Going Mac to the future…
My iMac was recently upgraded to Mavericks by a friend of mine, and, since then, I’ve noticed the system time isn’t accurate anymore. It can gain as much as a minute per day; if I open Date & Time Preferences and turn automatic checking off and on again, it jumps to the correct time – but then it starts gaining again straight away. Margaret Szolkowy This does appear to be a bug in Mavericks. I believe it’s related to the ntpd process failing to connect to the internet time server. Some people have reported that adding several extra time servers in the Date & Time Preferences field (get a list from support.ntp. org/bin/view/Servers/WebHome – separate each one with a comma) improves the accuracy. But this approach probably only works because ntpd is making more attempts to connect. Other fixes that have been successful for some people are rebooting in Safe Mode and adding ‘interface ignore ipv6’ to the /etc/ntp.conf file. If this doesn’t work, you’ll have to wait for an update that fixes the problem.