[Hash]

I know that i sound too critical of OS, which has been out for less than 2 years, but things now are changing too fast.

Apple WANTS to be OS X-only OS company, ditching OS 9. The latest move with Powerbooks 12 and 17 is the example. In June 2003 probably last OS 9- booting Macs production will cease. It means that all those with OS 9 apps will frantically look for last OS 9 booting hardware.

I understand why Apple wants to focus on OS X only.

One reason is moving to new hardware such as Firewire800; Bluetooth, maybe USB2. USB2 was never implemented in OS9 and probably never will. Same fate is probably for Bluetooth and Firewire800. Second, maybe new CPUs from IBM or even Intel or even that mysterious G5. Anyway.

Which means, that Apple wants to concentrate its R&D on OS X software/hardware only because of its limited resources. At least, that is what has been officially proclaimed.


There may be other reasons, some of them hidden, anyway.


But i have few worries. I think that OS X itself is not ready for prime time.

Let me explain in details.

First, its not robust enough concerning hardware.

I know, probably some mac users will immediately respond with their reports about how OS X 10.2.3 wonderfully runs on their beige G3 and how they spent already years without single crash or kernel panic unlike hellish days of OS 9, when they had freezes every 15 minutes.


But lets face the truth. Jaguar 10.2 is wonderful OS with big potential. It has extremely good networking capabilities, exceeding anything OS 9 had. It got real multitasking. Yes, we all can run 10-20-30 apps simultaneously.


But what i mean by robustness of OS is the degree to which you can trust the OS to run your most important job tasks as well as daily routines. Can you trust OS X ONLY without 0S 9?

Probably a lot of readers on these fora, who always bragging about trashing OS 9 folders and how they feel wonderful OS 9-free, will not agree with me. They will tell about mountains of work accomplished in OS X and how they even didnt dream about that in dreadful OS 9 days.

My aim is not to try to convince that OS 9 is much better OS than OS X. Maybe its not; probably OS X has much more advantages.

But its not ready.

1. Lack of any real troubleshooting apps, which can run in OS X only. What you gonna do without Disk Warrior when you cant boot into OS 9? Disk warrior is only one example: Apple's Disk Utility, while useful on few occasions, is the only available tool. Norton ruins more than it fixes; Drive 10 is pretty but useless; MacJanitor and some others are fine IF you manage boot into OS X; what if you cant boot at all? Install CD's disk utility is a lone available tool again; what about permissions? If something happens and you cant boot into Jaguar, for average user, choices are limited. They cant use UNIX commands to fix permissions, delete corrupted files, or remove broken system files. Then, the whole issue of system maintenance. Frankly, frantically running Disk Utility after installing even mouse driver is overkill. Yet, OS X manages to frag the disc and corrupt its own preferences at similar frantic pace.

2. Too much kernel panics, freezes and strange problems no one can troubleshoot. Beside of few already used to death unplug all USB peripherals, check permissions and run fsck and pray - nothing can be done. There are almost no solutions except reinstalling OS AND even that doesnt guarantee anything. Lately i read few fora on OS X usage - it reads like horror book. I never seen so many troubles and problems with OS 9 usage. What about folders and data disappearing without trace? I lost myself few gigs of data with some Jaguar freeze; what about absolutely RANDOM crashes and kernel panics? so on and so forth - there are reports on apple forums about that on many computers

3. I cant now trust Jag to handle any important work. Anytime there can be kernel panics of two kinds; freezes; crashes; disappearing data; corrupted files; some apps (mostly Apple apps!) can wipe out whole partitions and home directories!

And there is almost nothing that can be done to prevent, troubleshoot and fix those things! Its too much uncertainty with OS X usage. Its more fragile than OS 9. I think that using OS X as the ONLY os is too scary. It can break anytime, anyway, after each update, after each driver install, after just using it for a while. OS X is really not ready. One cant trust this OS.

[xenu]

Backup often?

OS X is a joy to use.

I have never used a trouble shooting app, I have never had a kernel panic. I haven't even fsck'd, although I do so every now and then on my Linux machine at work.

I just wished AppleWorks wasn't such a painful app.

Now if I could get OS X at work, I would be the envy of all.

All this on a 700 MHz G4 iMac, 768 MB RAM, OS X 10.2.3

Not a flame, just my experience.

