Apple OS X 10.9 Mavericks review

The latest version of OS X is the first to be named after a place – a surfing location in California – rather than a big cat. It’s also the first to be offered as a free upgrade.

That’s a change that benefits almost every Mac user, as support for Mavericks stretches back to mid-2007 hardware, and installing it’s as easy as clicking a button in the Mac App Store. The only catch is that you need at least 2GB of RAM and must be running Snow Leopard or later; if you’re running an older version of OS X, that upgrade will cost you £14.

You might worry that installing a new OS on ageing hardware will cause things to slow to a halt. In fact, OS X has remained impressively nimble since Snow Leopard, and Mavericks should be faster still, thanks to a new memory compression technique that reduces the system’s reliance on virtual memory. Apple claims this delivers a 40% improvement in responsiveness compared to Mountain Lion on a MacBook Air; on our early-2008 iMac, Mavericks certainly felt no less smooth than the Leopard OS it originally shipped with.

Mavericks also brings improved power-management features, including one – with the rather twee name App Nap – that automatically throttles CPU usage for background applications. According to Apple’s figures, this can reduce CPU power usage by up to 23%, promising improved battery life for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro users.

New apps

Mavericks comes with a few new apps that strengthen the relationship between the desktop and iOS devices. The first is a desktop version of iBooks, which makes a lot of sense for students in particular. Texts on your iPad or iPhone automatically sync to the desktop, complete with highlights and notes, so you can easily refer to them while revising or writing, and citations are generated automatically. Even for casual reading, it’s worth having: if your iPad battery is getting low, you can switch to your laptop and pick up where you left off.

There’s a desktop version of Maps, too; this doesn’t offer much benefit over existing web-based services, but it provides consistency with the mobile experience. A handy “Send to” feature lets you beam routes and landmarks to your iPhone or iPad, so you can refer to them on the go.

One more enhancement that’s worth mentioning is iCloud Keychain – an identity manager that stores your usernames, passwords and credit card details and synchronises them across your authorised OS X and iOS devices.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in third-party browsers, nor in most third-party iOS apps, as support must be specifically plumbed into the code.

In addition to iOS integration, Mavericks brings enhancements to the traditional desktop. First, Finder windows can now contain multiple tabs, like a browser. This means you can easily hop back and forth between file system locations without filling up your screen with windows. It’s a simple but welcome improvement.

Secondly, the coloured label system has grown into a more versatile system of Tags. These are similar to labels, but you can create as many of them as you like, and assign multiple tags to individual files. If you’re managing a large library of documents, it’s a welcome improvement to be able to assign both project and department codes to files, for example.

There’s good news for multi-display users, too: at long last, each display gets its own menu bar and Dock. By default, each screen is configured as a separate Space, allowing you to run a full-screen application on one screen while remaining in desktop mode on the other; if you prefer, you can switch to extended desktop mode, enabling your windows to spill across displays. If you own an Apple TV, you can also use your television as a mirrored or secondary display.

A final update concerns the notifications framework. Safari for Mavericks introduces an API that enables (with your permission) online services to generate desktop notifications that work like system-level ones. Interactive notifications are also available: set a service to generate Alerts rather than Banners and you can reply directly to messages and emails by clicking a button on the notification pop-up.

Worth the upgrade?

The naming theme and distribution model may be new, but Mavericks isn’t a dramatic departure from what’s gone before in terms of functionality. Though several of the new features reach out to iOS, there’s nothing here that will require your existing desktop workflow to change, and we suspect most upgraders will be grateful for that.

Even if the new apps and multi-screen enhancements don’t appeal, it’s easy enough to disable or ignore any features you don’t need; you’ll still reap the benefits of running Apple’s latest, best-supported OS. Considering it’s free, Mavericks is a no-brainer for everyone who owns a Mac that’s recent enough to run it.

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