First thoughts of Mavericks

By Siobhan, 22 October, 2013

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Hi all. I updated both IOs and Mac and for a split second couldn't get into my iPhone. I've fixed it. The first thing I noticed about Mavericks is that it seems to be giving us a little more verbal feedback then before. When you click mail, it says open. I haven't gone through the prefferences to stop anything, yet, but I will. If I click mail, I know it's open, I wanted it to be. I also noticed that the sound effects as int he bonk sound after there is nothing in the inbox, seems to lower itself just a fraction as voice over is speaking. Nothing I really like, but nothing that I wish I had the earlier OS. I cna say now that having fixed a typo, I'm famous for those, the responsiveness with the arrow keys is amazing. I'm sure I'll figure out more things but so far that's what i have.

Options

Comments

By Raul on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Should I upgrade to Mavericks? I have a Macbook white late 2009. I have no performance problems with Mountain Lion, will it be able to run 10.9?

By Tree on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

If anyone els has tried mavericks yet let us know. There might not be much in the os update itself to gain but if you update you will be able to check out the new iwork sweet. Which I am very much hoping is a huge improvement

By Santiago on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Yes, if you're not having performance issues on your Mac with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, then Mavericks shouldn't have any issues running either.

Raul, yes you can upgrade. It's not available on the earlier amcbook, ie. the plastic ones. As for the other commenter I've downloaded pages, numbers and keynote, thank god they updated and I didn't have to buy again. I haven't test driven those yet.

By LaBoheme on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

you shouldn't have any problem, unless you're like me. i decided to restore back to ML and wait for a while before i make another attempt. couple of things i don't like: the removed "bind", i really don't get it. bind doesn't take up and space, and it's an integral part of unix. also, finder is having a hard time browsing large directory, try go to /usr/bin, and you'll know what i mean. and it removed all my vpn server settings, even though they still keep vpnd. there is something called upgrading too soon.

By Siobhan on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi. What exactly did they remove such an integral part of and why is it a huge problem you don't like it? Second, No one has to upgrade, I happen to and though there are annoyances, I can either get used to them, or be like some who dislike things, downgrade and wait. Someone waiting because they have school is a much more substantial leg to stand on then a claim of something that has been removed with little to back up their statement. Sooner or later, though your trusted device may work, you might just need to jump off the safety zone and see what's next. Maybe not today but in time, comforts will be stripped until there's little choice.

By Tangela on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

After playing with the new update for about an hour, I've noticed a few really wonderful things if you are still on the fence about updating. New voiceOver voices- There are several new US english, British English, and indian voices available Updates to existing voices- the existing voices on your mac will have updates in the app store Pages has seen huge improvements with regards to accessibility. It is now possible to format documents with features such as line spacing, font and size, spacing etc. I have not played with Ibooks, tagging or the rest of the IWorks apps yet, but if those improvements are as substantial this is a really huge update.

Hello. Yes, the voices are improved. Also, there are new ones as well. the link sound is different. I have not had the chance to play with iBooks yet, but I am guessing that it will be interesting to see what happens. It is probably very similar to the iOs iBooks app.

By JT on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

I had a quick 2 minutes looking at iBooks - it didn't seem to work very well at all!

I too looked at ibooks and the only disapointment is that there are maybe four buttons without labels. Unless they've brought the three finger hold to label, I'm not sure why those buttons as you enter the app aren't labeled. The maps app is confusing, I admit to not giving it a good try. One annoyance i've found out is that on facebook, it will say link, changed her profile picture, when before it might say Jen stone changed her profile picture. another thing is when audio is playing, if voiceover speaks, the audio is turned down, then brought back up when voice over stops speaking. i'm not thrilled with this, I used otjust have music at a lower volume, so i could listen and write at the same time. Another thing is the mail appwill say link Siobhan re: mac at seven thirty pm. Again if I could fix that, i'd like too. The only thing i don't understand is why someone said the link sound is different. It is? or maybe I'm not paying close enough attentionbut could you explaina little about why it's different? Nice voices, I loked but i'm nto one to put another voice on my mac. alex though a male is fine for me. :) Oh forgot, you can't use command left arrow or right to go back and forward in safari anymore. boo, I liked that. As iwth IOS7 I liked the post to facebook and twiter buttons int he notification center, i'll handle this change with a smile too.

Hi there… I believe you can change audio ducking by going into the voiceover utility. Audio ducking is what you're experiencing when your music temporarily lowers its volume when voiceover is speaking… But I believe that this can be turned on and off within the VoiceOver utility. I'm glad to hear that Mavericks overall seems to be working very well for folks. I'm probably going to wait to upgrade until I have a faster Internet connection… The one I have at my current apartment isn't the greatest a lot of the time.