[Anomalous]

Originally posted by Hash:

2. Too much kernel panics, freezes and strange problems no one can troubleshoot. Beside of few already used to death unplug all USB peripherals, check permissions and run fsck and pray - nothing can be done. There are almost no solutions except reinstalling OS AND even that doesnt guarantee anything. Lately i read few fora on OS X usage - it reads like horror book. I never seen so many troubles and problems with OS 9 usage. What about folders and data disappearing without trace? I lost myself few gigs of data with some Jaguar freeze; what about absolutely RANDOM crashes and kernel panics? so on and so forth - there are reports on apple forums about that on many computers

Kernel panics and freezes are much less common and less random in OS X than in OS 9. OS 9 would often bomb spontaneously with no apparent reason whatsoever. Data loss in OS X is rarer than you make it sound.

3. I cant now trust Jag to handle any important work. Anytime there can be kernel panics of two kinds; freezes; crashes; disappearing data; corrupted files; some apps (mostly Apple apps!) can wipe out whole partitions and home directories!

On any computer, it is expected that you have to save your work frequently and make backups. OS X is not any less trustworthy than other operating systems. I have never heard of an application wiping out an entire partition.

[Eug]

I never trusted OS 9 because it was so crashy. OS X.0 was not very good either. X.1.3 was already better than OS 9. X.2 is in a different league altogether.

I've been running 99% OS X since 2001.

DiskWarrior will be OS X native in Feb. if you're worried.

[karbon]

Are you just here to troll?

OS X is very robust, a lot more robust than OS 9 ever was. Since I installed OS X 2 years ago I haven't had a single hard drive crash, and no need for either Norton or DiskWarrior, which was a must with OS 9.

You need to move on... OS X is definitely ready for prime time. I use it every day, both private and for work. It's 10x better than OS 9

[Group51]

I don't use OS X for my daily work, so I have had no compunction about deleting OS 9 and never going back.

The thing that concerns me most is Microsoft Office. I use this at work on a Dell with 128MB RAM, NT 4 and a PII 233. Its runs like a champ on the PC and comparatively, on my 600Mhz iBook with 384MB RAM, like a dog.

I couldn't actually use Microsoft Office day-to-day on the Mac, nor Office 98. Its too slow and laggardly. I haven't heard much about this, I guess it must work OK on the G4s everyone else has, but this is a real problem for me, and I think its the real problem.

Rob Galbraith has just put up a web page which shows, fairly, how a PC laptop trounces the high-end G4 PowerMac speed wise.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews..._07_macpc.html

Does this mean that Macs are too slow to be useful? I don't think so, but it shows that there is a problem with optimising applications for speed on the Mac. If Safari does anything, it demonstrates that.

As to your specific points, well of course we need disk warrior and TechTool Pro and Norton, but what do Linux users do when something goes wrong. That's a serious question, I am interested to know the answer. Its not something I've really thought about though, since [cliche] I haven't had any kernel panics for ages [/cliche]

[moki]

I must be in the minority, but I have never had to run any maintenance utilities on Mac OS X. I have three Mac OS X machines I used on a daily basis: an older Titanium Powerbook, a dual 1ghz G4 tower, and a 17" iMac.

The iMac and tower are both running Mac OS X 10.2.3 -- the Powerbook is still running a developer release of Mac OS X 10.2, mostly because I have been too lazy to upgrade it properly (I use it mostly for eMail and web browsing).

I've never had a kernel panic on any of these machines. I've never had to repair permissions or run a disk fixing utility. I've never had any files corrupted, or any data lost.

Am I the only one? I use my machines (except for the TiBook) doing fairly esoteric stuff that you'd think would cause problems, such as software development.

I'm wondering if perhaps people who experience problems with Mac OS X are running on systems that they've mucked with in ways they should not have (logging in as root), or perhaps there are issues caused by booting alternately into Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X on the same machine?

I really can't explain the disparity between my experience with Mac OS X as a paragon of stability and other's seemingly nightmarish experience.

I also maintain several servers that get a serious workout day in and day out -- and I've had no problems at all:

Welcome to Darwin!
[asgard:~] andrew% uptime
4:47PM up 117 days, 6:20, 1 user, load averages: 0.82, 0.54, 0.40

117 days of uptime isn't bad for a server that gets hundreds of thousands of web and ftp hits on a daily basis (the last time it was rebooted was simply to update software).

[JLL]

Originally posted by Hash:
But what i mean by robustness of OS is the degree to which you can trust the OS to run your most important job tasks as well as daily routines. Can you trust OS X ONLY without 0S 9?

