestures, switched in Feb. Even Windows 7, for all it's relative non-suckiness, is like pulling nails now. I don't know, I thought 10.8 was cool. All this griping about 10.9 ... I still find it pretty awesome. Especially the multi monitor ease of use, despite its minor flaws. After Windows I guess I'm just not as spoiled by a crazy-smooth experience. Remember, they had about 4mo to build this before they had to spend 6mo in testing. Forstall was fired in fall 2012. Didn't start 10.9 until November (Apple said at trial). Presented alpha in May. It's understandable why the recent iOS 7 and 10.9 updates are worse -- there was no way for Apple to give them the usual time.
  • Windows XP is the most Popular version of Windows, Windows 7 is the Best version of windows, Windows 8 is - by far - the worst version of windows.
    It's not just that Mac OS X has the issues mentioned above... LOTS of semi-advanced features are missing (Ex. It took me 1 week to find my WiFi's M.A.C address when I first got it!), and anything over that needs the command prompt (Ex. Showing hidden files!). And there is very limited software support. Not to mention Minecraft is pretty much the only game that's supported lol. Apple has pretty much invented GUI in Operating Systems; But then they concentrated on tiny details, leaving huge bugs and features out...
  • XENGS, do not make any confusion between your lack of experience with MacOSX and it's features or functionality. You need 10 seconds (very conservative) to know your machine MAC Adress without any terminal command. Any average MacOSX user, with 2 months of experience, knows how to get any information about machine's hardware. Apple Menu -> About this Mac -> System Report then just click on the "Network -> wifi" option from the left list. MacOSX has this centralised manner of access system information In Windows is a pain to get the same from several places. As for the Hidden files, maybe there's a reason to hide them from users. If you want to access them via a GUI, there are dozens of free apps to do so (Tinker tool, Onyx, Invisiblix, etc). If you want to find invisible files from the finder, when you start a search, you have the option to search for "File visibility" in the search options. Compare these search option with the inefficient windows search for instance!! As a matter of Fact, I have in the same machine Mavericks and Windows 7 installed. I use both daily and Mavericks has nothing to do with windows 7. It's, by far, better in all aspects, unless you need a windows only application.
  • Your answer is very biased towards OS X, however.
    So first things first; I didn't say you need to run a command to find out a MAC address, did I?
    As for saying "maybe there's a reason to hide them from users"; Indeed there is a reason they are hidden from users, but quoting from my reply, "LOTS of semi-advanced features are missing". Showing hidden files is an essential feature to many semi-advanced users; Web Developers for example, need to edit .htaccess files, which due to their dot prefix get automatically hidden. Meaning they can't be opened, or uploaded by dragging and dropping.
    "there are dozens of free apps to do so (Tinker tool, Onyx, Invisiblix, etc)."
    This exact phrase proves my point completely. There are MANY features missing, which in order to gain, you either have to run UNIX commands through the Command Prompt, or get several other applications that will help you do it. I won't comment on the fact that they will, eventually, make your mac unresponsive due to tons of auto starting services, registry, etc, but instead leave it there; "Mac OS X lacks many features". If you would like some examples of features it lacks... Without using the command prompt, or third party software anyway:
    - MsConfig, which will allow you to control which services start up when booting your computer. Very useful if you don't want a 20 minute start-up.
    - Viewing hidden files, as I mentioned earlier.
    - Installing custom drivers for devices.
    - Properly uninstalling software (Including AppData, etc)
    - Device Manager; Managing a device. I know you can view it's info, but you can't disable it or do any sort of management.
    - Etc... Not mention issues with other apple software, like a iTunes' lack of FLAC support...
  • I have a lot of issues with Mavericks but the two that stand out are the Finder and Quick View. Finder: For some reason on all 3 of my macs then when browsing folders in the Finder then they often appear blank for a while until it finally gets populated. It's odd because I'll open a file, close the finder and a few minutes later go to the same folder and its blank again and I need to wait. I dont get it. Quick View support - Losing AVI and FLV support is terrible. I taught my kids to access a specific folder with some of their videos on it that they can just spacebar to view. But now it requires opening in VLC since I cant get that support back.
  • Finder: must be a caching issue. I haven't seen it locally myself - only on network volumes sometimes. Where these systems upgraded from an earlier OS? or new with 10.9? Quicklook: certain file support in quicklook is more of an issue of quicktime plugins for video, it is possible for a new plugin to be made to support this... just hasn't happened yet.
    There is a thread on reddit that has details, and some work-arounds. (was the 3rd link on a google search of "Mavericks quicklook avi"0 I barely even noticed because I have used Plex for the last few years. My 2yr old daughter knows to fire up plex on the iPad, or on the computer to access those videos (on the iPad she uses the most, I have it set to automatically show genre's appropriate for her)
  • "Apple's UI designers simply ran out of time with Mavericks" How can they run out of time when they really don't give public release dates...ship when it's ready? That's supposed to be the difference with Apple products.
  • There's a difference between giving out public release dates and hitting internal milestones.
  • I've been told that the 10.9.2 beta of OS X reverses the "polarity" of that power button so that it acts like it always has before on Mac notebooks. Maybe you should trying installing it to see if that is true.
  • It's still different. Holding the power button for 1 second does nothing, 2 seconds THEN release to go to sleep and around 3 seconds for options. 5 seconds is force shutdown. As you can see, it has not been entirely reversed yet. It used to be 1 second for shutdown options, and I liked 10.9 where sleep could just be activated immediately.