Greg, I could kiss you. Wait, that's probably for another forum right? ;) Seriously I don't know where in the voice over utility but I'll start looking. It was driving me nuts!!! Not that I need a badge for that...

By Siobhan on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Jokes aside, here's how to disable it. I should've looked harder then I did. It's under sound, first checkbox. I'm not sure why you can disable it on here or enable it, I don't see the feature. I'm thrilled I fixed it. While this is open, has anyone who has updated or will, confirm this for me? When you're on a link, say First thoughts of mavericks, I can double tap the trackpad, and it will click and open the item. However when I'm on the one new, or four new, comments, a double tap on the trackpad just does a sound but you're still sitting where you were. Please i'd be interested if it's just me or this is what they've done now. thanks for all the replies. Even though half are my own :D

I'm happy my suggestion helped. :) and to make this day even better for anyone who hasn't heard the news iOS 7.0.3 dropped today and the VoiceOver screen sensitivity issue has been resolved and a bug that may cause VO and Siri to use lower quality voices has also apparently been addressed. My Apple optimism is being renewed. :-) Okay… Back on topic everyone… OS X Mavericks… Thoughts!

By brandon armstrong on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

i have also updated my two macs i have to mavericks, but one thing i can't find is automatically interact with elements. where is this in voiceover utilities?

By Tyler on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Overall, I really like Maverick's responsiveness, especially with respect to the keyboard. It is insanely responsive. I have, however noticed a few bugs, has anyone else on this form experienced the following? 1. On websites, the feedback for a link seems to read the text around it. In some contexts, this can sound distorted, like in Wikipedia in the dictionary, a feature notorious for accessibility inconveniences. 2. In iTunes, the audio when playing songs seems to give off a loud bass blast, which sounds like more than headphones or speakers can capture clearly. This appears to be limited to iTunes, with audio in other apps and Voiceover sounding normal. Has anyone experienced either of these issues or reported them to Apple?

By Daniel on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Dear all, I haven't upgraded to 10.9 yet but for those who are on the new OS, if you could please let me know if Daniel compact has changed as it did in IOS7 or if it has indeed remained the same in Mountain Lion. Fingers crossed I hope its the same as it was in ML. Thank you Daniel

Hi all! I was pretty excited to wake up to the Mavericks update today, and I almost couldn't hold back and just update the thing right away! But I managed to stay cool, and wait until I've checked here, and read about your experiences first. Mostly, it seems great, but there's a few things that's conserning me a bit... I e.g. read a post about garageband being pretty messed up, and that's one of the apps I use the most, also In my job, while waiting for my wallet to allow me to buy protools and all that comes with it of accessories that also needs to be bought... And that's another consern, will protools, and also other apps work with mavericks, or do I have to wait for an update to those first? So what I really wanna know is, if I now boil up a big mug of coffee and take the leep to go Mavericks, will I be able to downgrade to ML again if I don't like it, and my apps don't like it? I suspect the answer is yes, so here's the most important question: How? How do I downgrade to ML? Can that also be done without loosing any data, or do I have to finally set up TimeMachine before doing this? Thanks in advance, guys!

By Alana on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Speaking of apps, is Pages more accessible in word processing with the new oS? Thanks.

By Mikey on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

While it does seem that the accessibility can sometimes seem like it's getting sloppy, I would submit that the accessibility team is probably a small team and we have no idea what constraints they face when working on this stuff. Also I don't know how many blind people are part of the quality assurance team either, so ranting at the accessibility email doesn't seem productive. Just my thoughts.

By Thomas Byskov … on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi CLiff! I updated this morning, but before that I used Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich software. http://www.bombich.com It is an awesome product that has saved me when something has broken big time. It is not free, but I suggest you try it before you concider buying it. WHat it can do is make bootable backups of your harddrive. I've made a backup plan for my two macs, so I can restore any of them via my NAS-server or via an external harddrive. That was how I downgraded today. I haven't tried timemachine or any other backup app, since Carbon copy cloner just works fine for me. The best thing is too, that the support they give you are very very good. They know what they're talking about and they respond very fast. Sorry that I can't give you any other advice than this one.

By Tree on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Thank you for the cool app recommendation. You said you downgraded from mavrics today right? Can you tell us why you downgraded? Sorry I am just really wanting to maje the jump but wanting to get more information first.

