OS X Mavericks GM Seed available to Developers | Hacker News Reader

OS X Mavericks GM Seed available to Developers

developer.apple.com

120 pointszdw113 comments

I thought for sure I'd come in here and find that someone had posted a solution:

After redeeming the GM code from the Mac Dev Center in the App Store, a message is displayed:

OS X v10.9 is already installed on this computer. Use the Updates page to install the 10.9 update or if you would like to download the full OS X installer click Continue.

The last developer preview of Mavericks was build 13A584, GM is build 13A598. However, using the App Store to check for updates returns no updates available (well, iPhoto, iTunes, and Command Line Tools have been updated today, but no Mavericks update).

It seems like I'll have to download the full (5.29 GB) setup image (bigger than a DVD, I don't think that was the case with 10.8?) to update to this release..

This is standard operating procedure for recent OS X/iOS developer previews: Apple enables in-place DP-to-DP upgrades, but requires a full install of the GM seed. No doubt this is done to iron out any issues that might've arisen in the DP deltas.

Nope. Highest rated comment is sarcastic, uninformative garbage.

Not exactly on topic, but the biggest usability flaw in HN is the inability to minimise a post (and its child comments), coupled with no hiding of child comments a million levels deep (this I'm fine with, if you could hide posts). Having to scroll down half a page to see what other discussions are happening around a link really blows.

If you're using Chrome I suggest installing HN Collapse:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collap...

A thousand times, this.

I agree, it's utter garbage. If only HN had some sort of a voting system where users could vote for the comments they like and the most liked comments would float to the top.

Wow, multiple display support? Are you sure Apple? Don't you want to wait a couple years more to see if this whole 'multiple screen setup' is not just some sort of a fad?

To be fair, OS X always worked well with multiple displays (I would know), but it's their intentionally and needlessly crippled full screen mode that made the combination useless. And don't worry, they still haven't "solved" this completely.

>To be fair, OS X always worked well with multiple displays (I would know),

As I work with multiple displays, I think you're sugar-coating it to say it works "well." In fact, Apple knows how horrible it is. That's part of the reason they are displaying the full-screen support as a major upgrade with their new OS release. It is currently so bad, that not only do I find myself frustrated, the PR and dev teams at Apple want to shout about their fix from the rooftops.

Did you read the rest of my comment? Was I really "sugarcoating" it when I said they intentionally and needlessly crippled full screen?

Even without using full screen mode the multi display support is passable at best. There is no way to turn off any of the connected displays, which is a problem when giving presentations or even when just connecting my mac to the TV so we can watch a film with friends - mac's display needs to stay on, there is no way to turn it off.

Laptops will output to external screen while closed, and all connected monitors brightness can be adjusted independently (to off if need be).

Exactly what can't be done?

Yes they will, except that they will automatically enter sleep unless they are plugged in, which is not always the case. And I am not going to change my power settings to not sleep with the lid closed just so I can turn the display off - it's daft, there should be an option to do that in the displays menu. And even if you turn the brightness all the way down the display is still active, it's just the backlight that is off.

This is a good point, but doesn't seem to be like a very big one. (I'd like to be able to turn off my tablet display when I'm not using it.)

It seems to me that Apple's emphasis has been on using one screen well and applications like FCPX that use privileged APIs to use fullscreen well across monitors, but developers who use multiple displays in more complicated ways are pretty much stuck with third party solutions (I use SizeUp, and I used to use Cinch). This doesn't solve the issue you mention, but I'm very happy with it otherwise -- and when Apple incorporates the features of nice third-party utilities into the OS it gets lambasted from the other side.

man caffeinate

Funny, I can turn it off just by turning the brightness way down.

It's not actually off. It's still displaying your screen if you look closely - it's just the back light that is off.

To be fair, I think Mac OS 7 had multiple monitor support.

If you want to go back to last century: I think System 4.1 (shipping with the Macintosh II in 1987) had multiple-monitor support.

Indeed. I had two monitors on my Macintosh II back then - one color monitor and a portrait paperwhite monitor (forget who made it) for page layout.

Wow, memory lane. Yes it did, with the new 'ColorManager' that could display the same window spread across the beautiful 640x480 color monitor and a B&W monitor. Very cool in the day.

I like my dual setup with one monitor in portrait for documents, it was pretty cool for the time.

The standard monitor of the Xerox Alto was in portrait: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

I don't think they had duals, there interface was kinda clunky, and they didn't have the DP programs the Mac had.

