[P]

Regarding memory compression: To me it is the big standout feature of Mavericks. Siracusa explains it best, I think:

OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review | Ars Technica

The TL;DR is that when the Mac runs out of real RAM it has one more option before beginning to page out to disk: It can compress memory. This means that you can use more real memory before hitting the massive slowdowns - in the tests above, as much as 50% more. This means that a Mac with 4 GB RAM (very common in Mac in use today) will behave as if it had 6 GB after the OS upgrade.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by P 

Regarding memory compression: To me it is the big standout feature of Mavericks. Siracusa explains it best, I think:

OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review | Ars Technica

The TL;DR is that when the Mac runs out of real RAM it has one more option before beginning to page out to disk: It can compress memory. This means that you can use more real memory before hitting the massive slowdowns - in the tests above, as much as 50% more. This means that a Mac with 4 GB RAM (very common in Mac in use today) will behave as if it had 6 GB after the OS upgrade.

That is impressive. Wonder why they didn't do it before.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by P 

Regarding memory compression: To me it is the big standout feature of Mavericks.

That and App Nap: even if just Safari had App Nap, that'd already be a huge win, but I really notice how much more responsive the system is. Every once in a while some tab(s) would start to consume 80~100 % of one core and this is now gone. In the worst case, I press command + H, wait a few seconds and then cpu utilization goes down again. It's a big win.

[P]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

That is impressive. Wonder why they didn't do it before.

For one thing, it's hard and somewhat untested - I think it has been tested in research projects, but not in production systems. For another, it has previously always been cheap and easy to add RAM if you need to. Soldered RAM and increased focus on battery life makes this a more valuable feature. Haven't upgraded any of my machines yet (because of that WD warning) but once I do, I hope my MBA will see a nice boost.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by P 

For one thing, it's hard and somewhat untested - I think it has been tested in research projects, but not in production systems. For another, it has previously always been cheap and easy to add RAM if you need to. Soldered RAM and increased focus on battery life makes this a more valuable feature. Haven't upgraded any of my machines yet (because of that WD warning) but once I do, I hope my MBA will see a nice boost.

Not RAM, but database vendors have been compressing tables for a while using the same sort of trick (indexing the same values and then deleting the duplicates). As for the RAM compression, it costs more in CPU resources.

Might waste some work hours tomorrow trying to find if IBM, MS or Oracle have done something like this.

[P]

The Linux developers are working on it, and there are modules that you can install now that do it, but it's not included in most releases. Apparently it will be in Android 4.4, and Ubuntu is considering it as well. Clearly it is a technology whose time has come, and Apple moved fast to implement it. Now we only wait for the function to be enabled in iOS 7.1 or whatever.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

Not RAM, but database vendors have been compressing tables for a while using the same sort of trick (indexing the same values and then deleting the duplicates). As for the RAM compression, it costs more in CPU resources.

But it saves vastly more by reducing disk access.

The increase in responsiveness in Logic X in previously tight memory situations is insane.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

But it saves vastly more by reducing disk access.

The increase in responsiveness in Logic X in previously tight memory situations is insane.

I realize that. Since disk I/O is basically THE bottleneck (in my domain of work) nowadays, its always better to have stuff in memory. SAN vendors are putting SSDs in their disk arrays and some companies are selling flash memory arrays - at exorbitant prices, to speed up access to data.

[P]

Including Fusion-io, featuring a certain Steve Wozniak in the management team. Remember the little "poem" of storage evolution:

Tape to disk
Disk to Flash
Flash to RAM
RAM to cache

Tape is mostly dying, and disk is replacing it as the backup medium of choice. HDDs are being replaced by SSDs. This can be said to be the flash to RAM bit, and we have Intel and AMD putting massive caches in the CPU and just about every mobile SOC has the RAM in the package.

How do I prevent Mavericks from changing triple period to a single text object?

I used to be able to go into TextEdit > Substitutions > Show Substitutions... > Text Preferences... >

and then de-activate the option for the "..." object replacement.

But in 10.9 it's not there.

Well I upgraded to 10.9, and In Calendars, I have "3 PM" taking up what was a line of text for a one-hour event, and I can see only the first line of event text.

