I upgrade Mac OS upon every release, usually as soon as I can. Same with the software imperative to what I need to use for my career. At times I’ll have to shell out a bit of dough or be more vigilant about “if I upgrade this, how does it affect that?” sort of thing.
But overall, I much prefer this method of staying up to date as it’s gradual and growing accustomed to the differences made between OS versions are easier to swallow. Going from 10.6 to 10.9 is like jumping into a time machine and going 10 years into the future as opposed to one year. It’s just going to be a bigger pill to not only adjust to the changes, but get all your peripheral software and gear up to speed.
That said, I love OSX Mavericks, a lot of nice things addressed under the hood and in the finder itself. It’s clear they’re trying to keep some things consistent between iOS and OSX, but really, it’s kind of hard to blame them seeing that these two worlds are colliding so fast.
RE: QuickTime, ever since the introduction to QuickTime X it’s never been what QuickTime 7 was. I still use QT 7 Pro for most of my codec or simple video exporting/tweaking needs as all the codec plugins are all still out there and easy to drop into its plugin folder. Still a-ok on 10.9 IME. Plus, no Mac user should go without VLC. Perian too.
Unfortunately, the way Apple is accomplishing this consistency is by crippling their desktop apps and making them more like their less-capable iOS counterparts.
I’m among those who have the temerity to assert that working on a desktop computer and working on a phone or tablet are two different things. But voices like mine are getting drowned out.
Yeah, the iWork changes (which I’ve only read about) make no sense at all. Would it really be that much trouble to have a stripped-down version just for tablet use? Why cripple the desktop version?
New question: how much of an issue is the fact that I can’t get the very latest Java and QuickTime plugin versions on Firefox because I’m on 10.6.8?
I’m afraid I still can’t figure out just how much I’d “lose out on” by upgrading, and this doesn’t help matters. I might just trudge along until it’s unavoidable. At least I know what my problems are with 10.6.8 (Firefox using up way too much CPU way too fast); I don’t know what they’d be if I upgraded (except for my old version of Office).