Mavericks is getting on my last nerve

[James Steele]

James,

Finder > Preferences > Advanced > Search The Current Folder

Now when you do a search you can select "name matches *****" or "search everything" from a list right there in the window's little search field. You'll see.

Thanks. I checked it and that's how it was already set. But my problem really is that I don't want "name matches *****"... what I want is "name contains *****". As it is now it will not find a string of characters if it is in the middle of the filename.

My contention is the default behavior to "matches" instead of "contains" borders on being useless for me personally. I can't think of any reason you would not prefer to use "contains" when searching for a filename. What if I can't remember how the file name begins, but I'm positive I know a different part of the filename?

Say I'm looking for a couple of photos of people named Smith from years ago. The files were named suesmith.jpg, davesmith.jpg, and jinnysmith.jpg. I can't remember the one person with the unusual first name so I figure I can type "smith"... nothing will come up. I try "jenny"... nothing... "ginny" nothing. Basically I cannot just type "smith" and find these without having to open up the advanced search options and change the search to "contains" every time.

I just feel defaulting to "matches" with filenames instead of "contains" is terribly dense. "contains" will find ALL the files "matches" will. "matches" is the more restrictive search and the one that should be optional. LOL Sorry to harp on it! LOL

[frankf]

You might want to try Launchbar, EasyFind or any other app which has more easily accessible search criteria. There are a lot out there. Or if you use Disk Catalog Maker or Disk Tracker and keep them up to date you can use either for "contains" searching. BTW you can limit searches to .jpg in many of these apps.


Frank Ferrucci

[Dan Worley]

James,

How you want it to work is how it works for me, that's why I mentioned that preference, so something is definitely not right.

The search terms yours seems to be using is "Name = is" not "name = contains" or "name = matches." There has to be a setting somewhere or you may have to trash a preference file, but I don't know which one.

[James Steele]

James,

How you want it to work is how it works for me, that's why I mentioned that preference, so something is definitely not right.

The search terms yours seems to be using is "Name = is" not "name = contains" or "name = matches." There has to be a setting somewhere or you may have to trash a preference file, but I don't know which one.

That's interesting. Your files in that directly included the word "watermark" When you typed "water" the filenames that appeared in the results either *began* with the word "water" or the word "water" came right after a dash. Try typing "mark" in that same directory and tell me if it finds any of the files? If not, has this behavior always been like this?

[Dan Worley]

That's interesting. Your files in that directly included the word "watermark" When you typed "water" the filenames that appeared in the results either *began* with the word "water" or the word "water" came right after a dash. Try typing "mark" in that same directory and tell me if it finds any of the files? If not, has this behavior always been like this?

No, it will not find the files named "watermark" when I search for "mark." I have to switch to a Find window and add the name=contains criteria.

What a bummer.

Sorry about that.

I'm pretty sure you can directly edit (one of) the plist files to have name=contains as the default search criteria in a Find window, but I'm not sure if that will actually take effect when you type in the search field of any Finder window without first doing Command-F, if you know what I mean.

[bayswater]

After some googling I see that people have come up with terminal commands and plist edits to change the default in searches. I haven't seen anything specific to Mavericks, so I've posted the question in a few places. If I can get something working, I'll post it here.

[David Polich]

A good friend of mine who sometimes posts here on this forum had some serious monitor
issues on his Mavericks-based system, spent several hours on the phone with Apple tech
support, and was told by the tech support person that Mavericks slows down Macs older than
two years.

That doesn't surprise me...I had a terrible experience when I installed Leopard on my old
G4 Powerbook back in 2009. It slowed that machine to a crawl.

I have no plans to move to Mavericks on any of my Macs now, they're all four years old.
ML is the end of the line for the Macs I now own.

[bayswater]

... Apple tech support, and was told by the tech support person that Mavericks slows down Macs older than two years.

Some independent confirmation of that would be helpful. I suppose it's testable.

OTOH, I don't believe everything an Apple tech says. One told me that there is never a need to repair permissions, and another, that there was nothing wrong with Norton Utilities.

[cuttime]

10.9.2 Update available now!

http://www.macworld.com/article/2101307 ... tk.rss_all

[Gravity Jim]

I have a six year old Mac... 3,1, early 2008 8-core. It runs way mo' better with Mavericks than any previous system, and has certainly not been "slowed down" in any way.

I should point out that I had almost zero trouble with 10.7, 10.8 or 10.9, or with any version of DP 8. I can't prove it because I don't really care why all that much (and because my approach to Mac usage doesn't allow for "testing"), but I suspect that I don't have crashes, freezes and weird graphics junk going on because I don't:

• tinker with the OS
• run third party drivers for input devices
• use free or otherwise questionable plug-ins
• bounce between versions of DP
• use this machine to run anything (besides new versions of DP) except proven, solid versions of well known productivity software (MS Office, Inutit Quickbooks and TurboTax, and the like)

I upgrade the OS whenever I can, load new versions of DP without keeping old ones to compare it to, and then just go to work. The result seems to be that I experience approximately 1% of the total available trouble.

Anyway, that particular Apple tech is full of it, as many telephone CSRs are.

[frankf]

I have a six year old Mac... 3,1, early 2008 8-core. It runs way mo' better with Mavericks than any previous system, and has certainly not been "slowed down" in any way.

That Apple tech is full of it, as many telephone CSR's are.

Great to hear, Jim. I always read what you have to say about these things as we have the same box. I'm still on ML and will stay here until I get a break.


Frank Ferrucci

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Same machine as Frank and same experience with the update.

[FMiguelez]

Anyway, that particular Apple tech is full of it, as many telephone CSRs are.

My experience with Apple techs has been the same (3 times out of 3): I really think they are full of grosse scheisse. They have this weird way of "answering questions" that is almost like politicians...

They know the very basic stuff, but we have members here that are far more knowledgeable about Apple stuff than the techs I've spoken too (Mike Halloran comes immediately to mind).

[bayswater]

I doubt the people who answer the phones are "techs" in any sense. More likely they are there to screen basic questions, so the higher priced help doesn't deal with trivial problems.

I've experienced at least three tiers of support at Apple, and the first has never solved a problem; they just enter whatever you say and see if a match comes up in a database search for possible solutions.

This process probably works fine for new Apple customers and most of the longer term users -- I don't think the members of this forum are typical of the general customer base in any way.

[BobK]

Just installed Mavericks on my 2009 Mac Pro (2.26 GHz 8-core 'Nehalem') and so far it's running great - no signs of slowness at all.

My recent DP 8.06 projects include Kontakt 5, Superior Drummer 2, Trilian, Waves Renn Compressor and L1 ultramaximizer, Altiverb 7, and Channel Strip 3, all running simultaneously without issue.