How many are using Mavericks?

[Mark Lindquist]

Just curious - anyone using OSX 10.9 Mavericks?

[Garnick]

Hi Mark,

Although I'm not using Mavericks yet, I did post an inquiry a couple of months ago concerning printing from 10.9 to the 9900.  I received a couple of replies which indicated no major issues.  One fellow mentioned something about an "expand" option in the driver dialog that he couldn't turn off, but it didn't seem to cause a problem either.  Sorry I can't provide more information, but I imagine you'll get a few more in depth replies and I'll be following this thread as well. 

Gary

[Chairman Bill]

I am. I've been using it since it was released

[matoqui]

Me too.

[na goodman]

I had to get a new computer and it came with Mavericks. No problems with any Epson printers or scanners,

[Tom Montgomery]

I have an iMac running Mavericks (10.9.2). No problems with Lightroom, Photoshop, my Epson 4900, Wacom tablet, scanner, card reader...  I did make sure to download and install new versions of all applications rather than porting them over from my old machine.  I also had to replace the old Xrite i1 calibrator with the newer i1 Display, however.

[Ken Bennett]

I switched to Mavericks a couple of months ago on my printing iMac, and I was surprised to have no problems at all with my Epson 3800 drivers.

[kers]

I am on a macpro 2008 and i like Mavericks for a few reasons over 10.6.8

better finder- works better with large amounts of files.
Thumbnails are rendered far more quickly.
it zips parts of the ram you do not use directly so in a way you can use more ram than you have installed.
On a laptop it works longer on the accu.
and- it is more secure- some programs do not get upgraded for use in 10.6 ; Apple drops support of 10.6

problem1 - since 10.6.8 my pCI esata card is not working anymore...
problem2: you cannot synchronize you contacts and calendar from your iPhone locally - Apple forces you to use iCloud- the only way to do it locally is to use the OSX server. that cost 20$ or something so after all OSX9 is not free.
(Apparantly they want your data...)

[BobShaw]

We did a survey on another forum and most replies were on Mavericks. I did not migrate straight away but am vey happy now. Just make sure you rid of all old print drivers, but that was worse on Mountain Lion.

[Wayne Fox]

It seems that many have a problem when they leave 10.6.  For many this was with 10.7.  Once you get past 10.6, additional upgrades seem to affect very few.  so some that skipped 10.7 had some issues when they installed 10.8, and for those moving from 10.6 to 10.9 very likely could have some issues.  The answer is usually a complete cleanout/reset of the printing system.(or do what I did with my new mac, I just started form scratch and reinstalled all apps and drivers.  Amazing how much junk accumulates in computers through OS upgrades over the years).

I had to do this 10.6- 10.7, but not since.

I will add that many of the problems are actually the result from apple updating software and the Apple supplied Epson update running.  This will toast your epson professional printer drivers.  Make sure you don’t run those updates. I had one client who did this and everything I tried failed ... the only thing that work backing up the drive, wiping the startup disk, and starting from scratch. ( I think there were some serious other issues with his system however, so this was just one problem he was having.)

[tastar]

We posted the following opinion of Mavericks on our website.

Tony

Upgrade to Mavericks - You Get What You Pay For!

We do a lot of Mac support in our shop - and felt that we needed to voice our opinion about this operating system.

Why to like it:

It's a free upgrade for Mac users running OS X 10.6 and above. And Macs built in 2007 and newer will run the operating system.

On relatively new Macs, it actually seems like it's a good system - like on Macs that were originally sold with OS 10.7 or 10.8 installed. And, it provides new features for home users that improve iPhone and iPad integration.

Why not to like it:

If you have an older Mac and/or older peripherals, it will probably break something. Some examples:

•External USB, Firewire and Thunderbolt drives can lose their data when plugged into a computer running Mavericks. There is no fix to recover the lost data.

•The Mavericks OS, running on older iMacs and MacBook Pros, too frequently boots to a black or white screen with just a cursor. The fix is to wipe the computer and re-install the operating system and everything else that was running on it.

•Mavericks doesn't support older printers or scanners. One fix is to install Parallels or Fusion and run older programs and drivers in Windows. Neither Parallels, Fusion nor Windows are free programs. Another fix is to buy new printers and scanners - they aren't free either.

