Apple’s OS X Mavericks contributed to a 10-fold spike in update traffic on launch day

OS X Mavericks is one of the largest operating system downloads Apple has ever released, at 5.3 GB. Between all the new features it offers and its $0 price tag, crowds of consumers rushed to install it last month.

That led to a massive spike in Internet traffic, highlighting how dependent Apple has become on wired broadband companies to deliver a smooth customer experience.

By Nov. 1, 10 days after launch, Mavericks had been installed on nearly 11 percent of all Macs, breaking Apple’s previous adoption records handily. (Mountain Lion didn’t hit that point until a month into its release.) Here’s what launch day last month looked like in terms of Apple data downloaded from the Internet, as captured by the broadband research group Sandvine: