I don't think you have to worry too much about the stability of Mac OS X- for me it's totally rock solid, and this is on a very old iMac 266 with only 192 MB RAM.
Hopefully I'll be updating to something made this millenium sooner or later
JasonFI its probably you're memory bro.. I do a lot of video editing stuff now on my powerbook but, but I used to do a lot of stuff with external hardware not so much anymore, i've grown more patient , but check your memory, or the cables to your hard drive and peripherals, for the longest time I worked next to a TV that wasn't shielded and once I moved it everything works great... so check that too. My powerbook freezes occasionally, especially since I run it about 12 hours a day and run everything at once it seems, photoshop, final cut pro, and after effects, illustrator at the same time, it usually doesn't hick up. Its crashed maybe 3 times? usually because I let the battery get sickly low, but you know how it is when you're on site... I've had it since december I'm really happy with it so far. I just baby it too much. I just wish they made one with a keyboard for left-handers where the control, option, and fn keys were on the ride side, it seems so unnatural to me.
yep, I've tried all sorts of memory configs. Currently running on 2 chips from Crucial, but whether I used the original one from Apple, the free one from MacMall or the Crucials (both or singly) I had the same problems.
First, let me say that I'm happy to become a new member of the AppleInsider community.
If any of you have visited ArsTechnica you should be familiar with Beosiman. Well, that's me.
Anyway, I too will be picking up a new Mac this holiday season (one of the new dual 970 units) and I too was curious of OS X's stability.
Personally, in the past 3 months of running Windows XP Pro on a dual processor MSI board I haven't had one crash. The only apps I use on a daily basis are Quicken, Outlook, CorelDraw, RealJukebox, Nero and Word.
I'm looking to get a new Mac because I know all of those programs have comparable offerings on the Mac platform and the new hardware about to debut looks VERY appealing.
I guess you're all saying OS X is finally a ROCK SOLID platform that the average computer user won't have any stability issues with?
Yup. I think the GUI locked on me once since I got my Mini PowerBook G4. Then there are the SMB crashes which will be worked out. Don't worry about that if you don't know what it means. (file-sharing from a PC.)
kraig911 that's a nice idea. It would also be nice to have Dvorak keyboards as an option. And ruggidized PowerBooks! I dunno if I could afford it but it would be cool to see a "rugged" version of the PowerBook line. Not sure what they would do, I guess water-proofing, droppable from a few feet, better key mechanisms (my 9 key came off from a vacuum yesterday but went back on.)
All *desktop* OS, be it XP, OS X, or Linux are expected to freeze/crash sooner or later because the constant configuration changes we make to it. With that said, for me both XP and OS X have been very stable. There are times where I have to reboot but they are acceptable to me in a desktop (read: non-server) environment.
In other threads I have said I was eagerly awaiting the installation of XP at work to fix my crash-prone Windows 98 system (1-2 crashes per day, or more on that old system).
Well, it finally was installed yesterday. TIME TO FIRST CRASH ON XP: only 1.5 hours (while running Office for XP).
And the ease of use the "End task" and "Shut down" options when you hit control-alt-del is just not there - instead of a simple listing of open programs, you get the usual Windows bullshit of a non-intuitive list of every background exe file running. Appalling for people like me who are not computer geniuses.
I was expecting great things from XP, but so far I am underwhelmed, and not just because of the speed with which it first crashed. The look and feel of XP simply do not match that of the OSX on my home computer. I know that in other threads I have complained of Quartz fuzziness in some fonts - well I will take Quartz any day over the Windows XP imaging. I had just assumed that MS would do something to match or even improve on Apple's Quartz - I don't see it.
Rant, rant, etc., etc., but I am now ever more confirmed in my appreciation of OSX.
Right now I'm at my College doing research for the summer. I'm stuck here in a Windows 98 lab, trying to process some big text files (>5MB), and right now I'm waiting for the computer next to me to copy some stuff... I've already crashed five computers in the first two hours of the day... I'm tempted to run back to my dorm room and just do it on my OS X iMac... I know I'll get it done in five minutes vs. the hours of crashing I'm experiencing here. In fact, I'll be right back
And the ease of use the "End task" and "Shut down" options when you hit control-alt-del is just not there - instead of a simple listing of open programs, you get the usual Windows bullshit of a non-intuitive list of every background exe file running. Appalling for people like me who are not computer geniuses.
I believe there are multiple tabs available... one of which is the list of all active processes... another tab should have just the open programs that you're seeing on the taskbar though.
I believe there are multiple tabs available... one of which is the list of all active processes... another tab should have just the open programs that you're seeing on the taskbar though.
Right you are. Thanks, this is an improvement. I guess I should keep an open mind on XP, but I am still not impressed with it so far.
Folks had extreme slowdown on my 500DP PowerMac with top showing up to 150% CPU usage for SystemUIServer process. Turns out it was due to the Massinova Extras from www.massinova.com trance music server... the site was down and the menu extras were in an endless loop looking for the server. Beware if you have the menu extra installed... Otherwise - when server up - the menu extra works very well allowing u to vote for tracks, add favourites etc. Use Terminal and the top, ps commands to track down rogue processes...
Update on my first week with XP: bugs, bugs, bugs. My biggest nightmare right now is the way that my Outlook now randomly and independantly reschedules my Calendar appointments "Hey, why is that meeting now at 3AM?".
I am not saying that OSX is bug-free, but I personally have not experienced anything like what I have had with XP so far at work .