•Mavericks has a significant color management bugs in Safari and in professional applications including Aperture and Lightroom. As of today, there aren't fixes for these problems.

Our recommendation - if you have an older Mac and you want to upgrade your operating system, pay 19.95 for the upgrade to 10.8, and forget about upgrading to OS X Mavericks. You'll more than likely find that it will be a less expensive choice. You still might have compatibility issues with older peripherals or software, since, like Mavericks, 10.8 doesn't support Rosetta. But, you won't have data loss, re-installation or color management issues.

[Mark Lindquist]

Good to hear many of you are using Mavericks succesfully.  I did an upgrade install 2 weeks ago.  No go - many crashes.  The did a fresh install on a 4 TB Hitachi drive and went through nightmarish gyrations getting it to work on my 2009 3.32 Quad Xenon with 32 GB Ram Mac Tower.  Ultimately, I did a fresh system install over the original fresh install and that seemed to fix the problem.

There's a lot to like about Mavericks - the finder improvements, of course, and several other things.  I've had to buy a lot of software I hadn't planned on, but I'm using Photoshop CC now and it's very cool.  I do have Photoshops CS3, CS4, and CS5 extended installed as well, and they work fine, happy to say (long story why I need each of those PS's).
Lightroom 5 is great.

The one thing I miss the most is an older program called iView Media Pro  (pre- Redmond and Phase one) which was an awesome program that I can hardly live without.

I do have VMWare Fusion and I run a few Windows programs on that, but I'm going to install Snow Leopard Server on Fusion so I can run any programs that are Legacy or anything else that runs on Rosetta.

If anyone is aware of any software that equals iView Media Pro, that is current, please let me know.

Printers synced up immediately with the exception of the little Cannon Pro-100 - it was tricky getting it to work - thank goodness for the internet and people who post solutions.
Our HP Z3200ps 44" hit the ground running - never lost any profiles, etc.  It was a dream.
Have not tried to use the Epson 4800 Pro yet - will wait on that for awhile.

All in all, now that I have several backup copies, all my eSata devices are working well (upgrades on Caldigit), etc., I'm fairly pleased with it.

Admittedly, I cringe every time I see the circle going round and round on the grey apple boot up screen, but now that I know that an "install-over" works perfectly, I guess it's time to relax, but easier said than done.

The most important thing - my Gretag i1 no longer works with Mavericks.  So just got an i1 Display Pro and it is a dream to use, even with the secondary monitor workaround.

I'm more happy with Mavericks every day....

[syncrasy]

The one thing I miss the most is an older program called iView Media Pro  (pre- Redmond and Phase one) which was an awesome program that I can hardly live without.

I do have VMWare Fusion and I run a few Windows programs on that, but I'm going to install Snow Leopard Server on Fusion so I can run any programs that are Legacy or anything else that runs on Rosetta.

If anyone is aware of any software that equals iView Media Pro, that is current, please let me know.

What was the reason why you didn't get Expression Media (or the "current" Media Pro)? In my experience EM is more stable than iView was.

I'm planning a slow Snow Leopard -> Mavericks transition and recently dipped a toe into the Mavericks experience (via a partition) and it looks like Expression Media will work (with just a couple quirks, but no crashes). Might be worth a try.

Alternately I suppose you could run iView on your virtual Snow Leopard.

[Mark Lindquist]

What was the reason why you didn't get Expression Media (or the "current" Media Pro)? In my experience EM is more stable than iView was.

I'm planning a slow Snow Leopard -> Mavericks transition and recently dipped a toe into the Mavericks experience (via a partition) and it looks like Expression Media will work (with just a couple quirks, but no crashes). Might be worth a try.

Alternately I suppose you could run iView on your virtual Snow Leopard.

I suggest you make many backups on independent drives before you do that transition, LOL    I recommend a fresh install, but who knows, right?

I am planning to run iView on my Virtual Snow Leopard - that's the reason for doing the Virtual machine entirely.  However, you're saying that Media Pro is as good, as simple, as limber as the old iView?  I was under the impression that it's become "bloatware". 

Thanks for your feedback.