  • For me, it's resizing web page in Safari. on either my MacBook Air or 27" iMac, I like to hit the Command and + keys twice to enlarge the content in safari. But when I navigate to another web page, it resizes the page to its native size. Prior to Mavericks, Safari would remember how large I like to see web pages. I wish they would bring that back, unless I am missing a setting somewhere. I'll also echo the need to make items popup consistently. On my iMac, I have two additional monitors attached and when I go to empty my trash, the confirm window may show up on the main iMac Monterey or one of the the other two side monitors. No rhyme or reason as to where they will pop up next.
  • There's a specific problem with scrolling in Safari that happens when the back and/or forward buttons are disabled (which is the case when creating a new window/tab). If while scrolling vertically with two fingers you deviate horizontally so that it triggers the rubber banding effect that is supposed to prevent you from swiping left or right when there's no previous or forward page, once the rubber band animation is finished the scrolling position suddenly jumps up or down. The size of the jump depends on how much you deviated horizontally, if you deviated by a small amount, it looks like scrolling is jittery. Not sure if it happens in other apps.
  • I've got a late-2013 27-inch iMac, with 2 external monitors (so 3 displays in total). Overall, I've been happy with Mavericks, but there are some oddities. I use X11 in my work a lot (xdvi windows, and my own C code using X11 graphics for displaying simulations). If I try to drag an X11 window from the primary display to one of the other displays, it vanishes. My mouse pointer appears on the other displays, but with no window attached to it. If I keep moving the mouse pointer back to the primary display, the window is still attached to it. Try it e.g. by running "xclock". The multi-monitor setup just gets in my way in general. E.g. say I have Preview windows open on displays 1 and 2, and am reading through a document on display 1. I command-tab to another application which is only on display 2. Then I try to command-tab back to Preview to keep reading my document. But focus is now on the Preview window on display 2, rather than on display 1. That is, focus within an application goes to a window on the same display that you're currently focused on, rather than on the window which last had the focus for that application. Sometimes, my trackpad click stops working in all applications (web browsers, e-mail, etc.). I can move the pointer around, but clicking does nothing. I plugged in a USB mouse one time it happened, and it also had the problem -- I could not click on anything. (Scrolling using two fingers on the trackpad also stopped working.) I believe I could still click items on the menu bar, because I fixed it by switching back to the login window for a moment (without actually logging out) and then re-logging in to my account. This has happened a few times. I'm pretty sure I had one more strange issue, but can't recall it at the moment.
  • I have been searching everywhere for someone else with this same problem regarding the trackpad click stops working for no apparent reason. I too have 3 monitors although from a Macbook pro and not an iMac, but it seems this is a common setup we both have and i wonder if this is causing the issue? Were you ever able to solve this?
  • I read your article about Mavericks, I don't believe the problems you talked about are as wide spread as you think.
    I've had no issues with sound or smooth scrolling.
    Gmail, while it's better then it was, it isn't all Apple. Google should have better IMAP support then what they have now. Hitting the power button..
    It's a good bet that a good portion of users don't actually restart their computer when they are done, they just close the lid, or hit the power button to put the computer to sleep and walk off to do something else. I can think of a lot of Windows computers that do the same. That's a preference not a problem. Notifications...no problem other then the fact that iMore doesn't have notifications ahem......:)
  • Are you nuts? The gmail problems were completely absent in Mountain Lion and Lion. It is in Mavericks that the problem occurs. So to shift the blame to google is absurd. You're a mac boner.
  • In email there is no way to preview emails without mark the message read. This feature was still present in Mountain Lion. This is extremely frustrating and unacceptable for enterprise use..
  • I'm actually very pleased with the multi-monitor support. It's a HUGE improvement over Mountain Lion.
  • Reading through this list there are only a few that actually happen to me. So the problem while mostly in Apple's court will still also be attributable to some users' setups, apps installed, crappy upgrade, etc. Asking the same user to start fresh with a good base system will be like pulling teeth because complaining will be easier than loading everything back. The skeumophism though I think is a personal preference. There are some that will not like some elements and others that will love it. I personally prefer the new game center compared to the old casino table look but then I never did care whether something was skeumorphic as long as it worked.
  • I remembered the other issue. Sometimes when I command-tab to another application (often, but not always, Chrome), nothing happens. The screen doesn't update until I wiggle the pointer a bit by wiggling my finger on the trackpad. It's not that it's just slow. I can hit command-tab, wait a long time without seeing anything, and then the moment I wiggle on the trackpad it switches to the app I selected. When I'm holding command-tab, I see the app icons right away. The delay/freeze happens after I release the keys.
  • Finder freezing on network transfers. Anyone else having this issue? Sent from the iMore App
  • Mail is a hot mess, just as you've said. Rules are completely broken, and despite numerous fixes suggested in the Apple forums, nothing works. All my rules were working fine before Mavericks, dutifully moving incoming mail to their designated folders, but no more. Sometimes the mail COPIES (it never moves) and sometimes not. I finally just deleted all the rules and went back to moving messages manually. And yes, Mail also refuses to shut down, so you're not alone. Apple, FIX THIS.
  • The most disruptive issue I continue to face is the inability to send iWorks documents (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) as attachments through gmail. Each time I want to send one of these docs as an attachment I have to remember first to export it as a Microsoft file or convert it to a pdf first. If it was only for personal use, I could just get an iCloud email address, but all of my business email addresses are through gmail. I know that gmail sees the new iWorks docs as spam due to the new folder structure, but it seems like Apple and Google could get together and create an exception rule (or some other brilliant solution) so us poor users can send attachments.