OS X always worked well with multiple displays

Not if you want multiple independently color corrected displays... (unless they added that feature post Snow Leopard)

Intentionally? Makes sense. Not like they manufacture dedicated external displays with built in MagSafe adapters.

The way full screen worked was clearly intentional, not a bug, they obviously invested a lot of time into making this objectively less useful. Don't talk to me as if I'm an idiot simply because I won't speculate as to why they did this. I only know they did - and that's not some new thing I just made up, it's common knowledge. Don't be so hostile.

> Don't talk to me as if I'm an idiot simply because I won't speculate as to why they did this. I only know they did - and that's not some new thing I just made up, it's common knowledge. Don't be so hostile.

Let's assume best faith. siglesias might have just mean "that design choice makes no sense", not "you make no sense".

On to speculation - I'd guess they don't want you to use full screen, and only included it as a concession to things like movies / games.

I believe the fullscreen mode, as implemented in Mountain Lion, was largely intended to be used on Apple laptops with smaller displays.

The first time I used the feature on a Macbook Air without an external display I suddenly 'got' it. It made a lot more sense.

(That said, at least Mavericks doesn't make it unusable on a multi-display setup.)

Edit: Incorrectly thought fullscreen mode was introduced in Lion

> Edit: Incorrectly thought fullscreen mode was introduced in Lion

It was.

> On to speculation - I'd guess they don't want you to use full screen, and only included it as a concession to things like movies / games.

On the contrary, the Lion fullscreen mode, which caused the issue, was a relatively large push towards fullscreen, by giving it a standardized and better (if you don't have multiple displays :) UI and integrating it into built-in applications.

Sorry, you're right, I might have misunderstood him there. As to the speculation, my guess is you're correct there also: they do want to enable people with multiple displays, they just can't imagine why you would want fullscreen like that as well so they make sure you can't. It's probably about dictating "the user experience".

Works well? You must have low expectations.

I take that as a compliment. Yes, I like to think that my expectations are pretty minimal. All the more disappointing when they're not met.

Why would "[you] know"?

Because I've been a somewhat extreme multi display user for a long time, with a lot of OSes :)

And with what OS was the experience, the best?

I suspect this question should be split. I hadn't used Windows and Macs for years, but I suspect any modern software can handle the hardware. The tricky part is the window manager: making sure windows behave right when moved from one screen to the next.

For that, the only things that works for _me_ is XMonad, simply because it does not bind a workspace (virtual desktop) to a physical monitor for life.

I have a set of N workspaces, any of which I can display on any physical monitor connected, as long as only a given monitor shows a given desktop.

I'm yet to find a way to replicate it with any other window manager.

The sad thing is that after using xmonad for the last few months I'm confident having xmonad style virtual workspaces independent from the monitors is ultimately the best solution.

At one point I want IDE|chat split. The other time Browser|IDE split. The other time IDE|Browser (reversed for better screen exposure). Absolutely perfect.

Plus tiling, tile navigation-resize and no window decorators.

But I'm still looking at the next OS X and hoping to move there just to have all tools in one box. Right now having some of the work in another less configured macbook laptop is wasting my time.

I'd say WinXP (and greater) and OS X both make it very easy to set up and use multiple screens effectively, with OS X being overall drastically better for my purposes in almost every other aspect and - due to the full screen thing - slightly lagging behind in multi screening.

Disclaimer, it's been a few years since I last tried, but: Linux and other unixy OSes were the absolute worst, due to failures at every level from the drivers to the window managers, plus of course the endemic configuration pains. Some distros and drivers have halfway-decent support for two displays driven by the same card, but that's it. Clearly, in that entire ecosystem nobody saw why you would ever have more than 1-2 displays.

> Clearly, in that entire ecosystem nobody saw why you would ever have more than 1-2 displays.

http://awesome.naquadah.org/images/6mon.medium.png but it may not be the kind of wm you're looking for. also http://blog.linuxacademy.com/linux/ubuntu-and-multiple-monit... etc. Linux graphics drivers are a nightmare in general, saying that nobody cares is a bit unfair, especially when crazy setups are pretty common.

Out of curiosity, does Windows handle multi-multiple monitor setups as elegantly as OS X?

Ever since I've been using OS X (over a decade now) it always remembers the exact arrangement of my monitors when I go home / come to work (I take my laptop from home to work, and have different multi-monitor setups at each location).

Also, does Windows handle differing DPIs across multiple displays like Mac OS X handles a retina display connected to one-or-more non-retina displays?

And more to the point (well, not really - only for me ;) does anything on Linux handle this?

Currently using a hi(ish, not Retina) PPI laptop with a standard monitor and, well, you know the rest.