[Mark Lindquist]

It seems that many have a problem when they leave 10.6.  For many this was with 10.7.  Once you get past 10.6, additional upgrades seem to affect very few.  so some that skipped 10.7 had some issues when they installed 10.8, and for those moving from 10.6 to 10.9 very likely could have some issues.  The answer is usually a complete cleanout/reset of the printing system.(or do what I did with my new mac, I just started form scratch and reinstalled all apps and drivers.  Amazing how much junk accumulates in computers through OS upgrades over the years).

I had to do this 10.6- 10.7, but not since.

I will add that many of the problems are actually the result from apple updating software and the Apple supplied Epson update running.  This will toast your epson professional printer drivers.  Make sure you don’t run those updates. I had one client who did this and everything I tried failed ... the only thing that work backing up the drive, wiping the startup disk, and starting from scratch. ( I think there were some serious other issues with his system however, so this was just one problem he was having.)

Yep, you nailed it Wayne.  Exactly what happened to me.  Actually, I've been running on upgrades from Tiger, which, with each system upgrade just worked right into 10.6.8.  The upgrade from Snow Leopard was a disaster - just a nightmare that went on for a week and a half until I said uncle and did a clean install.  I still haven't migrated everything yet, and just have the old SL drive in one of the bays and pick and choose what to use from it, for now.

As for the printers, I had read some things about the updates and was prepared.  Still issues with Canon and Epson but I wiped everything regarding the Z3200ps first and it went through easy.

[syncrasy]

I suggest you make many backups on independent drives before you do that transition, LOL    I recommend a fresh install, but who knows, right?

I did a fresh install to the new Mavericks partition. No problems. My Snow Leopard Mac Pro is circa 2010, so maybe the processor is a little more compatible (?). The main issues will be (presumed) obsolete scanner drivers and a few apps. I plan to keep an SL partition just for my scanner.

I am planning to run iView on my Virtual Snow Leopard - that's the reason for doing the Virtual machine entirely.  However, you're saying that Media Pro is as good, as simple, as limber as the old iView?  I was under the impression that it's become "bloatware".  

No. I'm saying Expression Media is as good, as simple and as limber as the old iView. For me at least. I could be wrong but don't think the term "bloatware" really applies since MS didn't add new or unwanted features, just improved a few existing features. (For example, Light Table can show six images instead of just two.) You could download the trial version from Phase One's archive and try it for yourself. (Be sure to install SP2, not just SP1, as SP1 was buggy.)

I don't use Media Pro because of reported instability after Phase One got its hands on the software. They mucked up the UI too. I might end up getting it eventually if my EM fails to perform as well as I had hoped on Mavericks, but it's uncertain whether Phase One is committed to Media Pro as a standalone DAM. (It appears Phase One bought iView/EM primarily so that they could integrate the code into Capture One to compete with Lightroom.)

[DF1]

We use it at my company and it's mostly a good thing. A few little hiccups still exist with Mavericks. Airplay can be a little flakey, and syncing with Google is still buggy, despite several rounds of OS updates to fix it. Also, on some older Macs Mavericks can have slowness issues, but I've been able to fix that by cleaning the kernel cache with Onyx. Also I've had to re-install and/or upgrade certain printer drivers. But on the whole, I think Mavericks is a pretty good iteration of OS X, but they do need to get some kinks ironed out.

[Mark Lindquist]

What was the reason why you didn't get Expression Media (or the "current" Media Pro)? In my experience EM is more stable than iView was.

Good news!  Phase one offers an upgrade to Mdeia Pro from iView.  Bought it and am making catalogs as I write this.  Thanks again for this info.
It works!

-Mark

[syncrasy]

Good news!  Phase one offers an upgrade to Mdeia Pro from iView.  Bought it and am making catalogs as I write this.  Thanks again for this info.
It works!

You're welcome! Please let us know how Media Pro works out for you after you've had a chance to use it for a while on Mavericks. There have been mixed reports on the Phase One forum (some users complain of slow speed and instability, others say it works fine). I'd also be curious how you like the new interface. (I personally don't like the white text on glossy black background.)

[Mark Lindquist]

Although I just got it, I used it a lot already. My upgrade version is 1.4.1.6792 and it has a dark gray background with white text which is fine with me.

What is amazing is that all the iView catalogs open in Media Pro.  They have to be saved with Media Pro's file extension, but no problem.  It is fast fast fast, but I have 32 GB of ram and a Quad core which seems to work well with it.

Couldn't be more pleased.  Runs like a strip-ed ass ape!