Finally on Mavericks
Yeah, I’m a late adopter… The reason for the delay is that 10.8 was working just fine pretty much until the last few weeks. Then between OS entropy and needing to upgrade the OS for some apps that required it, I decided to bite the bullet.
I use a MacBook Pro and decided to pull the optical drive and replace it with a 1TB 7200RPM, install the new OS on that, and then manually transfer over only the apps that I absolutely needed (not using Migration Assistant). It only took about 15 minutes to install the OWC Data Doubler and the new drive. I then installed Mavericks and copied over the apps and their preferences/support directories. I only really ran into difficulty with Mail (and Keychain), I just had to try a few times before everything got copied over and worked properly but that didn’t really hold me up for too long.
Considering the MBP is a Mid-2009 model, it’s just flying now, everything is snappy and responsive. It’s really like getting a new machine.
I’ll let the old (750MB) drive sit there for a while just to make sure I get everything off it that I need, then I’ll erase it and install the Yosemite beta on it. I’ve already got the Xcode 6 beta and I’m looking to start my next project entirely in Swift.