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Which OSX are you using?

JamesF

By JamesF
in Discussions - Software

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JamesF

JamesF

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For those Mac users, which OSX are you using?  I've checked a webserver suggesting that 52% of OSX users are on Mavericks, almost 12% were Mountain Lion, 14% were Lion and 18% were Snow Leopard.  It would be interesting to know what the balance is like for a more astro-orientated set of users.

James

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twintin

twintin

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We have a mac we use as a home / office computer running mountain lion. I'm very wary that upgrading to mavericks will throw a spanner in the works with a lot of the programmes we use, so won't be upgrading yet. Don't use it for astro though other than cs5 . I'll stick with the laptop on win7 as I have it all working fine. If it ain't broke an all that.....

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JamesF

JamesF

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I think if you're running Windows in a virtual machine on OSX then it's still useful to know which version of OSX you're running.  From my point of view producing binaries for Snow Leopard and Lion is something of a pain though I can do it if necessary and I'm not the only one in that particular boat, I think.  It becomes even more interesting now ZWO are planning to produce a USB3 version of the ASI120 that apparently won't have the compatibility issues with the Mac hardware that the USB2 cameras do.

James

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James

James

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I'm on Mavericks, I tend to update fairly quickly as I'm not too stressed about having to reinstall from backup if it goes wrong - luckily I've never had an OS update go wrong in about 15 years (jinxed myself for sure). I do all my astro stuff in Mavericks on my MacBook Pro and in Lion for my older laptop that can't be updated any more OS-wise.

It'd be nice to have stuff available in Lion as well as Mavericks as there's probably a fair number like me who still run a machine happily that peaks at Lion but if you had to choose just one I'd say Mavericks (of course..)

The stats you've posted sound about right to me..

James

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jgs001

jgs001

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James it is 64 bit... and it will take Mavericks... I'm a bit tempted as the update that comes with it for Aperture is sposed to make Aperture a whole lot faster. 

James, I'm a bit more concerned about having to do a system restore from backup... although I have a 1Tb timemachine drive. Especially with the lack of install media ... and my internal DVD drive is toast... not worth changing it so I bought a USB one from Amazon for £20.

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NickK

NickK

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From my discussions with Software Bisque and Craig Stark, there has been considerable demand for 10.6.8 32bit as a large number of users use their old macs in the field/obsy.

Now the thing is with apple is that the hardware, OS version, and Xcode versions* are inextricably linked. So over time, the failure/replacement of older hardware drives the move forward in OS support required. Usually that jump will go from the old version directly to the latest.. i.e. those with failed 10.6.8 era machines will go directly to 10.9 mavericks with the new hardware.

So, in short .. 10.6.8 support is being slowly phased out.. but there's a few miles in the hardware that govern the speed at which this occurs as not many people continue to use their old machines for accessing their iTunes/iCloud etc but the apps for astro still run..

* when I say Xcode I mean the programming APIs/SDK in addition to the Xcode app itself.. functions available in 10.6 are deprecated/removed in 10.8 and functionality in 10.8 is added/altered from that available in 10.6.. it's the reason why ExampleApp doesn't work in 10.6.. 

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Steve-G

Steve-G

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Well I'm one of the 18% still creaking around with Snow Leopard, and proud of it  :grin:

I used to be fanatical about upgrading to the latest version of everything going but simply can't be bothered anymore. Maybe it's the start of my slow decline into being a grumpy old man.

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JamesF

JamesF

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Well I'm one of the 18% still creaking around with Snow Leopard, and proud of it  :grin:

There's always one :D

Actually, the feeling I'm getting is that many of those who can have moved to Mavericks, leaving behind a small number who dare not for compatibility reasons or because they're concerned about their system not being up to it.  And then there are a whole bunch still on Snow Leopard because they're pretty much stuck there anyhow (though I think Lion does support 32-bit if they wanted it?  Not sure about that.)

James

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David_Pickles

David_Pickles

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Running Mavericks on my 2013 i7 iMac and 2010 core2 MacBook Pro. All my astro software works well - Equinox Pro, AstroPlanner, Nebulosity 3, PHD and Photoshop CS6. I have to admit that I do run Windows 7 via Parallels on the MacBook Pro just so I can use AutoStakkert 2 and Registax 6 for planetary processing - again, no issues with compatability.

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NickK

NickK

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32bit macs were the Core Solo & Core Duo.. once you got to Core 2 Duo you're onto 64 bit.

10.6.8 was the big jump for efficiency, throwing away PPC support, adding OpenCL.. etc hence the reason why it's usually the earliest form still supported.

I have Mavericks on the mini but still use ML on the MBP.. used to it at the moment and didn't want any hassle as it's a good 64bit support point for those still not wanting to make a jump to Mavericks.

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NickK

NickK

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Now they've fixed the GPU OpenCL issues in Mavericks.. I may be tempted as it supports OpenCL 1.2 and probably has a better OpenCL compiler.


That has recently happened with the very recent 10.9.1 OS X update for Mavericks but only on Macs that have ATI GPUs in them (which a lot of people have). Macs with OS X Mountain Lion and Lion do not have this OpenCL platform bug. Macs having Nvidia GPUs are not affected. Macs having Intel GPUS are affected but less severely (this compile issued appeared for them in 10.9.0).

It does not make the app unusable, but it does prevent you from using the GPU for OpenCL accelerated rendering.

Important: Rendering on the CPU still works correctly on these Macs with ATI GPUs.

What is this OpenCL Platform Bug ??

The OpenCL platform must build the actual executable machine code that runs on the OpenCL CPU/GPU devices. It does this by compiling the app’s OpenCL source code..

On Mountain Lion, this compile step for this app took about 1 second when targeting the CPU and about 2 – 5 seconds when targeting the GPU. On 10.9.1, the compile time for CPU is unchanged and the compile time for GPU is drastically increased to over 2 minutes or even slower !!

The Apple OpenCL platform is apparently using a watchdog timer to make sure that an OpenCL compile does not take longer than 2 minutes and 20 seconds. If a compile takes longer, the OpenCL platform aborts the compile and a crash occurs inside the OpenCL platform call clBuildProgram().

No prizes which GPU and MBP era I have!

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jgs001

jgs001

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I'm sure the GPU is part of the issues we have with our iMac with Lion, it's an ATI... The other thing, the iMac runs very hot.... and keeps putting itself to sleep due to the internal heat... normally the GPU causes it. Not sure it's worth doing anything with, and I can't help but wonder if Mavericks isn't going to push it harder... SL didn't push it as hard as Lion...

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NickK

NickK

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The bug was fixed in 10.9.2.. but AMD's OpenCL compiler really sucks the preverbal monkey nuts. Something as simple as a sine function.. well it managed to optimise by breaking it! Ahh pre-calculated taylor series to the rescue… (basically the compiler 'optimises' directly to the native GPU trig functions.. which have limited ranges such as 0 to pi/2 etc but it doesn't tell you that nor does it take the fact you're not using the native_ form because of the range restriction!).

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Mark_C

Mark_C

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Running a late 2013 15" Macbook Pro retina (with nVidia GPU) that has Mavericks installed from factory. Runs beautifully, although I initially I did get graphical corruption in Safari but that seems to have been fixed in a recent update.

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