I trust Mac OS X more than Mac OS 9 on important job tasks.

Originally posted by Hash:
What you gonna do without Disk Warrior when you cant boot into OS 9?

Disk Warrior 3 will be out in a few weeks, and TechTool Pro 4 has been announced.

Originally posted by Hash:
2. Too much kernel panics

Haven't seen one since 10.0.

Originally posted by Hash:
some apps (mostly Apple apps!) can wipe out whole partitions and home directories!

Safari is a Beta app - use it as such.

[moki]

Originally posted by Group51:
Does this mean that Macs to slow to be useful? I don't think so, but it shows that there is a problem with optimising them for speed on the Mac. If Safari does anything, it demonstrates that.[/cliche]

I think what Safari demonstrates, more than anything else, is the lack of resources that some companies devote to producing applications for Mac OS X that not just run, but run well.

[mitchell_pgh]

When are people going to realize that OS X isn?t for everyone? For some computer users, OS X has been prime time since the Public Beta, for others, it?s not going to be ready until 10.3 or beyond (hopefully not).

Someday I hope that OS 9 will be behind us and we can move on to bigger and better things. I have felt for a long time that OS X was build for much faster CPUs. I?m not positive, but I think once the faster and more robust CPUs and motherboards come around, things will change. It?s important to remember that OS X has a much more solid base then OS 9 ever could have dreamed upon. As Apple becomes more comfortable as a Unix company, things will improve.

[Hash]

---OS X is very robust, a lot more robust than OS 9 ever was. Since I installed OS X 2 years ago I haven't had a single hard drive crash, and no need for either Norton or DiskWarrior, which was a must with OS 9----



Well, i think i am witnessing eighth wonder of the world

[Millennium]

OK, let's look at this...

As to Point 1, you have a point about Norton. I wouldn't go so far as to call Drive10 useless, however. Both DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro are due next month; between the two of these, your lack of troubleshooting apps is solved.

Point 2: Yeah, you read about a large number of problems on our forums. In case you haven't noticed, these forums are all about support: people are supposed to come to us with their problems. Very few people complain when their OS is doing well. Let's look at the numbers: we get approximately ten new threads about OSX problems every week. Now, I'm not so naive to think that all 5,000,000-odd OSX users come here. However, I'd imagine that a good 100,000 at least know about us, though the vast majority of them never post unless there's a problem (I'd imagine that we probably have at least five times as many regular visitors to the Lounge as we do actual posters; lurking on boards is a popular activity in its own right). So, if we were to look at those numbers and extrapolate them to the whole userbase -a very foolish thing to do but that's never stopped most statisticians- every week, about 0.01% of the userbase has a major problem. And keep in mind also, the people who do know about us are already at least a little higher up on the power-user scale than most; I've seen people run OS9, to say nothing of OSX, for literally years with no major issues. While I can't say I've had someone running OSX for five years with no major issues, that's largely because OSX hasn't even been around for that long. My parents still use an original 6100/60 with OS8.6, and while we've occasionally fried modems, hard drives, and printers, the machine and OS itself has yet to show any problems (except for a dead modem port, killed in the same lightning strike which fried the modem). This is not because of OS9; it's because of usage patterns. The average user just plain doesn't do much to cause trouble on their machines, and the machines generally respond by not having trouble. Moderate Net usage is enough to cause the ppotential for problems, yes. And then there are the psycho-users, such as myself, who rearrange entire aspects of the machine practically on a whim just to see if they can. Of course we have more problems than the average user would. Even reputedly "unbreakable" operating systems such as Linux have problems when you start getting freaky with it.

My point: You cannot take a tech-support forum as representative of the userbase in general. We're supposed to read like a horror story; that is the entire point of our existence. So that people can come here with their problems and get help.

Point 3: As for corrupted filesystems via systyem crashes, this is what journaling is meant to address. You speak of "too many kernel panics": I've had a total of three over the entire course of my OSX usage, and that started with DP4. One was last winter, and it involved Netscape4 in Classic (I was never able to reproduce it). I don't even remember what caused the second, but again, I've never been able to reproduce it. The third one I can reproduce 100% of the time; it involves unplugging a Griffin powerMate while the machine is asleep. That is Griffin's fault, not Apple's. I can demonstrate that quite easily; none of my other USB devices show this behavior when unplugged from a sleeping machine. In other words, Griffin's drivers are not programmed well, and the onus is on them to fix their work.

