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   Apple Releases OS X 10.9 Mavericks for Free

   Adam C. Engst

   Breaking from tradition, Apple today released [1]OS X 10.9 Mavericks
   with no more specific advance notice than the 'fall' promise from
   June's Worldwide Developer Conference. A more interesting first is that
   Mavericks will also be [2]free to all Mac users, at least those who can
   access the Mac App Store, which goes back to 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.

   [3][tn_Mavericks-splash.jpg]

   At the company's special event, which also saw announcements of the new
   Mac Pro, new MacBook Pro models, new versions of iLife and iWork, and
   the new iPad Air and iPad mini, Apple's Craig Federighi recapped the
   main enhancements in Mavericks, including under-the-hood improvements
   like better battery life, more efficient memory use, and faster
   graphics. He also zipped through a demo of the new Maps and iBooks
   apps, showed off Safari's new Shared Links and enhanced Reader view,
   and responded to interactive notifications from Messages, including a
   cute message, presumably from his wife, using the jokey username 'Hair
   Force Two' (Federighi has made a number of jokes about his stylish
   coiffure in the past.) Other features we're looking forward to include
   better support for multiple monitors, the elimination of the
   stitched-leather look of Calendar and Contacts, Finder tabs, and
   document tagging. See '[4]Apple Previews OS X 10.9 Mavericks' (10 June
   2013), for our initial coverage, which is still a fine overview.

   Most surprising for those of us watching, though, was that Apple has
   made Mavericks completely free, eliminating even the $19.99 cost of
   10.8 Mountain Lion. And, Apple released Mavericks today, unlike in
   previous years, when there were always several days of advance notice
   before actual availability. Nevertheless, we're putting the finishing
   touches on Joe Kissell's '[5]Take Control of Upgrading to Mavericks'
   now that we have final pricing information and Mac App Store links, and
   that will be available before the end of the day. Unfortunately, Sharon
   Zardetto's '[6]Take Control of iBooks' is not quite done, so we'll keep
   it at the pre-release price for a few more days until we can make it
   available in its entirety.

   Mavericks may not cost anything, but the $64,000 question remains '
   should you jump on the Mavericks upgrade right away. Our answer is a
   qualified yes. Yes, because Mavericks runs on any Mac that can run
   Mountain Lion, has performed generally well in our testing, and is an
   obvious win for laptop users because of the improved battery life in
   particular. But we qualify that recommendation with a caveat: clicking
   that Download button in the Mac App Store willy-nilly could result in a
   world of hurt if you have a mission-critical app that turns out not to
   be compatible with Mavericks, or if some deep-seated disk corruption
   chooses such a moment (when vast number of files are being touched) to
   bite you. Just proceed with due caution and full backups ' we put an
   insane amount of work into '[7]Take Control of Upgrading to Mavericks'
   because the devil is in the details, and there can be a lot of details.

References

   1. http://www.apple.com/osx/
   2. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-mavericks/id675248567?mt=12&at=10l5PW
   3. http://tidbits.com/resources/2013-10/Mavericks-splash.png
   4. http://tidbits.com/article/13835
   5. http://tid.bl.it/tco-mavericks-upgrading-tidbits
   6. http://tid.bl.it/tco-ibooks-prerelease
   7. http://tid.bl.it/tco-mavericks-upgrading-tidbits

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