>Also, does Windows handle differing DPIs across multiple displays like Mac OS X handles a retina display connected to one-or-more non-retina displays?

This is a feature in Windows 8.1

Funny that, I bought a copy a copy of Windows 8 because I'd read that multi-monitor support was better. But it still didn't work for me. Mainly because I don't necessarily want both my displays on at the same time. And I want to switch my primary monitor as and when I feel like it. I don't want windows appearing on off monitors. And if they do I want to be able to grab and group them.

Then there's window management. Which I think is pretty woeful on both Windows and OSX. I want to be able to send a window to another display easily. Switch focus etc Without having to fumble about with the mouse like an idiot. Not wonder why I can't do anything because some modal window is hidden somewhere on another monitor.

I've given up on multi-monitors, they are just not worth it for me until these issues are addressed. Multi-desktops will have to suffice instead.

In short: I want plug and play monitor support and good window management baked into OSs.

On Windows 7: winkey+left/right arrow will dock actively focused window from one side of the screen to the center to the other side of the screen and then to the next monitor and so on and so forth. I hate Windows 8 so can't comment there. The inanity of the "let's kill multitasking by showing only one (metro) app window on the screen at once kinda cancels out any other windows management improvements that PoS might ship with.

But back to the subject at hand: winkey+arrow is awesome. Works so you can retrieve a window from a display that isn't on (though how hard can it be for ms to detect that and not launch your app on a powered down screen??) without needing to see what you're doing (in the past, I've had to blindly click and drag hoping I got the title bar. Or right-click on the app in the task and choose move.

The newest OS X builds have much saner multidisppay support than that.

The keyboard shortcuts are the same (with some new ones) in Win8. Moving windows between screens is just as easy.

I don't understand the Windows 8 hate; it seems so very irrational from someone tech-literate. It's Windows 7 with a more power-efficient and fast-booting kernel, improved Explorer and disk IO system, better task manager and a bunch of other really useful improvements. It's incredibly stable and resource-efficient, and will likely make any system you install it on last longer with the same battery -- far from a "PoS".

It also comes with an app store. You can ignore the store if you'd like, it's just another program you never have to run. How does the presence of this kill the whole OS for you? Did you once feel the same about the inclusion of Spider Solitaire in Windows ME?

You can alt-tab between metro apps and native programs, you can run them in the background, and drag them between displays too. You can leave the Netflix app up on one screen and your 20 non-Metro windows on the other at the same time. Or you could snap it to 1/3rd or 1/2 of the screen, and use the rest for your other windows. Multitasking isn't defeated in any way.

In Windows 8 there are two different keyboard shortcuts to move windows between displays depending on whether you are in desktop or metro mode. That's a bit of a downer. It still doesn't address the use case where I have a monitor turned off. Blindly trying to grab windows in the dark isn't clever.

I have a desktop PC connected to my TV in one room, with a HDMI cable, and a monitor in the other. I'd like to just play games and use media centre on either monitor. But I can't do this easily. The current fudge of a solution is to yank the cables out of the back of the PC or swap them over. Which is a pain, as I want the machine hidden away. I'd like to easily control where the audio ends up aswell, but that's another topic. Actually ideally, I'd like my partner to be able to use media-centre, while I'm using the other monitor in the room next door. I don't think that's a wild idea.

A lot of good ideas have been kicking about in various window managers and add ons for a decade. So why not steal and implement these ideas with a little polish?

I have similar issues under Linux, but if I could be bothered I could probably at least script it.

If somethnig like a Ubuntu Edge, gets traction, than it will be really important to get this kind of thing working correctly.

I like the way OSX detects monitors, and I like the way you can easily arrange the displays, but there's still an assumption that you'll be keeping them all on.

It's painful to watch people use multi-monitor setups, which is a shame because using them could be far more intuitive and productive. I'm intrigued to read more about the changes in Mavericks.

I actually love the technical improvements in Windows 8, enough that I'm considering buying a license for Server 2008 to run as my desktop.

Server 2008 has the features you speak of "and has metro too." Whereas Windows 8 shoves Metro down your throat. I have tried to use it, I keep changing the settings one at a time so that when I launch a file or try to load a program I'm not jerked away from my traditional workspace screen.

I'm not one of the guys that's lamenting the death of the start menu — I use OS X on a daily basis and get along just fine with cmd+space and searching for my apps by name. I don't like how ADHD the Metro UI is, I don't like how Microsoft seems to have not even remotely considered the cognitive cost of screen-switching. It's completely unnatural to jerk me back and forth between two completely different window managers. It's stupid of them to launch Metro apps by default when there's two apps of the same name, one Metro and one not.