As for being "hard to troubleshoot"; do you mean that is is difficult to troubleshoot, or that you don't know how to do it? Keep in mind all the time you spent learning how to troubleshoot OS9 (and yes, you learned to do it; even the most intuitive things in the world aren't intuitive to troubleshoot). Why would you expect OSX to be any different? It requires learning one or two things, yes, but it is not hard to do.

Is OSX perfect? Of course not; nothing is. But is it ready for prime time? You bet; at least on the grounds being discussed here.

[ARENA]

Some people will never stop trolling.
Mac OS X, as it is, is the best operating system ever, and as times passes it can only get better.

[Group51]

Originally posted by moki:
I think what Safari demonstrates, more than anything else, is the lack of resources that some companies devote to producing applications for Mac OS X that not just run, but run well.

That's what I meant (I was missing a key word there!). Of course, your app, is a prime exemplar of optimisation!

[Hash]

--Mac OS X, as it is, is the best operating system ever--

what makes me really mad is that there are always some kind of apologetists without single argument. You could also add - the best thing in the world since sliced cheese-

Would you elaborate on your criteria of OS judgement

[Hash]

Originally posted by moki:
I think what Safari demonstrates, more than anything else, is the lack of resources that some companies devote to producing applications for Mac OS X that not just run, but run well.

Do you mean Apple? I also remember how iTunes (2 or 3) managed to do things similar to what Safari did on option dowload. Yes i agree. That lack of testing (and this is true for OS updates as well) is just alarming. Any new update breaks so many things that it requires another bug fix update which also breaks something and so on

[goose]

Originally posted by xenu:
........
Now if I could get OS X at work, I would be the envy of all........

I hear ya. I've been trying for the longest time -- and I'm in a company that's publically anti-Microsoft.

[TheMosco]

i have had some problems with osx since i switched when 10.0 came out but nothing really major. I do a re-install of osx every couple of months not because it doesn't work right, i just like to keep things clean.

I have had a kernal panic before, but not since 10.0. Other than that i have not had any stability problems although same apps are not very stable.

I think that problems were much worse on 9 then on X. I think most of the problems that people have can be fixed by erasing prefs and running fsck. It's a joy compared to os 9 where you have to worry about extension conflicts and such. and for major problems, new utilities are coming out to fix the problems.

i like the fact that if an app crashes, i can force quit it easily and not have to press crlt apple q or whatever and pray that force quiting doesn't crash my computer in os 9.

repairing permisions is easy, you just boot from the install cd and repair permissions with disk utility. that has always worked for me.

and about speed. i know what you mean. it is slower than os 9 on most machines. I recently upgraded from an ibook to a tower and its fast now. i think the speed problem will go away as people start buying new machines. Mac os X is the future, and it was built for those machines.

[iamnid]

troll troll...


You're certainly entitled to your opinion though.

[Hash]

Well, i am not talking speed - that whole another matter; but the lack of any means to troubleshoot, maintain and repair the system to prevent it from all kinds of kernel panics, freezes and so on. For me, troubleshooting OS 9 seems to be much easier - you can use so many apps; delete corrupted prefs; reduce number of extensions and so on. It was quite simple (at least, i think so).

[ARENA]

Originally posted by Hash:
--Mac OS X, as it is, is the best operating system ever--

what makes me really mad is that there are always some kind of apologetists without single argument. You could also add - the best thing in the world since sliced cheese-

Would you elaborate on your criteria of OS judgement

I say Mac OS X is the best OS ever, comparing it with almost any other full featured operating system available. I've used Windows since 3.1 to XP, various distros of Linux, and Mac OS since 7.0 and seeing the evolutions of all different OSs i can say Mac OS X is by far the best of the current generations. That is considering different aspects such as: it's robust Core foundations, great stability, beautiful user interface, total compatibility (X11. VPC, Classic), ease of use, modern technologies built in, etc.
One last thing, as of 10.2 Mac OS X is also a very fast operating even in Macs from 2 years ago.

[JohnD]

I only had one kernel panic using 10.1 and playing with a bunch of PC cards on my Ti400.

