Battery Life in OS X Mavericks 10.9

Battery life in OS X Mavericks 10.9 seems to have improved a bit.  I haven’t really done any specific testing as such, but overall, the battery life seems to have improved under general usage.

With Snow Leopard, I’d get close to 4:30 - 5:00 hours with my Macbook White.  Now, with Mavericks, it’s more like 5:00 to 6:00 hours.  So let’s say, roughly about 1 hour more than Snow Leopard.  That’s really very good, amount for roughly a 20% increase in battery life.

This may also be due to my CPU being an old Core 2 Duo, p8400 2.26 ghz.  Maybe, the newer CPUs like Haswell have better power savings, and may lead to an increase in battery life.

This is with Wifi On and Safari running in the background. 

I'm sure Apple is going to further optimise the battery life as it gets closer to the final release, but I'm already really happy with the results, so anything more will be just additional bonus.

Whatever the case, kudos to Apple for increasing the features, overall speed and even battery life, all in one masterful stroke!

OS X 10.9 Mavericks Compressed Memory: A more detailed analysis

I tested OS X Mavericks more extensively over the last couple of days.  The Activity Monitor was always on (it has some wonderful new changes, by the way) and I was monitoring the changes.

I started loading a lot of apps so that I could overload the system and get the swap file to start slowing down the system.  But no...Nothing happened even after I loaded the heavyweights Chrome, Safari, and iPhoto.

So I went crazy and started opening up all the apps I had installed but the swap file refused to budge!  Compressed Memory apparently had started to come into play, and I could see its values start to rise.  Even after I had opened up all my apps, run a system scan with iAntivirus, playing iTunes in the background, and over 5GB of virtual memory used, the swap file was still ZERO.  Frigging Zero!!!!  Sure, the system was kind of bogged down, but I have never ever seen any OS with such fantastic memory management.  If it was Lion, Mountain Lion, or even Snow Leopard, the swap file would have been a few GB by now, and the system would be slow as molasses with the hard drive thrashing away!

I really really don’t know how Apple has managed this remarkable feat!  Even after continuing to stress the system for some more time, the swap file finally went up to 3.5 MB!!!  That’s MB not GB mind you....Amazingly Incredible!

If you look at the other picture I have included, it also shows the programs in App Nap, and this may have contributed to the memory management.  Maybe it puts the background apps to sleep and gives memory to those apps in the foreground.  The amazing thing is that all of this seems to be happening in RAM!

But whatever the reasons, whatever processes are going on, I just can’t believe the results.  I’m simply at a loss for words....

  

Memory Compression in OS X Mavericks 10.9

O.K.  I was dying to try out the memory compression feature in OSX Mavericks.  After the first boot post installation on my Macbook 2009, memory usage was 2.4/4.0 GB so it was just a bit more than the previous instalment of Snow Leopard.

However, after the update and reboot, memory usage was 3.9GB and I kinda panicked, thinking," Lord, not again...Gonna have to downgrade back to Snow Leopard".  Someone very rightly said that "Snow Leopard is the Windows XP of Mac OSX...It simply will not die!

Another reboot later, things settled back to 2.4GB so that was good.

I opened up Safari (Still a memory hog!  Apple, do something about it, for God's sake)...Opened a lot of tabs, opened Microsoft Word, iTunes, and few Finder windows....Virtual memory usage showed 4.5 GB, and I expected the swap file to be used and the thrashing of the hard disk, but NO!  Apple's Compressed Memory was starting to work and it started going up to a few hundred megabytes.

So this is how it works.  First, the programs use up all the available RAM and when that's about to finish, Compressed Memory comes into play.  I really haven't overloaded the system with a lot more apps and intend to do so in a few days...Will post again.

Immediately, I uninstalled a program I'd been using for the last few months - FreeMemory.  A very good utility, but rendered useless due to Apple's superb memory management.

Fantastic job, Apple!!!

OS X Mavericks 10.9 install ; first impressions

I had to try out OSX Mavericks (Not a big fan of the name though) on my 2009 Unibody Macbook White with 4GB of RAM with normal hard drive.  I think this is the most exciting OS release for me in quite a while.

Previously, I had downgraded back to Snow Leopard after installing Lion and Mountain Lion.  The new features coupled with losses of performance weren't worth it for me.

Well, well, so far so good.  Mavericks runs like a champ.  I've just finished installing and waiting for it to download updates.  Memory usage, system responsiveness seem waaay better than Mountain Lion and almost as smooth as Snow Leopard on this old system...

I'll keep posting again in the coming week and will be looking at Compressed Memory, App Nap, and the gains in battery life....Stay tuned.

WWDC 2013 Review

Well, well.  I think this was one of the best WWDCs ever.

The presenters were relaxed and except for Tim Cook's rehearsed usual fact files, I think it went pretty well.  Everyone seemed really excited to present their respective segments.  Craig Federighi was very relaxed and even funny on several occasions.  And he really interacted very well with the audience.  This was probably the first event that these guys did a really good job, post Steve Jobs...

The only negative:  Too many references about Scott Forstall's  skeuomorphic designs.  Hey, I kind of liked it and it gave ipad software some character and made it stand out; i.e. the book shelf, notes, and reminders.  In fact, I am probably one of the few people who says BRING BACK SKEUMORPHISM!  (Did you see the new plain looking notes and calender in iOS and OSX?  Uggh!!).

Scott was not the bad guy - O.K. he screwed up on maps and may have been an arrogant control freak, but let's stop beating the dead horse....

The new features of iOS7 and OSX Mavericks look very good indeed along with the new MacPro (not that I'd ever have enough money to buy it).  I think Apple is on a roll, both on the hardware and software side.....

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT iOS 7

O.K. iOS7 has been released in its beta form for the iphone.  Here are some things that I like about the release:



1) It supports all devices dating back to ipad 2 and iphone 4.  Yay, apple!  At least you support your devices for few years.  My last year's xperia got a late update and will probably be stuck at the current version of android os.

2) Multitasking -  looking good!

3) Automatic app updates and preferential fetching of the apps, according to usage.  Brilliant

4) Other changes including control center, weather, maps and various apps

5) I love the changes they have done to the notification center, and the addition of the today screen!  HP Palmtop, anyone?

6) Auto update of apps - FINALLY!!!

My only gripe is that they could have added some real time information in the icons or made cool apple widgets showing information, like the dashboard in OSX (Am I the only one who uses dashboard?  I love it, especially checking the weather and system stats, memory etc..)

People say they are copying from android, windows phone and I agree....Hell, they are copying off ubuntu mobile/jolla/meego as well.  But they refine the ideas, and make them slick and easy to use - the same that they do with hardware.  Speaking of which, once you use an apple multi-touch trackpad, you'll never and I mean NEVER EVER want to use a clumsy windows touchpad...It's that good.  And it's really so good that I don't even feel the need to use a touch screen...But that's a story for another day...

Can't wait for the fall to install it my ipad 2 (which my family and I love, love, love, love and love) and download and try OSX Maveriks on my unibody Macbook white ( as far as I'm concerned, Apple lost it's distinctiveness after it developed the current Macbooks with black keyboard! )