Microsoft castrated shadow copy, pressing 'delete' instantly removes files without asking to confirm deletion (yes, Mac does this to, but on Mac it's a keypress combo of cmd+backspace which is unlikely to happen by accident), and worst of all, now that all UX access is search-based, the fact that Windows' search feature is completely, horribly useless really shines. I can never find documents by name or content with search on Windows, funny how that works just fine on Mac. With Windows 7, I had it set up so I could work around the inept search ranking algorithm, with Windows 8 I cannot.

> I don't understand the Windows 8 hate;

You're not meant to understand it. Its the party line. Many of the people that loathe Windows 8 likely have had Windows XP shoved down their throats for the last decade at work. So anything with a Microsoft logo on it makes them sick.

Words cannot describe how much I hate their new-since-Lion full-screen thing. Other than that, I agree, OSX does multi-desktop better than most, and far simpler setup.

Apple introduced first-class multiple display support in 1987 with the Macintosh II.

So what you are saying is that Mavericks will have multiple multiple screen supports?

Essentially it does: they fixed how virtual desktops interact with the multi-monitor environment into a way that people will find useful.

It was a joke. But srsly, it's still broken.

Could you just once expand on why you think it's still broken for those of us who have not tried Mavericks and hope this will finally fix the clusterfucked combination of fullscreen and multiple displays of Lion and Mountain Lion?

Yes, I'm hopeful multi-monitors will work as well as Windows 7 now without me having to use third-party window managers and such.

Don't worry, you can no longer span a single window across multiple monitors. The support fixes a lot of issues but introduces some new ones :/

Where were you back in 1987?

Except that windows can no longer span multiple displays.

Multiway video chat removal in favour of more FaceTime seems like an interesting choice (well, not the consolidation on FaceTime), but it'd be nice to see Apple develop FaceTime along with iMessage to be better.

Google has done a really good job overall of doing useful things with making Hangouts one thing that is really useful (and to be honest I think if they want something to really drive adoption of Google as a social platform it'd be hammering that shit for other platforms so Hangouts is the default messaging platform no matter what device you're on).

If Google did what Apple has done with iMessage blending with standard SMS it'd be brilliant. Conversely it'd be nice to see Apple making FaceTime less like video chat with a face, and broadening it to be useful in more situations.

Mavericks still supports multiperson video chat.

Huh. Not according to the "What's New?" link on the site. Unless I'm misunderstanding what they're talking about (a distinct possibility)

Legacy iChat is essentially bolted to the new Messages app, muti-person video chat is still supported over AIM/Jabber/Bonjour.

LinkedIn baked into an OS? Wonderful...

Your comment set off a chain of thought that resulted in me deleting my LinkedIn account. Thank you for that.

LOL. Can you please elaborate on what happened :)

Maybe they can now use some sort of direct access to your address book for their...ah, promotional emails.

"Hello sir,

It looks like you have been working a lot. The following companies would like to hire you..."

"You seem to have monetized irritating people"

You must really hate android!

It's not bad, my Nexus 7 has been an adequate appliance of a walled garden variety, so I don't want or expect a flexible operating system. It comes with all the apps I will ever need from it, such as book reader and browser. I do really hate the google plus nagging I experience every now and then.

...why? What LinkedIn integration does Android have?

It has Google integration to the point of being obnoxious.

you must not know android if you only ever used samsung (or google for that matter) flavours

Ruby 2.0 out-of-the-box. woohoo! \o/

Oh you reminded me last time I upgraded my OSX. Ruby and RVM always have problem with me upgrading the system.

Just as 2.1 is around the corner ;-)

I usually don't bother with beta OS's or GM seeds (unless they're in a VM!) on my "daily" machine, but I'm curious to know whether the GM seed can be updated to the release version/10.9.1 and onwards?

I'm not sure on Apple's history here re: OS X GM seeds.

Historically, yes for both iOS and OS X. They are also the same version as the publicly available version with a few rare exceptions.

For the past few OS beta to GM transitions I've been a part of (10.6, 10.7, 10.8), the GM is the same thing as the public release, so when 10.9.1 comes out, you'll upgrade just the same.

GM Seed means quite literally what it says. It's the build that will be released to customers if nothing showstopping crops up.

It says quite literally that it is the Golden Master, I don't know how you literally read all that other stuff into it.

"Golden Master" is what went to CD/DVD printing when we still had those.

