Maverick for Macbook - some of the new features you can expect

Maverick -> Apple's latest operating system (10.9) is out. Most Macbooks from 10.7 onwards can be upgraded.  And, in contrary to Apple's tradition, this one is free!

 Photo Credit: Brenna Daugherty via Compfight

However, at Chadwick we recommend to wait with upgrading, as we are experiencing a number of issues so far.  Some are minor, some are quite annoying. E.g. Mail behaves rather bad, and some users gave report of very sluggish computers. We keep track of issues and are testing our configurations. You can ask the students in your class/sections, many have upgraded - and you will have some varying responses as to how happy they are! Some actually had to downgrade (back t0 10.8) again. Did Apple do a bad thing? Hard to tell. There are so many factors playing a role, a nightmare to test them all.

If you are curious what you are missing, then here are some links to Atomic Learning videos that describe the main new features

Getting Started with Mac OS X Mavericks Training

What you'll learn in this training

• Using tabs in the Finder
• Merging multiple Finder windows
• Using iBooks for Mac
• Finding a location in Maps
• Sharing locations and directions in Maps

Tech will inform you all when we have a stable version, and then you could go ahead.

Students that have upgraded are now causing some trouble with handing in work, especially when using Pages and Keynote. The free Maverick update does come with free updates to those programs. They produce different file formats  though, and are not compatible with the versions on the faculty 10.7 or 10.8 laptops.

How to solve:
Students should select the option to save the Pages or Keynote in the older iWork-09 format. Luckily that can still be done by exporting:

Alternatively, you and your class could opt for using Google Presentation and Google Docs as the basic software for presentations. 

That way, they do not have to send large files, but only have to share links with you! No problems with different versions either!

And, if you would think that Google presentation is lacking features, then have a look at he following (short) video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt9F7tKcZcU

it will show a stunning presentation, and yes, all made within Google presentation.

Yes, Google Apps is getting better every day!