OS X Mavericks - Beware of App Nap!

[OzDave]

I have recently been having some odd problems with my astronomy software since upgrading to Mavericks.

My capture software suddenly started throwing the camera into a fatal error mode, PHD was guiding very oddly to name a few things.

I tracked it down today to be caused by the App Nap feature of Mavericks. What this does is change the behaviour of timers slowing the app down when it is not the foreground application. Since there is only one foregound app, it means all of the real time astronomy apps that you may have running during an imaging session may behave badly.

Unless apps are appnap aware, we need to disable it. You can do this by rightclicking the app, choosing Get Info, and then checking the Prevent App Nap option.

If you dont do this you can expect erroneous captures, pulse guiding that is way off, and other such problems.

Hope this helps people on Macs.

David

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[NickK]

Still on Mountain Lion 10.8.5 here.. just lol

[Digz]

Thanks for the heads up. Haven't plucked up the courage yet though to upgrade.....

[majapala]

I'm yet to upgrade too, but thank for the warning.

[Elara]

I have recently been having some odd problems with my astronomy software since upgrading to Mavericks.

My capture software suddenly started throwing the camera into a fatal error mode, PHD was guiding very oddly to name a few things.

I tracked it down today to be caused by the App Nap feature of Mavericks. What this does is change the behaviour of timers slowing the app down when it is not the foreground application. Since there is only one foregound app, it means all of the real time astronomy apps that you may have running during an imaging session may behave badly.

Unless apps are appnap aware, we need to disable it. You can do this by rightclicking the app, choosing Get Info, and then checking the Prevent App Nap option.

If you dont do this you can expect erroneous captures, pulse guiding that is way off, and other such problems.

Hope this helps people on Macs.

David

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi David - many thanks and well done - I'm on OS X Mavericks, so if it's ok, I'll cut and paste this into the Mac specific section here http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/176721-mac-osx-software/ 

Cheers

Graham