Ever since the first addition of Mac OSX, it has been named after some feline of some sort. Now however, Apple is ditching that naming scheme and has released Mavericks during their live press conference today.
Now the user interface may look unchanged. In fact, it looks the same as the OS that was shipped out for several years. Most of the improvements done on the OS was to the workings under the hood. Mavericks is promising higher battery efficiency and the usual bunch. But an interesting feature Apple has come up with is the ability to compress memory for inactive RAM. Which means you could have up to 6 GBs of data on 4 GBs of RAM. Pretty cool stuff. Other changes are higher allocated system RAM as a GPU frame buffer so the GPU can grab more memory on demand. The average user might wonder how it would apply to them. Well the answer is that Mavericks now supports Open GL which is claimed to show up to 1.8x faster performance with supported workloads.
Other additions include iBooks and Maps Apps, better multi-display support as well as the ability to view notifications on the side so they don't become a big distraction.
And here's the kicker, the update is FREE for users who have bought an Apple computer in the last few years. Even iMacs dating back to 2007 are eligible for the upgrade.Link to Apple's Upgrade Page
Changes like these are actually pretty exciting. For the longest time, OSX seemed very dull to me. Nothing about the OS really seemed to appeal to me in any way shape or form. With Mavericks, I can see a larger reason why I would consider adding Mac in my toolkit.
This seems like a good move by Apple. All these upgrades and improvements and all for free (provided you already have a Mac). Nothing to really complain about, good move.
ReplyDeleteThis is very exciting. I hope that this update will actually make the battery life lasts longer. It also says that the performance will be x1.8 faster which I'd really like since I don't really like waiting for anything for too long (I'm impatient). Also, it's free so there's nothing to lose right? I can't wait to update this to my laptop!
ReplyDeleteIf it is so good why give it out for free. I could see them giving Mavericks out for a smaller price so people would adopt it but isn't it a little extreme to give this out for free?
ReplyDeleteI think this is a major step forward for Apple to take a even larger percentage of the computer industry. They are now really picking up the push things forward because they're even packaging things like GarageBand, things that was an expensive option: free. Their new Microsoft Office competitor is also free. If I'm Microsoft, I would be scared right about now cause it's not like they are making any money off hardware.
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