Example for an event from 3 PM to 4 PM in 10.8.x:

(texteventline1
texteventline2)

Example for an event from 3 PM to 4 PM in 10.9:

(3 PM
texteventline1...)

How do I change this behavior?

Finally, text annotations has logical alignment tools.


Preview in 10.9 has new bugs: scrolling past the top or bottom of the first/last page will get stuck with a dark gray space for a second, then recoil. It's not an instantaneous rebound. This happens maybe 15% of the time. Also, sometimes I will be scrolling and the text will get blurry and stay blurry and I can't two-finger scroll until I try all sorts of clicking madness and then it'll work normally. This happens maybe 5% of the time. Editing photos is now a nightmare in Preview because it's soooooo sloooooowwww....literally it takes 8x longer to edit the exposure, contrast, sharpness of my photos.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by P 

Tape is mostly dying, and disk is replacing it as the backup medium of choice. HDDs are being replaced by SSDs. This can be said to be the flash to RAM bit, and we have Intel and AMD putting massive caches in the CPU and just about every mobile SOC has the RAM in the package.

Tape isn't dying, it's 'morphed'. Backup is to disk, but tape is used for archiving.

Google reveals TAPE-TASTIC data centre in saucy vid • The Register

Disk-pushers, get reel: Even GOOGLE relies on tape • The Register

Why does the Time Machine icon in the menu bar not spin around anymore during backup? That was really cool and now it doesn't do that anymore in 10.9.

[OreoCookie]

I heard it is to make it more energy efficient (no joke).

Activity Monitor is blank. Nothing shows up:





That's what I get.

I tried restarting Activity Monitor. That didn't work.

I tried restarting my computer. That didn't work.


This has been going on for days!

[Laminar]

I like the old Activity Monitor better...

Alright now it works.

Hey another question: How do I turn off the triple period in Mavericks? It keeps becoming a single object and I want it to stay three periods.

[FireWire]

Originally Posted by Laminar 

I like the old Activity Monitor better...

I liked everything Apple made before better.. seriously.. iOS 7, the beginning of the end.. new iTunes: crap. new iWork suite? what the hell? new iMovie: are they doing this on purpose? etc etc..

[subego]

Old iTunes was crap.

[... 26 days later ...]

Originally Posted by And.reg 

Well I upgraded to 10.9, and In Calendars, I have "3 PM" taking up what was a line of text for a one-hour event, and I can see only the first line of event text.

Example for an event from 3 PM to 4 PM in 10.8.x:

(texteventline1
texteventline2)

Example for an event from 3 PM to 4 PM in 10.9:

(3 PM
texteventline1...)

How do I change this behavior?

Could someone tell me: How do I get Calendars in 10.9 to show two lines of event text for a 1 hour event like it used to in 10.8?

About 1/3rd of my events are 1-hour blocks

SoSinceUpgrading10.9

IHaveToCompressAll

MyEventsToLookLikeThis

If I don't then they lo...



^ So, how do I get Calendars to work normally again?

[P]

Originally Posted by And.reg 

Alright now it works.

Hey another question: How do I turn off the triple period in Mavericks? It keeps becoming a single object and I want it to stay three periods.

I stumbled over the answer to this one while attempting to fix another issue: Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Text and disable Smart Quotes. This also disables the three periods turning into an ellipsis.

According to my Text preferences, Smart Quotes checkbox was previously unchecked, so it's not that.

[ghporter]

Try checking Smart Quotes, backing out of Preferences, then going back in and un-checking it.

That worked.

[ghporter]

Sadly, that's an old Windows trick... The concept behind it is that sometimes not all "connected" options get set to the expected default when something un-does one selection, so manually checking the selection and backing out lets the OS sort things out appropriately, change all the options to their proper settings, etc. When you go back in and manually undo the selection, the OS now has everything where it's expected to be, and thus can do/undo what the user expects.

[Spheric Harlot]

It's occasionally fixed things on Macs for as long as I've been using them (25 years).

Claiming that it's "sadly" a "Windows trick" is a little disingenuous. It's a basic computer troubleshooting technique.

[ghporter]

It is, however, all to frequently needed with Windows machines, and far less frequently needed with Macs. I should have phrased that better, though. I should have said that, because of my long experience wth corporate PCs, that Windows taught me to do that as a first step.