  • email: I've seen issues with every email client out there, including past versions of Apple Mail (most notably it prompting for a password when the email server is slow responding, or gives certain error messages that have nothing to do with authentication) Quick Look: works fine for me, other than some of the older quicktime plugins no longer function for quicklook - hopefully someone will update or release new ones to cover this functionality. I've actually had more problems with slow quicklook on my older Mac Pro running 10.7 Power Button: I ended up far more used to "control-eject button" which on the newer Macs the eject button was replaced with the power button so "control-power button" to get the menu to pop up instantly. (mostly because I work on desktops and laptops daily) skeuomorphism: yeah, agreed they likely ran out of time, I'm sure it'll all be gone in the next major release. multi-monitor: I turned off the "each display is its own space" to get the old functionality - mostly because I use 3 displays and don't "full screen" apps. With the "each display is its own space" turn on, whenever I launched an app that previous had windows spread across my 3 monitors, the windows would be all collected on the main display again. I mostly use keyboard shortcuts, so having one menu bar on the middle display doesn't impact me as much as some users I guess. Audio drop outs: haven't seen this one myself - could be I'm not using any interfaces - just built in speakers, headphones or HDMI with audio. Notifications: yeah, helpers apps sounds like a good idea to add in the next major release. SMB: technically apple switched from Samba used in earlier OS to their own developed solution which supports SMB2 Smooth Scrolling: mostly smooth, haven't noticed enough choppy scrolling to be annoyed yet. I think there will always be room for improvement especially as computing power continues to increase, then more input methods will likely be possible for everyday use leading to more changes/improvements in how an OS looks/works.
  • "hot mess" is being charitable—"steaming pile" would be a better description. Here is my list of problems with Mail alone
    1. Multiple instances of same sent mail in Sent folder
    2. Multiple instances of same deleted file in Trash
    3. Frequent instances of Sent mail appearing in Drafts folder after sending, so I have to recheck the file was actually sent.
    4. Occasionally stops receiving emails although same emails do appear on iPhone-requires Mail app restart to get new emails
    5. Mail app very very very slow to shutdown—this with an archive of some 8000 mails and perhaps 50 in the Inbox
    I have tried clean installs of Mavericks on formatted disk and restored/rebuilt Mail databases but the problems never get fixed.
    The other Mavericks oddities I can live with but Mail drives me nuts—and I am not using gmail at all.
  • I'd like to see an option to kill mouse acceleration. Mac OS used to have the best mouse movement of any OS, but they killed the option to turn off acceleration (which makes sense on a track pad but makes mouse movement horrible) several versions ago. There are third party apps which attempt to fix this with varying levels of success. It's one area where windows is now vastly superior. As for the look of Mavericks, I expect we'll get a full iOS7 style redesign later this year. Mac OS looks dated now, unlike the far more modern, and flat, look of iOS 7. (And Windows 8)
  • I wonder if this still works in Mavericks
    http://triq.net/articles/mouse-acceleration-preference-pane-mac-os-x I've used default acceleration so long I prefer the default settings (Move your mouse or trackpad quickly, and the mouse moves further, move slowly and it moves more accurately)
  • My only issue is the kernel_task bug. It takes up VERY frequently 100% CPU just for having your earplugs plugged in.
    Thus it's draining your battery mega fast etc.
  • Spotlight reindexing after every restart. Sent from the iMore App
  • Apropos of this, there seems to be a group of us who are experiencing Spotlight continuously "estimating indexing time" and never actually indexing at all! This, for me, is on a brand new macbook pro. Spotlight has been estimating indexing time for about a month now. I wish Apple read these articles and comments.
  • Changes to the network stack broke some VPN solutions, which has been a real pain in the @#$ for our environment. (Example thread from cisco: https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2247235?tstart=0 )
  • Exchange accounts still don't auto fetch. Ever. It's THE WORST. I need to manually click "Get mail." How can this still be an issue??
  • I've had the same, inconsistent Gmail problems and those are irritating enough. Worse however, is that despite the so-called "memory efficiencies" that basically rendered my mid-2009 MBP, resulting in beachballs galore when running more than a couple of apps simultaneously - and that was after a clean install and minimal app installations. So, sadly, the MBP was demoted from office wingman (to save me from my work Windoze machine) retrograded to ML, and given kid duty. My slightly older iMac 24" was promoted to its place instead, complete with Mavericks, and works just fine. They were both spec'd about the same in terms of processor and RAM, so I'm not sure why the MBP handled it so poorly, but that was a great disappointment - though understandable that older machines will slowly get left behind by newer software. At least Apple made it possible to download the latest compatible versions of Mac App Store purchases (iWork, etc.) after the downgrade.