By Siobhan on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi. He said he has a plan to downgrade, meaning he backed up his Macs before updating. If we all have external hard drives, flash drives, cd's I'm sure we can downgrade, it should be that hard. epsecially since most of us bought ML ont he app store so it's in ourpurchased items anyway. But so far I'm still prettyhappy with things, especially the boot times. My Mac book pro mid 2012 took only I'd say thirty second to a minute to boot instead of a much longer boot with Mountain lion.

By Tyler on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Weird. I fixed the iTunes audio problem by turning off the iTunes equalizer. I've never had to go there before. Maybe some default setting change. If anyone else is experiencing this problem, from your iTunes library on a mac, choose, from the menu bar, window>equalizer and uncheck the, "On", checkbox. You can also get to the equalizer window by pressing command option 2.

Hi, thanks for the tip. I like the audio ducking feature check box, only because I like palying around iwth the qualizer settings or i will now that I know where they are. :) Thanks again.

Hi Daniel. This compact voice is 100% the same. Premium Daniel is the best voice out there in my opinion though. I'm happy to say that Apple has finally brought back the ability to scroll by holding down up and down arrows. This feature was gone in Mountain Lion and I amazed why no one had complained about that. Overall, Mavericks feels much better, however I'm still experiencing the issue with quick nav suddenly turning off and resuming working only after simultaneous tap of up and down arrow keys. Does anyone else come across this or it's just me who stumbles around?

By Jasmine on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi. I've updated to mavericks. I love the response of voiceover, amazing, and overall my system just seems more responsive. I also noticed that the intonation of the voice has improved. I tried out ibooks. I was disappointed to find some unlabelled buttons but it's a new app so we'll wait and see. The reading location seems to sync fine between mac and iPhone (3gs) but I couldn't work out how to make notes or add bookmarks or anything. Haven't checked out the ibooks store yet but I imagine it will be similar to the app store etc. I'm getting used to audio ducking, I find it quite useful because I'm rubbish at getting distracted by my music when I'm supposed to be working, I'm glad there is an option to disable it though. Also, like iOS 7, they've added a setting to change when braille is translated which is nice. I'm not sure if this is widely known, but the dictation feature is now available offline and is continuous. I like that a lot. Overall I'm really happy I updated, just looking forward to improvements with the ibooks app, which i'm hopeful will be introduced in the future.

By Thomas Byskov … on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi! The reason why I downgraded was that I had some issues in Mail when looking for threads. Please keep in mind though, that I only played around with Mavericks less than an hour before I restored back to MountainLion. Just earlier today a friend told me that he didn't have this issues and that I need to be a little more patient because the information is there... So I am trying it out again tomorrow, when time permits. Do any of you know if PDF support has been improved?

By Raul on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

I didn't upgrade yet due to the mail issues with gmail. I hope Apple solves it quickly.

By Scott Davert on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
So I had some time to try out mavericks yesterday on a friend's Mac, and like it. one of the minor changes, but one I like, is that when an app is open, if you see it on the dock, VO will let you know that the app is open. I tried several braille displays out yesterday as well and found that most responded well. All worked fine with USB, but I was having issues connecting the Focus displays via Bluetooth. I was never prompted for a pin code, and then after selecting the add button, it just said that the display was paired, but won't connect. This was duplicated on a Focus 14 and a Focus 40. I tried rebooting the machine, resetting the displays, and no go. Anyone else have this experience? Also, the ability to jump by whatever you have the rotor set to, such as characters, words, etc, still doesn't work. They broke it in ML, and have better things to do than fix it apparently.

By Maria on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi, I haven't upgraded yet, am looking for a friend who has Wi-Fi I can connect to. What are the Gmail issues?

By Raul on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Apparently there are some problems with imap and google synchronization. Here is a link to an article that explains it much better than me :) https://tidbits.com/article/14219

By Siobhan on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi Scott. glad you like the new OS. One thing I can ask is have you updated the Focus firmware? i do know it's up to version 4.59 but two things are preventing me from testing out the display. One, I don't have a windows computer to install the file on. And two, and a bigger problem, a dot is stuck, and I am not good at cleaning the braille cells out. Maybe see if you can dowload the firmware updates for both of the focuses? Just a thought. Hope you like the 14 I was considering that eventually. :)

By Seanoevil on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Overall, I am very happy with the new Operating system on my MacBook Pro. As with any changes, however, along with the improvements come some annoyances and I undoubtedly have some things to learn. I would appreciate some feedback from the Apple Vis community to know whether any other users have any of these irritations or can suggest some work arounds…? Emoji. Whenever VO encounters a line of text that contains an Emojji, it will ignore that entire line. This happens across all Aps, from Twitter Clients, to Notes to Mail. Not major, but annoying. Is there a work around for this? The update came with an update to the Australian Voice, Lee. Unfortunately, to my ears at least, itmakes the Voice harder to understand. Is there a way to roll this back? Safari. VO Focus in Safari is inconsistent. When navigating to a Page or using the Back function VO focus could end up anywhere on the new page. In fact the only places that it is guaranteed never to be is either at the top of the Page or on the last link used on a returning page. Again, not major, but I noticed a thread where Users were reporting an improvement in VO focus in Safari, so again, I am hoping for a tweak to improve my performance. Regards to all.

