[samsontan]

I've some application like skype, vlc and some others that sometimes quits automatically. Is it normal for us mac users since most of the programs made are more compatible to windows OS?

Do I send in a report to mac? Well, I felt when clicking on the "reopen" is like as if there's something wrong with my mac.

[Cadaver]

No, this is not a common problem for Mac users. Has nothing to do with applications for Windows.

Be aware, however, that VLC and Skype are often released as beta versions, which means they are unfinished test versions of the application. They are released for users' convenience and for testing purposes, but often have bugs that will cause them to crash.

VLC, in m opinion, is a very poorly written program. While it has some unique features, it crashes frequently for me as well. Virtually nothing else on my machine crashes. I don't personally use Skype, so I can't comment on its state of development.

With all that said, however, if other programs are constantly crashing on your machine as well (Safari, Mail, Keynote, iTunes, Word, iPhoto, etc.), then there may be a hardware problem with your or a corrupted OS install. The MacOS should be very stable, and if not, there's an issue somewhere.

[samsontan]

ratio is once in every 10 tries?... not often though

[ghporter]

You may have a problem with RAM-Both VLC and Skype seem to use a lot of memory, and sometimes "slightly off" RAM (not so great contact on a few pins, for example) can cause apps that hog memory to quit.

Also note that "Mac" is the kind of computer-they're made by Apple. And you'd only report bugs in Apple applications to Apple. You'd report bugs in Skype to Skype...

What computer do you have? Some apps make larger demands on some computers because of the specific hardware in the computer.

[samsontan]

macbook, with latest Mac OS X version
processor: 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo
memory: 1GHz 667MHz DDR 2 SDRAM

file size? 300mb at least
or file type prob? mostly avi. sometimes when i drag from finder to the vlc icon, it also hangs(doesn't respond) so i have to "force quit" it.. and succeeding at the 2nd attempt

[Sherman Homan]

Are you using vlc version 0.8.5? That release has been re-written for the Intel chip. Earlier versions had a lot of problems.

[samsontan]

yes i am

[seanc]

Constant App. crashes would usually point to RAM problems although could just be buggy applications. Try the latest version of Skype and VLC.

[TETENAL]

When I downloaded VLC I made the stupid mistake to download the PowerPC version. Almost all applications for Intel-Macs are universal-binaries so it doesn't matter what you download, it just works right on either platform. And that's how Apple intended it to be. However the morons at VLC somehow decided it would be better to distribute two different binaries. I got the wrong one and the PowerPC version running in emulation was horribly unstable on my MacBook. I only noticed months later and then got the Intel version wich runs better.

You probably didn't make the same mistake, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.

[samsontan]

quite impossible as i got it from versiontracker.com

[TETENAL]

And did you a "Get Info" on it to see for which architecture it is?

[samsontan]

it's power pc... heh, so i get intel version?
but how about skype? its kind:application (universal)

[seanc]

Yes get the Intel version of VLC.
What version is your version of Skype? The latest one is 2.0.0.6 and was released on the 23rd.

[TETENAL]

Yes, the VLC people are morons for not offering universal-binaries. Your Skype is universal, that means it automatically is available for the right architecture regardless of whether you launch it on PowerPC or Intel. Just make sure you have the latest version as seanc mentioned.

[samsontan]

alright.. Yeah, I think this is more stable. So as it loads instantly compared to the powerPC version. (intel version)
Btw, are there any other confusing application/scenario similar to the above case?