  • My biggest problem with Mavericks is the bluetooth. I thought it was maybe just myself but watching TWiT.TV Leo Laporte has complained of the same problem on his new Mac PRO. I have the same issue with my iMac. It will suddenly just stop communicating with the bluetooth keyboard, Mouse and the Magic Trackpad and I have to power them off and on and reconnect them, sometimes it takes multiple tries. Another that I noticed is that since Mavericks this constant reconnecting of the keyboard and trackpad (the mouse I tend to not use that much) is a battery killer. The rechargeable batteries drain in a couple of days -- I thought it may be just bad batteries but I put in a set of Duracell batteries fresh out of a package and they lasted just a couple of days. In fact typing this comment the keyboard and trackpad have already disconnected once. I also gave up with the WiFi connection and ran a Cat 6 line to the Mac, it was rather temperamental and would occasionally just drop the network and reconnect again and when starting up would take three or four minutes before it would look for the network. The constant crashing of Apple's email client and the multiple updates that have still never cured this problem drove me to just use webmail instead and switch between tabs on a third browser. Currently during a working day I now run 3 browsers, one for email, one for browsing and one for accessing Google Drive which brings me to the other huge pain in the backside. Apple's documents held in cloud. I used the cloud storage since buying the Mac but it would suddenly refuse to let me access them. This would occur at least every week but darn it, the only way to get access again was to log out of iCloud and everything else and log back in. This year I decided I would just make do with Google Docs! That way I don't need to resize pages and more importantly I can access google docs on my Nexus 5 and G2 and iPad and Mac and Windows PC's as well. I can't even access the Cloud version of the Apple Spreadsheet and Wordprocessing software on an Android Tablet or Phone or even an iPhone or iPad (unless you purchase the app's for the older devices and while I bought them the experience was just not that good with them). All the other issues that Peter Cohen are equally frustrating. I do wish that I could go back to the previous version. Mavericks just took the fun out of using the Mac.
  • I miss the good old days of Snow Leopard... Your right about : "Mavericks just took the fun out of using the Mac" Its Apple : Perfection, Precision, Simplicity < Whats happened to this Apple ?
  • I have Maverick 10.9.3 nothing has changed, just more problems with my Apple PC... dang. No sound, no trash, no hard drive access, basically, no systems folders are working ... Really Apple.... I left Microsoft because of lousy PC systems and blue screens.... As one follower stated, this rotten apple experience is a kill joy for sure. DOES ANYONE HAVE A REAL FIX SOLUTION?
  • Mail is definately the first on my list. Quiting the mail application or any other application never works. I have to always force quit the application just to close it. Scrolling on a PDF. Glitchy as 'hell' Mavericks looks very rough...Needs more transitions.
  • Hi. Yes, Peter...I have experienced the rough scrolling in Mavericks on my 2013 Haswell MacBook Air in Safari. Not so much on my 2011 MacBook Pro 17'...just the Air. For what it is worth... zip (Don)
  • I've heard a lot of complaints regarding Quick look (pressing the spacebar to quickly preview files in finder) and spotlight but on my 2012 15" Retina MBP, Quicklook is always instantaneous regardless of types of files (jpg, tiff, png, video files, PDF, xlsx. numbers etc.) being previewed. It feels ever so slightly slower on my partner's 2011 MBA but still within 1 to 2 seconds at its worst. Both laptops are obviously running SSD but even using Quicklook on my external portable HDD, the response time is every bit as fast as the SSD. Sent from the iMore App
  • Actually I like the power button and putting the device to sleep. It makes sense verse asking to shut down. But, everyone use their devices differently. Don't sweat the small stuff! Sent from the iMore App
  • You obviously don't have a MacBook Air then. It would make total sense on every other computer but the Air; The Power button is on the keyboard, just on top of the backspace button... Getting pressed quite often!
  • My beef re OS X Mail: prior to Mavericks, whenever I wanted to send mail to multiple recipients from my Address Book (AB), I would (1) place the cursor in either the To: or Bcc: field of the Compose window, and (2) just double click on a selected recipient name in AB and that recipient's name and address would go to the correct To: or Bcc: field. NOW, I have to click Address in the Compose window to open the AB. Then, for each and every name I select, I have to click either To: or Bcc: in AB, not the Compose window. I believe Mail is trying to mimic MS' Outlook client, and I do not like it. And when, pray tell, will Apple include the name of the Compose font out with the message so that MS Outlook doesn't convert my fonts to Times New Roman? Does anyone realize how bad this font looks on a screen?
  • I would just be happy if my MacBook Pro did not freeze up 6-8 times a day. I am ready to back to Mountain Lion. Multiple monitor gimmicks included Apple is feeling a lot more like Microsoft. Not good at all.
  • lots of freezing, quick look problems, lots of scroll problems(eg non responsive two finger scrolls or weirdness happening with two finger horizontal scrolling in launchpad), the audio problems, have given up on using mail, but one problem I've encountered I've not seen mentioned yet. I'm often getting windows or browser tabs appearing transparent for a few seconds, I suppose while they're loading. the os really feels like a step backwards...
  • Itunes not syncing music with my phone properly (playlists aren't matching up), I get a grey boot up screen when I wake my iMac up. All grey with a status bar on the bottom. Sent from the iMore App
  • Quick correction: SMB stands for "Server Message Block" not "Service Message Block".
  • Audio drop outs could be caused by Boom.
  • I have an iMac and a Mini, and neither of them will shut down on the first try. My Shutdown procedure on both machines is as follows:
    1 Click Shutdown from the Menu bar (Menu bar then goes away and nothing else happens)
    2 Launch Google Chrome from the Dock. (Launching Google Chrome brings back the Menu bar)
    3 Click Shutdown again from the Menu bar and the machine shuts down normally. (This procedure will not work if Google Chrome is currently running when I first click Shutdown, the application must be completely closed) Outside this HUGE bug, some of the listed bugs appear but not all. Mavericks has been out long enough that some of these bugs should have been fixed by now. I'm a little disappointed.