GM = "the build that will be released to customers"

Seed = "if nothing showstopping crops up."

I am actually looking forward to this release. No real features but hints of new behind-the-scenes improvements make me think this will bring some needed Snow Leopard-like refinement to Mountain Lion. Here's hoping they can fix fullscreen with multiple monitors especially!

how long does it usually take from GM to official release?

The pattern seems to be the day following the Q4 earnings release. So look for it in the second half of the month.

http://9to5mac.com/2013/09/06/apples-os-x-mavericks-release-...

a) What's the killer feature that I have to have, to make me tolerate the upgrade process (or wipe & reinstall, which I usually do)? ... and please don't tell me to go look at Apple's website to see the list of features ... I'm looking for some comments based on first-hand experience here.

b) does Mail.app still keep corrupting mailboxes?

c) homebrew / LaTeX / emacs still works?

oh hell maybe I'll just go install Debian

oh wait ... I have a retina display ...

One of the the features which I thought was pretty cool is that the windows which are behind will that are performing rendering tasks will now use a lot less resources. I don't know if you regard that as "killer" but I think this will be great for battery life.

The upgrade process is 100% painless. You run the upgrade, it reboots your PC, and then it reboots it back into your desktop. No questions asked. OS X is absolutely not designed to be wiped and reinstalled, that's your problem if you do. While I have to format my Windows computers once a year for various reasons, I've been using OS X unformatted since the day I got my first MacBook in '06. Just used the migrate utility once when upgrading to my new rMBP. If you usually wipe and reinstall, that's on you.

Homebrew's been working great for me throughout the entire Mavericks beta. The last time Mail.app corrupted my inbox was probably on Snow Leopard, everything's been good since.

"The last time Mail.app corrupted my inbox was probably on Snow Leopard, everything's been good since."

That's great for you. It hasn't been my experience. Seems like every few days I find a message here and there in my archive that's been corrupted.

I'm using Mountain Lion but my mail server is OS X Lion ... maybe that's the issue.

If you use Gnome, they [recently added high DPI display support][1].

[1]: http://www.gnome.org/press/2013/09/gnome-foundation-announce...

I believe keyboard shortcuts are synchronized between iOS and Mac. This alone is worth an upgrade for me, given I have almost a hundred shortcuts on my phone and have to retype them into DashExpander every time I make a new one.

The feature I want the most? Safari's new web inspector.

Everything else is just icing on the cake.

This might be the greatest advertisement against tying browser releases to OS releases. Mad.

The new Safari is coming to 10.7/8 also

I'm really looking forward to tagging files in Finder. An integrated solution, unlike OpenMeta.

why not just go with Webkit nightly if you want it so badly?

Maybe it's just me, but WebKit nightlies have been very crashy for me lately. All js stuff, from the tracebacks.

Yes! It's downloading. Just in time with my second HDD cable delivery - will upgrade my Mac Mini to SSD today! Seeds: 95 [154 MB / s] Leech: 411 [100 MB / s]

Do you mean, you are pirating it? No good, mate. No good.

Any effect on homebrew?

There were major problems early in the DP cycle, but they resolved themselves as of DP4. However, you do need to have the standalone command-line tools installed to populate /usr/include: it's empty otherwise, and Xcode doesn't provide a CLT package anymore (edit: not entirely accurate, see comments below).

Once /usr/include is populated, you shouldn't have much of a problem with most Homebrew packages.

> Xcode doesn't provide a CLT package anymore.

It does, but it doesn't install them under /usr anymore (unless you tell it to by calling `xcode-select --install`). See the homebrew discussion on the subject: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/20427

You're right: Xcode includes its own set of CLTs namespaced under /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.9.sdk/, but that's useless for anything expecting FHS.

What xcode-select --install will do is the same thing as downloading and installing the standalone CLT package manually, but in a manner similar to how X11 used to be distributed: OS X will request permission to download the standalone CLT package and install it: http://i.imgur.com/O1CIGCP.png

It also doesn't currently work (it'll error out saying it's not available on the Software Update Server). Assuming that's fixed by release, it will save a trip to the web browser to download it manually.

> It also doesn't currently work (it'll error out saying it's not available on the Software Update Server)

For what it's worth, It was previously working in earlier betas

Thanks!

You can now have the developer tools installed without XCode by using "xcode-select --install".

I hope they create a formal support lifecycle for Mac OS X.

Are there any benchmarks out on how the battery life compares to previous versions of OS X?

Finally, tabbed Finder ftw!

Watch out kids, they got energy saving maps now ... on more than one display. That's gonna be huge!

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