Apple unveils OS X 10.9 Mavericks

Cupertino based Apple Inc. unveils their latest Operating System to run on their Mac Desktop and Laptop lineup, OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

OS X Mavericks is packed with a lot of exciting enhancements, new functionalities and applications for the users to take advantage from. The way you work, and the way things look are not the only things changed in Mavericks – but before we delve deeper into the behind-the-scene enhancements, let’s take it all from the top.

iBooks comes to the Mac.

The first notable addition to OS X is the (at last) inclusion of iBooks for Mac. You can now finally start reading your eBooks and PDFs on your Mac and keep everything in sync across all Macs and iGadgets. iBooks for Mac, thanks to the larger screen real estate that you can make use of on the Desktop and Laptops, makes it quite easy to add notes and highlights to your books and reading material.

Those who are taking advantage of iBooks textbooks can even enter a “study mode” highlighting all notes you’ve taken from the textbook at hand. All of these though will be given a closer look once Mavericks hits this fall.

An even more amazing Safari experience

Not only has the already snappy and robust Safari become even more snappier than ever, but it also got a decent overhaul in some of the clunky areas that it had.

The first improvement that surf-aholics might get to notice is the redesign of the Top Sites feature. It’s now easier to add an remove sites from the Top Sites list, like just dragging them in from your bookmarks, or by rearranging them simply by dragging ’em around. At last, no need to go through the hassle of the “edit” button in Top Sites.

Next is Reading List. Reading List has received a major revamp not just in design but in functionality as well. It’s not just a mere ‘Reading List’ anymore, but is a whole sidebar inside your browser that allows you to explore your bookmarks, add or remove items from your reading list and… explore content shared by the people you follow on Twitter and LinkedIn, right there from your Sidebar in the new Safari.

There are so many other things that I’d love to tackle about Safari, but let’s wait for it to come out (and let’s hope and pray that my mid-2009 Macbook Pro is eligible to upgrade) along with OS X Mavericks.

Keychain for iCloud

At last, you can bring your passwords and other private data with you – on all your Macs. Seamlessly synced across all of them. Keychain for iCloud comes with a new feature that allows you to make use of a Keychain recommended password when you sign up to a site or service – without you ever needing to take note or memorize it. Keychain will make sure that (for as long as you’re on a Mac) login to those sites will be smooth and easy. You can, however, of course create your own passwords as usual and they’ll still get synced across all your OS X Mavericks installs.

Maps for OS X Mavericks

A slightly underwhelming addition to the suite of apps available to you right from the start in OS X Mavericks, is the Maps app.

Noting it as “slightly underwhelming” is even a bit generous given to how it compares to Google Maps, and how the introduction of Apple’s on Map app fared on the iOS platform.

For us Filipinos, this isn’t a feature we should be too hyped about as the mapping of our country looks to be quite terrible as usual – unlike how it stands in Google Maps.

Under the hood changes to improve your overall experience.

Here are two of my favorite new features in this beautiful new OS.

APP Nap – this feature allows you to full concentrate on the apps seen on the display, while reducing the power given to the apps in the background (whose windows are not in front). That way, you’re ensured that all the processing power goes to the app that you are focused on.

Compressed Memory – the new technology involved here, makes your Mac even more responsive than it already is. Before, Memory (RAM) on a Mac was divided between Active RAM and Inactive (Cached) RAM, now, that inactive ram is getting compressed, leaving the system with a decent amount of “Free” RAM. So, instead of rewriting on the inactive/cached RAM, the system can make use of that vacated RAM whenever it needs to immediately.

Notification Galore the right way

To cap off this quite lengthy teaser into Apple’s first California-themed OS X release named Mavericks, I’m excited to shine a bit more light on what’s been going on to the dreaded Notification Center (which I have not used, ever).

Aside from the (late) notifications that you can from your Social Media accounts like Facebook and Twitter, and all the other typical stuff, it is now possible for you to push your iOS notifications right to the Notification Center on your Mac. It doesn’t just end here though. If you’re like me and have multiple Apple devices at home and are annoyed with dealing with the same set notifications over and over again, fear no more… because once you’ve dealt with a notification on one of your devices, it’ll be synced across the board to disappear on the other ones as well.

Notifications have also become a bit more flexible, too. Instead of heading right over to whatever App is calling your attention through Notification Center, you can now deal with the notification on the spot (depending on what kind of Notification it is).

Let’s say you got an iMessage, you can reply in-line in the notification popup to the message sent to you. You can even send an reply to an email you get notified of. The possibilities are endless, and I’m already looking forward to what other developers make of it.

Biggest change since Snow Leopard

Some long-time Mac users are already considering Mavericks as the biggest OS X update since Snow Leopard hit the shelves. I can’t quite comment on that yet, because Snow Leopard has been my first OS X version that I used when I got my Macbook Pro. Yet as far as it seems, if Mavericks lives up to all the other under the hood enhancements et al that was discussed during Apple’s WWDC 2013 Keynote, this may well be the first OS X version to radically change something to OS X.

Luckily though, based on Developer Notes from the Developer Program, OS X Mavericks is supposed to work with my 2009 Mac. So, expect a more in depth review once hat OS is out this Fall.