Apple today announced that OS X Mavericks, the 10th major release of their desktop operating system, and is available for free from the Mac App Store. The new OS has “over 200” new features, which includes iBooks, Maps, and a much improved version of Safari and Finder. The biggest news however is that it improves performance and battery life on existing Macs. In our testing we managed to squeeze out an extra hour of battery life out of a 2012 Macbook Pro Retina.
“œMavericks is an incredible release, which introduces significant new apps and features, while also improving the performance and battery life of your Mac,“ said Craig Federighi, Apple‘s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “œWe want every Mac user to experience the latest features, the most advanced technologies, and the strongest security. We believe the best way to do this is to begin a new era of personal computing software where OS upgrades are free.“
Mavericks also includes new core technologies that boost performance and improve the battery life of your Mac. Timer Coalescing and App Nap intelligently save energy and reduce power consumption. Compressed Memory automatically shrinks inactive data to keep your Mac fast and responsive – meaning you can fit around 6GB of memory into 4GB of RAM. Mavericks also delivers significant performance enhancements for systems with integrated graphics through optimized OpenCL support and dynamic video memory allocation. This means that the integrated video system only uses as much memory as needed – not a predefined amount on bootup.
The update is available right now on the Mac Appstore, and is a free update for anyone running OS X 10.6 or later. We have been running the Golden Master on various machines, and have not had any issues – overall a great update, at the best possible price…