  • I really must agree with the article. As a new - ish mac user, I am finding that I am in utter shock with some of the changes in Mavericks. It's not necessarily pleasing to use and if it wasn't for the retina scaling, I'd be in my Windows partition more of the time. C'mon apple, you can do better than this
  • The audio dropouts are caused by the operating system not maintaining the selected output for audio on waking up from sleep. Often there may be contention for the audio output (e.g. with an app called Boom). Or the OS forgets that a device exists (e.g. iMic) so selects another output. You can option click the volume icon in the menu bar ( or go to audio preference) to reset the output device for audio.
  • I am currently satisfied with how Mail works. I have over 50,000 messages stored in mail and 10+ email accounts that Mail is juggling. Yes, it occasionally can have difficulty quitting when it is waiting for input from other servers. I simply force-quit it to move on. The email database can be rebuilt using various utilities. A corrupted entry in the database can cause problems in Mail.
  • The primary problem I have with Mavericks is that it crashed old apps since it moved forward with its technology (e.g. RAM compression) and the old apps were not compatible with it and were no longer being updated (e.g. Now Up To Date and Contact). My solution is to simply run Mac OS X 10.6 Server simultaneously with Mavericks in Parallels. This then allows me to run the old apps forever, no matter what OS X Update there is in the future.
  • A problem which was introduced prior to mavericks for me is the whole Save / Save As / Duplicate system they introduced. It wasn't broke before and has not really introduced any benefits I can see other than confusion and frustrations. I have, ironically, lost some docs cos of it. Fortunately, Adobe have not adopted this for their apps or i'd be very screwed indeed. It felt like a change for change's sake move like I'd expect from Microsoft.
  • I've had quite a few instances of freezing that requires a hard reset. Not good. Almost 9/10 it has been while in Safari so I'm not sure if it's a issue in Safari or Mavericks. Running a mid 2012 retina MBP.
  • All I know is my 2008 Mac Pro is more stable than it has been in two years. So there's that. And my 2011 MacBook Pro at work was locking up every time it started up. Reinstall the OS? No dice. Upgrade to Mavericks. Flawless since. That's my experience. Take it with a grain of salt if you like. I couldn't care less about GMail. I'm thinking of closing the account altogether before Google's abuse of Google+ takes another step in selling me to their clients - advertisers. SMB is a big thing. Glad the Windows protocol (CIFS) works or I'd be sunk when my new Mac Pro arrives next month at work! All in all, I'm very happy with Mavericks. But I'm not an audio pro. And Photoshop is lightning fast in Mavericks. As is many of the apps I use, some are Mavericks-only.
  • cifs does not work for the church I work for. None of our Mavericks (luckily we only upgraded 3 and not all 50) Macs can connect to our Windows File server via SMB or CIFS without rebooting. Then it works one time, then needs another reboot.
  • There are two features that I absolutely cannot stand. First, the 2D dock is gone. The 3D dock is so ugly, in my opinion, that I can't bear to use Mavericks on my main machine until we find a workaround to bring back the 2D dock (on the bottom, that is). Second is the dots replacing the colour labels. I understand that tags are now more powerful for searching, but for quick looks and visual ergonomics, they are an absolute failure. Many of my folder structures rely on colour-coding, and those silly little dots are not cutting it. Again, a hack or workaround is welcome.
  • Having to Force Quit Mail and the New Mail chime not syncing with the badge alert.
    iTunes still plagued by sudden quits and sometimes having to Force Quit.
    Messages on Mavericks, completely out of step with the IOS 7 flavour.
    I'm a heavy Aperture user and Apple have definitely made it a lot more stable...eventually!
  • For me, it's the Finder. It keeps crashing all the time, and stalls out at weird times like when transferring a file to the desktop. It may be that it's just not good enough form my 6 year old Mac.
  • Mail and Quick Look are the two biggies for me. I'm perplexed as to why Apple appears to be intentionally a short staffed company. It's obvious we received two OS's - mobile and desktop - that were not ready. I read here and elsewhere that they are constantly jumping teams to complete projects. Sent from the iMore App
  • Maverick breaks OLD Keynote monitor support. Since update to Maverick and downloading of new version of Keynote, which i decided NOT to use, I have problems with monitor support with The OLD version of Keynote. It randomly interrupts presentation stating that I have not enough VRAM to support screen and projector. Bullshit, it's the same Mac-projector combination I had for years.
  • Mail sucks. I loathe it now. Unread never reads the right count, sometimes mail doesn't go out until I restart it, mail shows up blank and I have to hit Reply or Forward to see the content, etc, etc, etc. It's terrible. Mail Pilot was a hopeful option but its "rethinking of mail" isn't what I need.
  • I noticed the boot on startup is messy recently. I end up with random folders opening on the home screen AND the length of time to boot keeps getting longer. I don't have a lot of apps set to open on startup - mainly mail, calendar and Safari, plus assorted bar apps. Maybe I should clean house there and limit what's active. I do use Bartender to organize that area. I notice above that one poster mentioned Photoshop. I use CS6 Photoshop professionally and I cannot get it to "find" my printer. I get error messages that I haven't identified a default printer or that it's the wrong one. Yet, I cannot even access the settings to fix that. I uninstalled and reinstalled Photoshop I've tried everything I could find to counteract this, but nothing helps. Now to print, I have to move a photo to InDesign and can print from there. Had no problem before the Mavericks upgrade.
  • With multiple monitors I often have trouble getting the Dock to un-hide.