Apple has still get to fix these occasional "stuck scrolling" issues with Preview, since they came out with 10.9. I could be scrolling along in a document (lots of pages in a PDF), and then the document will just get stuck when I scroll.

It has to do with their energy-efficiency optimization where Preview doesn't try to produce a full crisp text render, but gives a rough blurry text render (which is fine while scrolling).

I wish Preview had tabbed browsing. I have to go back and forth among four multipage documents all open at once and it can make for a quickly cluttered screen.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Originally Posted by And.reg 

I wish Preview had tabbed browsing. I have to go back and forth among four multipage documents all open at once and it can make for a quickly cluttered screen.

View menu -> Miniatures -> Drag the PDF's together

Personally Mavericks has been more of a big slowdown than speedup on my 2011 i7 iMac. I think an SSD would really do wonders, but still, it is much slower with random beach balls. Especially Finder acts as if it was a child of the devil.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by Thain Esh Kelch 

Personally Mavericks has been more of a big slowdown than speedup on my 2011 i7 iMac.

No issues here on a mid-2010 i7 iMac. Actually, my only complaint comes from the fact that I am running an SSD. Sometimes the Finder is weird about my linked home folder.

I've noticed that as well, sometimes the Finder will take like 5 seconds to refresh the list of items in a folder. Something about timer coalescing is causing occasional timed slowness esp. with Finder.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by And.reg 

I've noticed that as well, sometimes the Finder will take like 5 seconds to refresh the list of items in a folder. Something about timer coalescing is causing occasional timed slowness esp. with Finder.

Is there any basis to your claim that this has to do with timer coalescing, or is it simply a connection you're drawing from "Finder has issues that take time" to "CPU timing has been changed in Mavericks"?

Because it might just be a completely unrelated bug. I've noticed QuickLook can be a little wonky.

Because in 10.8.x this never happened.

Originally Posted by Thain Esh Kelch 

View menu -> Miniatures -> Drag the PDF's together

There is no option titled "Miniatures" in the View menu.

[Spheric Harlot]

There is in the windows' toolbar.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by And.reg 

Because in 10.8.x this never happened.

And of course, CPU timing adjustments are the only thing that changed in 10.9, as the Finder is completely unchanged otherwise.

Okay, thanks. I thought you'd maybe read a qualified explanation somewhere.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

And of course, CPU timing adjustments are the only thing that changed in 10.9, as the Finder is completely unchanged otherwise.

Okay, thanks. I thought you'd maybe read a qualified explanation somewhere.

Well then they should have fixed CPU timing adjustments so this didn't happen.

Geez, is Finder ever going to be bug free since they came out with Panther?

(On the flip side, tabs seem to work fine.)

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by And.reg 

Well then they should have fixed CPU timing adjustments so this didn't happen.

Okay, I'll make it drool-proof:

Q: HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH CPU TIMING ADJUSTMENTS?

A: YOU DON'T. In fact, you have no ****ing clue.

Clear enough?

[P]

Timer coalescing can delay an event firing by 100 ms or less. Not 5 seconds. You're seeing something else. This could be a Quicklook plugin no longer working in 10.9 or a drive that cannot be found at the moment (network or external) and is needed for something or one of many other things.

You can read more about timer coalescing here:

OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review | Ars Technica

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Okay, I'll make it drool-proof:

Q: HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH CPU TIMING ADJUSTMENTS?

A: YOU DON'T. In fact, you have no ****ing clue.

Clear enough?

You know sometimes it's fun just to watch your bad attitude fire up...

Keep using big letters.

Meanwhile, I didn't install any Quicklook plug-ins other than whatever came with 10.9...

[Spheric Harlot]

So you're ignoring what people are telling you and making ignorant assumptions just to get a rise out of them?

Do I report you for trolling now every time you play dense?

If, after a while of posting here, I have already done all the troubleshooting and asked for help, and still honestly cannot figure out solutions to strange bugs/issues that I'm experiencing, then I hardly see myself as playing dense or trolling. I'm just bewildered as to why it is just so hard to figure out how to fix a lot of the little bugs that I see with OS X and related software.