By LaBoheme on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

http://www.applevis.com/forum/accessibility-advocacy/two-worlds-voiceover see message 39.

By Mattie SV on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hello! I am loving Mavericks so far, but I have an issue with Voiceover in Safari. When I am reading comments on a webpage, Voiceover repeats the same comment over and over again when I swipe down with two fingers on the trackpad to read all text. I have to use my arrow keys to read comments one by one to stop Voiceover for repeating the same item over and over again in read all setting. Is anyone else having this problem? Also, I have Pages and it is much more accessible than before! Menu options are now accessible with Voiceover! Has anyone used Voiceover with the new versions of Keynote or Numbers with Mavericks! Thanks in advance!

By Maria on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi. Not having a problem with focus in safari but perhaps it's the way I navigate the web. When I want to open a link and go back to where I was originally, I open the link in a new window. I used to do this with windows as well. When I'm done looking at the new information I simple close the window and end up back where I was. the lee voice sounded a bit strange at first but after a few hours of using it, I'm now used to it. I think they are the new expressive voices. Am enjoying ibooks but haven't figured out how to get a list of bookmarks after adding some. gmail is being a bit quirky but apparently I'm not alone. Overall I am happy with the new update.

Hi Maria. How did you manage to bookmark in ibooks? Could you only bookmark specific chapters or have you worked out how to select and mark particular bits of texts. I managed to highlight parts of the text with shift down arrow etc but when I went to the menu and clicked add note or bookmark it said it was dimmed. Also, the syncing between my iPhone and mac hasn't ben very successful, though I am using a 3gs so it is kinda outdated.

By Jasmine on Sunday, October 27, 2013 - 05:32

Hi. I'm a literature student so use the apple thesaurus quite a bit. I noticed since I updated, voiceover has been behaving very oddly and inconsistently. It will sometimes only read word by word, or it will repeat itself a lot before going onto the next entry, when this is done, it often repeats itself again, but goes back to the start of the entire text. I tried to read the whole entry with VO A didn't work very well. Also, has anyone noticed that when in safari, VO will sometimes randomly read items from the doc? I noticed someone mentioned an issue with safari and comments so perhaps the issues are linked? If anyone else has had this problem let me know. Please let me know if I'm doing something wrong or if anyone knows a workaround. Thanks. Jazz.

> Hello! I am loving Mavericks so far, but I have an issue with Voiceover in Safari. When I am reading comments on a webpage, Voiceover repeats the same comment over and over again when I swipe down with two fingers on the trackpad to read all text. mavericks is not the problem, the new version of safari is. this is a nasty bug, making browsing painfully unproductive. i urge everyone knows what we're talking about to contact Apple at once.

Hi all. I too have had some problems with safari's trackpad, and i'm wonderig if a firmware update might need to be made. I haven't had the issues you all have, where it repeats comments as you swipe down with two fingers. I usually use the headings with VO U, then navigate to it, hit return, then read from there. I did notice that you can't always double tap to open something with the trackpad even though you're sitting right on the link you need. I knew this wouldn't go smoothly but at least there are few bugs and most we can tollerate. For the person using the thesoraus, hope that repeating thing is either fixed or someone knows more then me. ;)

Hi, to bookmark I just pressed command d. I think it just bookmarks The page. You are on. I don't think my devices are sinking right either. It's still nice though to be able to read books on the Mac. If you go to the help menu and click on shortcuts u will find some useful ones.

By Ekaj on Monday, January 27, 2014 - 05:32

Just thought I'd add in my 2 cents here. I only got my Mac after Christmas and have been exploring it. I am very impressed thus far. Voiceover is amazing, and I even find Alex's breathing a bit creepy. But I think Apple is to be commended on a job well done. I've had some minor issues thus far, but a lot of those were addressed yesterday by the trainer with whom my mom and I met at the local Apple store. I think Voiceover being included on everything now is a huge plus, and whoever made that decision deserves a big pay raise in my books. I, too, like the audio ducking. I've only noticed it on podcasts because I haven't yet listened to any other audio on the Mac with the obvious exception of Voiceover and the various sound effects. But audio ducking seems like a great feature.