2013-10-25 What is new in OS X Mavericks

I'm running a little comparison of the file system of a Mavericks install and a Mountain Lion install, to see what's new and what has disappeared.

So far, I found that Mavericks added the following drivers:

• ArcMSR -- For Areca RAID stuff, although I can't find a clear list somewhere
• ATTOCelerityFC8, ATTOExpressSASHBA2, ATTOExpressSASRAID2 -- See the announcement from Atto
• CalDigitHDPro -- For CalDigit's HDPro RAID hardware
• HighPointIOP, HighPointRR -- [1]
• PromiseSTEX -- For Promise its SuperTrak EX RAID controllers
• SoftRAID -- driver for a software-managed RAID array: http://www.softraid.com
• Canon IJScanner4 -- for Canon's multifunctional printer/scanners

Mavericks also added Ruby 2.0 (up from 1.8 in Mountain Lion).

I found a number of apps in /System/Library/CoreServices that are new:

• Install Command Line Developer Tools -- calling any of the binaries related to development (like /usr/bin/cc) will instead call this Xcode installation utility
• Keychain Circle Notification -- App that allows you to grant other devices access to this Mac its keychain, used for iCloud syncing of passwords (for example those used in the browser)
• Pass Viewer -- "partial support for Passbook passes, letting you view emailed passes on your Mac" -- source: MacWorld: Get to know OS X Mavericks: Apple Mail 7.0

There's also a number of new drivers in the /System/Library/Extensions folder:

• AppleHSSPIHIDDriver, AppleHSSPISupport, AppleHWAccess: would seem to be for communication with keyboards, trackpads, and other buttons (like a hinge-button) that use an SPI bus
• AppleIntelFramebufferAzul: obviously a display driver, but don't know what exactly
• Driver for the new Intel HD5000 stuff
• AppleIntelHSWVA driver, HSW is Haswell, but VA?
• AppleIntelLpssDmac, AppleIntelLpssGspi, AppleIntelLpssSpiController: LPSS is Intel's Low Power SubSystem stuff, the Linux kernel uses this acronym when talking about Intel's Bay Trail architecture
• AppleThunderboltIP, that's the driver for tunneling IP over Thunderbolt, duh :D I'm confused if this has anything to do with the Thunderbolt ethernet driver, I don't think so.
• AppleTopCase, ?
• GeForce Tesla driver, maybe a driver for the Mac Pro
• IOReportFamily driver, ?
• vecLib, see also [2]

In the /System/Library/Frameworks folder, there are a number of new libraries:

• AVKit.framework
• GameController.framework
• MapKit.framework
• MediaAccessibility.framework
• MediaLibrary.framework
• SpriteKit.framework

In /usr/bin, there are a bunch of new executables:

• afida -- Audio File Image Distortion Analyzer
• footprint -- gathers memory information about a process or set of processes
• ipmitool -- utility for controlling IPMI-enabled devices
• ippfind -- find internet printing protocol printers
• json_pp -- a Perl-based utility for working with JSON
• jvisualvm -- ?
• lsappinfo -- Control and query CoreApplicationServices about the app state on the system
• ncdestroy -- Destroy kernel NFS credentials
• pluginkit -- manages the PlugInKit subsystem for the current user. It can query for plugin matches, as well as explicitly change the plugin database.
• powermetrics -- gathers and display CPU usage statistics
• timer_analyser.d -- ?
• timerfires -- analyze timers as they fire
• wdutil -- Wireless Diagnostics command line utility
• zipdetails -- display the internal structure of zip files

In /usr/sbin:

• ioalloccount -- Summarize IOKit memory usage.
• purge -- force disk cache to be purged (flushed and emptied)
• sndiskmove -- Xsan File System Disk Mover Utility
• systemstats -- shows a selection of statistics about system power usage
• taskpolicy -- execute a program with an altered I/O or scheduling policy. Not sure how this relates to the standard Unix commandline utility "nice"