  • I've had one frustrating instance in Mavericks so far in which I was stuck at the log-in screen and had to hard reset. Besides that, I've had no other problems that I can recall. Sent from the iMore App
  • I have 'lost', perhaps permanently, 390 out of 410 Referenced files from Aperture 3 originally referenced in one batch. This problem has been documented elsewhere and is apparently restricted to external HDs made by WD. What is odd (and seemingly illogical) is that I referenced all 410 in one go in September, got Mavericks in November...but only 20 files are still there. Needless to say amongst them are files urgently wanted by a client. Well of course. In addition Photoshop CS4 no longer works with Mavericks, so I now have to get it by monthly sub. My Apple Cinema Screen no longer enables me to have some apps on the Pro and some on the Cinema Screen One way or another Mavericks is a disaster area for this long-time MacUser and I am not at present remotely amused. John B
  • I was out of town (and no data connection) when this posted so I am just now catching up. I'm going to preface my OSX gripe by saying two things. 1)Maybe there is a work around for this and I haven't found it despite searching high and low. 2)This may not be considered a flaw but it gets under my skin because I can't change it. I use multiple desktops when working, sometimes up to four. Why do minimized apps and Finder have to be specific to what ever desktop that they are originaly opened on?! Finder is the one that kills me the most. Example, I am working on Desktop 1 but I have a Finder window opened in on another Desktop. Why in the hell can't I click Finder and it open a new window (or even the same window) on the Desktop 1 that I am working on instead of shifting me to the desktop that it is already open on. The same goes for minimized apps. I sometimes need to use a Word document on different Desktops for projects. Why can't I keep it minimized to the Dock and shift Desktops, click the Word document, and have the document pop up on the Desktop I'm working on instead of it moving me to the original Desktop. Very annoying! If anyone could tell me a work around for this I would appreciate it. Again, apps like Word I can live with but there is not excuse for this with Finder.
  • I'm FRUSTRATED with Maverick, since installing my magic trackpad and magic mouse have become useless paperweights! They have a mind of their own and despite reading all the support comments nothing seems to correct the problem many are having. The next area for me is the SLOWING down of my desktop that was a nice fast machine. I removed Carbonite because thought it was slowly that program, always a computer usage drain. But turned out other things like aaplemediaservices are using gigs of memory canonregis something etc. New pages, numbers, etc seem to be memory and computer resource hogs. For 5 years I felt my desk top and I sailed through life working smoothly. Since Maverick I feel we are in a swamp trudging through and getting stuck in muck and mire always at the worst of times for productivity. I know how it feels, feels like microsoft wrote this crap! Don't get me wrong, after 20 plus years of msft I would give up computing rather than return. BUT that still doesn't mean I don't feel like APPLECARE went into the grave with Jobs. Got what we paid for in FREE Maverick. Next time charge me and make it work!!! George in NY
  • This is what I was afraid of….the only reason I "need" the upgrade is to meet the system requirements for the latest, free GarageBand download. But I love my Apple Mail, which contains THOUSANDS of contacts and information that, if compromised by the upgrade, will cause me to get in bed, and never leave it again. I am so close to giving it the old college try, but just don't want to chance potential malfunctions…..someone TELL ME what to do….lol….E
  • the only reason i even thought about upgrading was so that i could download F1 2013 but its not worth it.
  • Just installed on my mini which is a dedicated music server- I am starting to use Fidelia for improved fidelity over iTunes. My screen saver was the flipping album tiles which now seem to allow direct play access for iTunes. I used to be able to move my mouse to wake the screen. Now the screen does not change so I cannot access the mini. I realize that the masses think iTunes is fine, but I use this as an audio device and play hi-rez stuff. How do I fix this and will Apple ever improve the audio playback of iTunes- I had heard there was talk but never saw a product release.
  • My dad upgraded to mavericks on his iMac and for some reason now it seems that the system memory is always full and logons take 15 minutes and opening applications is painfully slow so we upgraded to 16gb of ram and that seemed to help but there are so many other things I hate about it there is no chance I'm putting it on my macbook pro.
  • So Mavericks has been out for several months now. Would you say it is safe to upgrade at this point?
  • Tim Cook can suck my Maverick. Maverick and the cloud completely stink. Websites will not even let you useYou Tube and game sites won't even allow you to use them w/o the latest version of flash, in Safari. You can only get it, by changing to Maverick. This supposed flash advancement isn't needed in google chrome, or in firefox, so it looks like apple is forcing you. Also no site remembers your password using the keychain, except for facebook. I suppose it is because facebook already know everything about you, so there is no need to encourage the cloud. Why the force apple. At least Leopard was an improvement. Goodbye newtons a-hole.
  • Is anyone having the same problem as me? I am on a website called "Whirled" it is a website that uses flash, but when I am on there, chats and avatars will be mooing for about 3 seconds, and then they would freeze, along with the mac. But when I move the mouse, events go on, and it works normally. But there would be updates on chats and messages all at once, basically the mac stops and then if I move the mouse it unfreezes.
  • I was very excited about the maverick.... I'm just a bit irritated right now. I've lost my news feed reader that was built into the mailbox prior to upgrade. Now I have to try to find a news feed reader. WHY remove that? That's where it's always been. ugh. I'm sure that is just the beginning of my issues. If anyone has knowledge of a good rss news feed reader. I'm not even sure if there is a rss news feed reader as it's always been built into any email system I used but not this one... not now anyway. Can we reverse the upgrade. I've only had a mac a couple of years and I am no way near savvy on it.