Another example: I was just about to create a thread of all the NeoOffice bugs I've been experiencing in past several months; one "multiple crash" was so serious that I had to reset my PRAM. But then they updated to version 2013.2 literally a couple of days ago, so now I have to see if the same bugs are reproducible before I throw in the towel again and say "So, what's causing this" - if I was making ignorant assumptions then I wouldn't spend weeks or months ruling out plausible causes and learning things on my own. So, cool off. Do I report you for reporting me for no real reason?

(Ten years ago, "trolling" on a Mac forum was coming in and saying "I luv my PC Macs suck" - I guess according to Dr. Harlot trolling is posting without having the training required to be an Apple Certification Technician.)

[besson3c]

What the hell Spheric?

Why do these sorts of threads make you completely lose your shit? Honestly man, I think you have a pretty unhealthy, not to mention not terribly professional, attachment to your gear.

So what if his theory is wrong or not well grounded? It shouldn't evoke this weird stuff...

[Spheric Harlot]

It looks like Dropbox may be involved with at least open/save dialog delays.

Edit: apparently not.

Something extremely bizarre just happened. I was printing a document, let my screen go blank (computer was still on), and at the end I just pressed any key to wake the screen up.
Well, what I got was: a different desktop picture, Calendars suddenly not working, nothing in System Preferences being clickable (nothing happens), and no way for me to switch my desktop picture back. Hunh?
I had to restart the computer.
Here's what was in my console when this happened:

1/6/14 11:37:02.014 AM secd[170]: SecErrorGetOSStatus unknown error domain: com.apple.security.sos.error for error: The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.security.sos.error error 2 - Public Key not available - failed to register before call)
1/6/14 11:37:02.014 AM secd[170]: securityd_xpc_dictionary_handler WiFiKeychainProx[197] DeviceInCircle The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.security.sos.error error 2 - Public Key not available - failed to register before call)
1/6/14 11:37:03.015 AM parentalcontrolsd[244]: StartObservingFSEvents [849:] -- *** StartObservingFSEvents started event stream
1/6/14 11:38:48.086 AM apsd[79]: Failed to send activation record to service com.apple.ManagedClient.enroll
1/6/14 11:40:46.800 AM mds[56]: (Normal) Volume: volume:0x7f825d008e00 ********** Bootstrapped Creating a default store:0 SpotLocnull) SpotVerLocnull) occlude:0 /Volumes/firmwaresyncd.tUfpzN

[Spheric Harlot]

A fix for the Finder/Open/Save hangs:

OS X 10.9 Mavericks - Ars Technica OpenForum

Disable URL error redirects for your web service provider.

This makes sense: I've only seen these hangs on T-Online, which has a redirect to their search page if a website is inaccessible.

Originally Posted by And.reg 

[... 26 days later ...]




Could someone tell me: How do I get Calendars in 10.9 to show two lines of event text for a 1 hour event like it used to in 10.8?

About 1/3rd of my events are 1-hour blocks

SoSinceUpgrading10.9

IHaveToCompressAll

MyEventsToLookLikeThis

If I don't then they lo...



^ So, how do I get Calendars to work normally again?

I found a remedy: in the Calendars preferences I switched it to show 10 hours at a time instead of 12 hours.

Now if I can just fix the "wrong start day of the week" bug when I drag a Calendar object for an event to a subsequent week...

Did anyone bother to debug Finder's folder aliases? Once they break... if you go to "Fix Alias" and you select the folder, and click "Open," Finder crashes, every time


Also: I'm getting tons of issues with Finder crashing if I drag and drop images from Safari to a Finder window.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

A fix for the Finder/Open/Save hangs:

OS X 10.9 Mavericks - Ars Technica OpenForum

Disable URL error redirects for your web service provider.

This makes sense: I've only seen these hangs on T-Online, which has a redirect to their search page if a website is inaccessible.

I did that. I still have problems with QuickLook.

Is it normal for my cursor to freeze for 0.5-1.0ish seconds when I click on a link in Safari that opens a new tab--but I have to wait that 1.0 seconds before anything happens?

This has been going on for a few weeks.

Edit: I also notice that this sometimes happens with other applications, such as my workplace email client.