OS X Mavericks: Small, Smart Changes Are Better Than Overhauls

When Apple was about to unveil their brand new version of their operating system, OS X, many did not know what to expect. All of the anticipation prior to Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) had been focused on the tech giant's impending mobile operating system, iOS 7, so Apple had a chance to wow the crowd, and the tech industry, with their upgrades to OS X. Despite a totally new name for the OS, and some great changes that bring even closer together Apple's desktop and mobile devices, OS X Mavericks doesn't exactly leave the traditional OS X behind. 

First, there was the name scheme, which top Apple software guru Craig Federighi said was getting a little old. Since OS X debuted, Apple has named each next carnation after a kind of wild feline, like the most recent Mountain Lion, or Snow Leopard, Tiger, or Panther. Federighi said they were running out of wild cats to name the system after — kind of a dark joke, environmentally speaking — but suggested naming it after a different kind of lion: the Sea Lion. From the crowd's reaction, perhaps they should have gone with Sea Lion; it does make some sense—sea lions are swift, and comfortable going into more than one environment.

But Federighi announced the new naming scheme was based on California landmarks, with the first incarnation, "Mavericks," named after a surfing location in Northern California. OS X Mavericks offers some tweaks to the old OS X, the most noticeable of which revolve around the finder and the system's display support. Other changes were more in the background, but will help keep OS X a relevant operating system, though they won't revolutionize anything.

The most important, and useful, changes are coming to the finder. Ever since the dock began being used as more than an application launcher, and following the advent of spaces and "mission control" on the operating system, the finder — arguably Apple's first "killer app" — has kind of been lost in the mix. It's not used to find anything. OS X Mavericks' finder features some changes that will make it far more useful.

Taking a cue from web browsers that have been around for years, the finder now features tabs, instead of more and more windows. Now you can keep several locations up at once in one finder window, transfer files between tabs, add new tabs if you need to, and generally keep your desktop less cluttered. In addition to tabs is another little finder app that seems to take inspiration from the web: tags—but thankfully not using hashtags. 

Tags is an updated labeling system that uses search terms that you add to documents to better sort through and find those documents later. And you can add color labels to tags for a more visually pleasing experience. Tags and tabs, oddly enough, seems like the closest Apple got to "genius" at WWDC—the simple design that organizes chaos into an elegant system.

Multiple display support got more intuitive with OS X Mavericks, where you can run applications in full screen on any and all displays you want, transfer open application windows between displays easily, and you can do that now with Apple TV, too. Additionally, OS X Mavericks puts a dock and a menu on each screen, so no more going back to your "home" screen to launch another application.

Other changes to OS X involve improvements to OS X-included applications or to background system processes. The most important changes involve integration of iPhones and OS X, so if you don't opt for the iPhone, these are cool, but not applicable. For example, Apple's Maps app is on OS X Mavericks, and has lots of nice features to send directions right to the iPhone. Other applications like Safari, iBooks, and Calendar are more seamlessly synced between iOS and OS X as well. Finally, there are changes to the background system that make it better, like tweaks that make the CPU run more efficiently and wake faster from sleep. These are all great, and sometimes you might even notice them.

In the end, OS X Mavericks isn't going to get the attention that Ives' completely redesigned iOS will get, and it's not going to completely change the way Macs work. But it is a good sign that Apple can still make smart, core changes that will actually make computing easier, without resorting to gimmicks. But naming the system Sea Lion would have been pretty fun.