All in all OSX has been pretty stable, however it still has a long way to go before I would call it (UNIX)solid. Samba crashes 1 out 3 times, FTP is horrible, ALL BROWSERS crash at least 3 times a day, I see the spinny ball thingy between 5 - 9 times a day, sometime I will have to reboot because of it(I hate waiting). Unmounting and mounting a cdrom via command line crashes the finder very easy. Copying a large file via wireless puts the machine to complete halt more times then I care it to happen. I believe the FInder is the cause of most of these problems because when I use GNOME or Afterstep under XDarwin, I can run my Powerbook probably for ever without a single hick-up.
All in all OSX has been pretty stable, however it still has a long way to go before I would call it (UNIX)solid. Samba crashes 1 out 3 times, FTP is horrible, ALL BROWSERS crash at least 3 times a day, I see the spinny ball thingy between 5 - 9 times a day, sometime I will have to reboot because of it(I hate waiting). Unmounting and mounting a cdrom via command line crashes the finder very easy. Copying a large file via wireless puts the machine to complete halt more times then I care it to happen. I believe the FInder is the cause of most of these problems because when I use GNOME or Afterstep under XDarwin, I can run my Powerbook probably for ever without a single hick-up.
Browser crashing in OSX has never been a problem for me.
Further update on my experience with XP: two to three crashes on Word XP per day, often at the worst time - when you are trying to save your documents (I tend to have many documents open at once - so the crashes are especially bothersome).
And don't tell me I don't have it set up right. The IT professionals have been in and out of my office to set it up and to 'fix' it: presumably they know what they are doing.
How much is it costing our organization to have so many IT people trying to fix junk PCs running a junk OS?
Comments
I don't think you have to worry too much about the stability of Mac OS X- for me it's totally rock solid, and this is on a very old iMac 266 with only 192 MB RAM.
Hopefully I'll be updating to something made this millenium sooner or later
Cam
All HD's are connected internally.
If any of you have visited ArsTechnica you should be familiar with Beosiman. Well, that's me.
Anyway, I too will be picking up a new Mac this holiday season (one of the new dual 970 units) and I too was curious of OS X's stability.
Personally, in the past 3 months of running Windows XP Pro on a dual processor MSI board I haven't had one crash. The only apps I use on a daily basis are Quicken, Outlook, CorelDraw, RealJukebox, Nero and Word.
I'm looking to get a new Mac because I know all of those programs have comparable offerings on the Mac platform and the new hardware about to debut looks VERY appealing.
I guess you're all saying OS X is finally a ROCK SOLID platform that the average computer user won't have any stability issues with?
kraig911 that's a nice idea. It would also be nice to have Dvorak keyboards as an option. And ruggidized PowerBooks! I dunno if I could afford it but it would be cool to see a "rugged" version of the PowerBook line. Not sure what they would do, I guess water-proofing, droppable from a few feet, better key mechanisms (my 9 key came off from a vacuum yesterday but went back on.)
Well, it finally was installed yesterday. TIME TO FIRST CRASH ON XP: only 1.5 hours (while running Office for XP).
And the ease of use the "End task" and "Shut down" options when you hit control-alt-del is just not there - instead of a simple listing of open programs, you get the usual Windows bullshit of a non-intuitive list of every background exe file running. Appalling for people like me who are not computer geniuses.
I was expecting great things from XP, but so far I am underwhelmed, and not just because of the speed with which it first crashed. The look and feel of XP simply do not match that of the OSX on my home computer. I know that in other threads I have complained of Quartz fuzziness in some fonts - well I will take Quartz any day over the Windows XP imaging. I had just assumed that MS would do something to match or even improve on Apple's Quartz - I don't see it.
Rant, rant, etc., etc., but I am now ever more confirmed in my appreciation of OSX.
Originally posted by Chinney
And the ease of use the "End task" and "Shut down" options when you hit control-alt-del is just not there - instead of a simple listing of open programs, you get the usual Windows bullshit of a non-intuitive list of every background exe file running. Appalling for people like me who are not computer geniuses.
I believe there are multiple tabs available... one of which is the list of all active processes... another tab should have just the open programs that you're seeing on the taskbar though.
Originally posted by MCQ
I believe there are multiple tabs available... one of which is the list of all active processes... another tab should have just the open programs that you're seeing on the taskbar though.
Right you are. Thanks, this is an improvement. I guess I should keep an open mind on XP, but I am still not impressed with it so far.
I am not saying that OSX is bug-free, but I personally have not experienced anything like what I have had with XP so far at work .
Originally posted by Relic
All in all OSX has been pretty stable, however it still has a long way to go before I would call it (UNIX)solid. Samba crashes 1 out 3 times, FTP is horrible, ALL BROWSERS crash at least 3 times a day, I see the spinny ball thingy between 5 - 9 times a day, sometime I will have to reboot because of it(I hate waiting). Unmounting and mounting a cdrom via command line crashes the finder very easy. Copying a large file via wireless puts the machine to complete halt more times then I care it to happen. I believe the FInder is the cause of most of these problems because when I use GNOME or Afterstep under XDarwin, I can run my Powerbook probably for ever without a single hick-up.
Browser crashing in OSX has never been a problem for me.
And don't tell me I don't have it set up right. The IT professionals have been in and out of my office to set it up and to 'fix' it: presumably they know what they are doing.
How much is it costing our organization to have so many IT people trying to fix junk PCs running a junk OS?