It’s that time of the year when all major software makers are busy updating their operating systems. Google launched Android 4.4 KitKat a few days ago and Microsoft pushed out the Windows 8.1 update, and has also announced ‘Update 3’ for Windows Phone 8 devices. And of course, Apple created quite a buzz with iOS 7, keeping the online communities busy with debates for a long time.

And ever since that statement about innovation came from Phil Schiller (you know which one) at the WWDC 2013 Keynote earlier this year, even non-fanboys have been looking out for everything that Apple pushes out. That also includes the new Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks operating system update, which surprised users around the world by appearing as a free download.

To see what else is different with this update, apart from Apple saying goodbye to the big-cat nomenclature system, we downloaded the 5.29 GB file from the App Store on to our 2011 iMac.

To be very honest, we had quite high hopes, expecting some major design changes, considering what Apple had done with iOS. Sadly, there aren’t many. Some of the icons, such as that of the Maps app, bear a flatter design, but that’s it. Safari, Calendar, Launchpad etc bear the same icon designs. We’ve been using our iPhones and iPads with the new iOS 7 interfaces, and we expected that Apple, which stresses a lot on convergence of devices, would at least keep that in mind and offer a fresh design philosophy. Of course, design isn’t the only thing that matters, but it does alienate Mavericks from iOS 7 to an extent.

Luckily, there are some good new features that kept us hooked on. Notifications, for instance, have become more interactive. For example, if you get an iMessage, Facebook or Twitter notification on Mavericks, you can reply or delete from the bubble itself. And if you’ve got too many services active that might cause a bubble-storm in the corner of your screen, you can turn it off with Do Not Disturb feature.

Finder has been refreshed on the inside and bears a look closer to Safari. You get Tabs, which is always a good feature, and you get to colour-code and tag all your files and folders. Those who have a lot of files and need high levels of organising will find this to be very useful.

Safari has received a slight cosmetic treatment as well as some functional ones. The curved launch screen has been replaced with a simple, grid-like display. And the reworked Bookmarks Bar now shows Shared Links column, which contains links that your friends and contacts may have shared across social networking platforms. And that’s pretty handy, because we found some interesting links to read through via Shared Links. Also, Safari now pauses Flash-based advertisements, which can save battery life on MacBooks.

Apart from these, Mavericks brings iCloud Keychain, which is a very secure tool to store your passwords and PINs, and this can be synced with your iPhones and iPads as well. Further, iBooks is now available on Mac with Mavericks. You can now send directions from Maps on your mac to your iPhone as well. There are a few more features, such as multi-monitor support with which you can use full-screen apps simultaneously on different monitors, and this is a good feature in our opinion.

OS X 10.9 Mavericks doesn’t look so different, but clearly, a lot of work has gone on the inside of some very important apps, and this makes the update quite significant. We’re just sad that we didn’t get a design overhaul on our Macs.

sabyasachi.b@thehindu.co.in

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