  • I absolutely agree with the comment you made about the newest Game Center redesign. How in the world are colourful bubbles better than the old design? It seems as if the people in charge of the Game Center redesign knew they couldn’t stick with the old skeuomorphic design which iOS seemed to follow since version 1.0 but they didn’t really try hard to find something better than that which would follow along the concept of the new minimalistic pastel and gradient design introduced by iOS 7.
  • Here are some Mavericks bugs from me! Dragging a file on an external drive to the recycle bin hangs Finder, and the icon I was dragging just floats on the screen. Can still right click -> Move to recycle bin after what feels like a minute of Finder hanging. Random freezes, fixable by pulling out the Thunderbolt VGA adapter cable that goes to my external screen. This only works on one of the inputs though. Lately though I haven’t been able to do the above fix, the whole computer will just freeze, requiring a forced reboot every time. This’ll randomly happen when playing flash videos, youtubes, but sometimes by just opening a random script on a page. The clock trails by several seconds each day. Fixable by opening Date/Time. There should be some way to make it sync more often than once per week. Fixed permanently by adding a bunch of time servers I found on a forum to the time server box. Apple Mail won’t download new mail until I quit and start the app again. I’ve switched to Airmail which works fine. Mouse pointer sometimes gets choppy movement. Fixable by disconnecting the external screen.
  • Since I upgraded my Mac mini to Mavericks, in Safari>Yahoo the back button misbehaves. When I open a new page, the back button grays out/loses previous page; sometimes it takes me back, not to previous page, but the vender's main website. I tried unchecking everything in System Preferences>Mission Control, but that did not help.
    Any advice, downloads or patches out there for us coding-challenged types? I read about deleting "~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist" but my Mac mini doesn't have this preference. Maybe Apple took it out of 10.9.2? Thanks!
    P.S. What's Mission Control for, anyway? Something to do with viewing/arranging web sites, screen savers too, but otherwise it's Greek to me.
  • Mavericks makes me wish I had Linux on this machine. I miss Snow leopard. It started quick and had few weird issues. Compatibility problems forced me to upgrade. I have hated this computer ever since. Now it only prints the top 2/3rds of documents. Really F'ing cute Mavericks! Add/remove ... reinstall drivers ... always some random problem. I finally got it to stop re-opening everything when I power on. Now it randomly opens programs I have not used in months. Open a web page, and it goes straight to print preview. If this is where OSX is going then never again for me.
  • I've just switched to using a Mac after using Windows since Windows 3.0. I am retired now, but worked on computerized machinery for 28 years, then was in tech support for the last 2 years before I retired. Was on that pc all day long. Since I retired I haven't been using the pc much lately, just using my iPad a lot. My old HP Pavilion on Win XP is too slow to upgrade to Win 8, and Turbotax ran real slow on it this year. I can't do anything on it when the antivirus is updating. So I needed a new pc. Purchased a new HP Pavilion with Win8 and a touchscreen. Don't know what all the complaining over Win8 is about, with a touchscreen it was kind of fun to use. I say 'was' because I had two weeks to be able to return it to Best Buy, and on the 12th day I discovered the pc had a lot of audio problems. Some were probably on that pc only, but others were software caused. So I returned it on day 14. Was going to try and find some other brand of pc to get with Win 8. But I have been looking at Apple pc's for awhile, and kept hearing about how great they are. I decided to spend the extra bucks and got a MacBook Air with a solid state drive. Bit of a learning curve, but no problems with it for 2 days. (Except I missed that touch screen.) Then it told me there were updates. I started the updates. I have AT&T dsl, not very fast. The dozens of updates I had done on that new Win8 pc had taken about an hour and a half. But these Apple updates appeared to be huge, and also seemed to either be starting over or jumping to a new file before finishing what it was doing. It took around 7 hours, including updating OSX from 10.9 to 10.9.2. Then it restarted, and it couldn't reconnect to my wifi. Fiddled with it for awhile, got it working. But it failed again after the next restart. It appeared to be the same DHCP problem that my iPad had when I got it a few years ago. Had fixed that by setting it to a static ip address. But this Mac won't work when set to static ip. Connects to the router ok, but no Internet. Found complaints about that all over the place when I Googled the problem, people saying it started when they upgraded to 10.9.2. I was messing around with the bookmark list in safari, trying to figured out why it can't be sorted. At one point safari froze up. Force closed it to fix it. Was checking out the Automator, but when I tried to close it, it hung up with a multicolored circle spinning around.(Beachball?) Was trying out Numbers, noticed two finger scrolling didn't work there. Went to safari to look up how you are supposed to scroll in Numbers, and a few of Safari's windows also stopped responding to two finger scrolling. Had to restart the whole pc to fix that. And that killed the wifi again for awhile. In the two weeks I had used Win8, nothing had gone wrong or locked up. Now I have had multiple problems with the Mac, and see that others are having the same problems. I feel like a just bought a new Cadillac that keeps stalling out. Many of you have used Apple pc's for years. Have these types of problems occurred with other OSX releases? And is it likely that Apple will fix these problems soon? The MacBook is a real nice piece of hardware, would like to keep it. Not so sure about the operating system. The guy at the Apple store told me I could return it within 30 days. But I now see the back of the receipt says 14 days. So I got two days left to decide.
  • I have to say, the typical update from same-number OS versions runs in the under 10-minute range 99% of the time. I've NEVER waited hours for an update to complete. When something like this occurs, your first action should be to call Apple support, where they'll provide you with assistance that's consistently voted the best in the tech world. You could have a lemon machine (Apple has had QC problems in the last five years compared with earlier build quality years), or just a failed RAM chip or flaky SSD. Hope you solve the problem. If nothing else, you could drop the Air off at your local Genius Bar for service, it'll probably be fixable in a few days. Good luck!
  • Well, the actual OS update didn't take very long, but there were several apps updating at the same time, including Garage Band, Numbers, Pages, and a few others. It looked like it was loading one for awhile then quitting and switching to another one. At one point it was saying something like 750 MB of 2.9 GB loaded. I saw that and knew it was going to take a long time, since I have very slow ATT dsl. I can download about 1.3 Megabits per second, which comes out to just under 10 MegaBYTES per minute. But it never got all of that 2.9 Gb loaded before switching to something else, suddenly saying 151 Mb of 1.9 Gb loaded. Eventually they all got loaded, just took over 7 hours. So if it was really loading as many bytes as it claimed, then the long download times were normal for my slow connection. But I couldn't really tell if it wasn't reloading the same stuff over and over. So I didn't see any point in calling Apple support, I just let it run until it was done.
    I did talk to Apple support later about the wifi problems. From posts in other forums I know that other people are having those problems too. But Apple support blamed it on "incompatibility" with my dsl router. I eventually figured out how to get it to work with a static IP address, so now it connects every time.
    Regarding the other problems with scrolling not working and some programs locking up, each of those problems are also mentioned in other forums. On the other hand, there may have been a hardware problem. Ended up deciding to stay with Apple, because of the scripting and programming possibilities, and upgraded that Macbook Air to a Macbook Pro, mainly to get better sound quality. But I am still finding things that don't work quit like they should in the Automator program and even in Mail. Again, others are complaining about the same things I am seeing and some of the complaints are over 2 years old with no fix yet. I am going to document these problems and submit reports to Apple. Nothing will get fixed unless Apple knows the problems are being noticed by a lot of people.
  • When using a second monitor with my MacBook Pro, it defaults to a different (wrong) resolution when waking from sleep mode (which then can only be fixed by disconnecting and reconnecting), audio problems persist, Finder windows randomly fail to show the filename column – altogether quite disappointing for an Apple product.
  • Since Mavericks, I've been missing the feature in Safari where you can open a window in the size the website opens it, or a full size page. How do I set that back to default?
  • I'm suffering from the SMB2 woes, and audio dropouts. Cannot wait to try 10.9.3 and see if ANYTHING is fixed!
  • After starting my login screen is there showing my account and guest account. The mouse will move the cursor fine but when I click on my account to login nothing happens. If I click on anything else like sleep or shutdown nothing happens. I tried a wireless mouse and it acted exactly the same. (Mavericks, Air 2013 128, i5, 4gb). Just like your picture. Please Help, thanks.
  • I've just up-dated last week and so far I'm not a fan. Everything is different and I feel like on someone else's computer. Scrolling is different, I can't have an email open next to a document....can't send a link from Safari....only email page....etc...etc..... Why invent everything new and don't build on what is? First time ever that I'm so unhappy about an up-grade.
  • I'm fairly new to Apple pc's, but it sure sounds like they have changed a lot of things that maybe didn't need changing.
    Not sure why you say you can't have an email open next to a document. The windows for each program can be sized so you can put email on one side of the screen and some other program next to it on the other side. The email program started out maximized to full screen size the first time I used it. But you can shrink it back to non-full screen, then you can put it next to another program.
    You CAN send a link from Safari, its just another one of those hidden keystrokes that seem to be needed all over the place. The huge number of mystery keystrokes needed definitely fits in with this topic of things that drive me nuts - but I suspect some of that was there way before Mavericks. To send a link from Safari, click on the File menu and select Share. As is, it shows "Email this page", which puts the whole web page into the email. But if you hold the shift key down while viewing that menu, "Email this page" changes to "Email link to this page", which is what you are looking for. I am finding there are a lot of things in the menus of many programs that change to something else when you press Shift, Fn, Control, Option, or Command. But you have to try each key to see what happens. There's gotta be a better way. They should either list all of the menu items separately, so you can see each one, or come up with some other way to let you know what secret keystrokes will add more to the menu.
  • Thank you Rooster51. Your comments were very helpful. I meanwhile saw also that within the mail box after selecting in Safari 'mail this page' that you can change it to a link by clicking the little triangle that appears on the right corner above the text field. I've previously tried to minimise my open mail but didn't get the corner to do so, but finally I got it.
  • Overall not as smooth and quick as Mountain Lion on my 2013 iMac with 8GB. Mail is terrible to use, my old iMac 2007 with Snow is a lot quicker with everything. Multiple displays gives me screen flickering issues I only now from some obscure Linux installations, doesn't feel solid...
  • I started using powerpc macs and used a rosetta program to say "file transfer completed" when I copied a file to some other place and "device mounted" when I inserted a USB flash drive but couldn't do this (I thought in Mavericks) then I found 2 audio files called "File Transfer Completed" and "Device Mounted" so I naturally thought I could make up the same sounds as I did before, however when I inserted a flash drive nothing was said and (now this really surprised me) the audio "Device Mounted" was said after I copied a file. Has anyone else found this out and is there any listing out there that actually says what and where the real system audio files are?