I use a Cube 450 with a radion card and an SGI panel at work.
Hardly any problems, lately the USB is acting up and can't stand the never mice without a powered USB hub....
OS X 10.2.3, software update log doesn't work.
Using a cad program and outlook with classic and all other apps native.
At home a 17" iMac with 10.2.3.
Never had a kernel panic.
Had to repair permissions twice after some IE 5.22 trouble and Photoshop 7 crashes after sleep but that's it.
It hardly runs classic.
Ti400 with OS X 10.2.3 doing very well also, no extraordinairy things.
Using bluetooth and airport and all the well known apps.
Using a minimum of 512 Mb memory on all machine's.

All machine's started with the earliest OS X available at the time.

I think the Ti400 started with 10.0 or the beta but I never did a clean install on all three machine's, only updates.

I am happy with X, some glitches but which CPU doesn't.

Comparable experience on Wintel, no worse no better.

[Simon Mundy]

Originally posted by Hash:
Well, i am not talking speed - that whole another matter; but the lack of any means to troubleshoot, maintain and repair the system to prevent it from all kinds of kernel panics, freezes and so on. For me, troubleshooting OS 9 seems to be much easier - you can use so many apps; delete corrupted prefs; reduce number of extensions and so on. It was quite simple (at least, i think so).

Bollocks to that.

Does anyone remember using that crazy 3rd party extensions manager (can't remember off the top of my head) just to find out which combination of extensions caused OS 9 to randomly freeze?

Or repeatedly deleting system prefs, finder prefs, general prefs and apple menu items prefs just to regain stability?

How about needing extra font utilities to find out which font's minor corruption brought down your entire system... Or the fact you couldn't use Type Reunion because it was so unstable, meaning you couldn't even view your fonts in families...

And this is only my little corner of the world. I can't imagine how many other people had never-ending problems running a pro system in a graphics studio and trying to explain to art directors and big bosses why a job was running a couple of hours past deadline... "It's just frozen...", "Didn't get a chance to save...", "Going to need a reinstall..."

Now I'm no apologist, and I realise there are still kinks in OS X that need fixing.

But I've been OS X for about 1.5-2 years now, and (98% of the time) Classic-free for 6 months. The only reason deadlines get pushed back now is because I spend too much time writing messages on this forum and not enough time working It certainly has nothing to do with an unstable system. OS X has been more stable for me doing exactly the same tasks I used to perform in 9, and it also lets me do more without the nagging feeling that I may crash if I pull down a menu or eject a disk.

Like everyone's been saying, the no-brainer tools for fixing Hard Disk will be out soon, even if they're more likely to gather dust for a vast majority of the users that buy them.

[JLL]

Originally posted by Hash:
For me, troubleshooting OS 9 seems to be much easier - you can use so many apps;

What apps are you talking about.

[benb]

Originally posted by Simon Mundy:
Bollocks to that.

Does anyone remember using that crazy 3rd party extensions manager (can't remember off the top of my head) just to find out which combination of extensions caused OS 9 to randomly freeze?

Conflict Catcher. Yea, I remember it. What a pain extension conflicts were. I used to only install 1 or 2 things a week in 9, if that, just because I wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to wreak havoc with my system. With X, I feel less nervous about installing items. The only thing that has given me trouble is DivX for X, and that only reset some system preferences!

Regards,
Ben

[mikerally]

I think Mac OS X is ready for the prime time, if Apple doesn't push it now, it will fail.

Apple simply can't continue supporting Mac OS 9 all the time, they have limited resources, and have bigger fish to fry.

And their hardware is moving on, OS 9 is growing old. 9.2.2 is the end of the road.

There is no choice on this one, the transition has to be pushed through.

[benb]

Originally posted by Hash:
3. I cant now trust Jag to handle any important work...some apps (mostly Apple apps!) can wipe out whole partitions and home directories!

Are you stupid? Or are you talking about Disk Utility? Or are you talking about when you boot into OS 9 and drag /var, /Library, and /etc to the trash?

Regards,
Ben

[Hi I'm Ben]

i think some people like to just rant rant rant...
i think they should go buy a pc and shut up.


Posting here saying all that will not make ANYONE switch to OS 9.. it's just so people will agree with their uneducated stupid reasoning...
Apple apps wipe out your whole drive
give me a break it happened with safari to like 4 people and you're all lame now.. GROW UP.

No one will care if you don't use OSX, infact i'll be happy so you won't post and rant in this board.

[voodoo]

Originally posted by mikerally:
I think Mac OS X is ready for the prime time, if Apple doesn't push it now, it will fail.

Apple simply can't continue supporting Mac OS 9 all the time, they have limited resources, and have bigger fish to fry.

And their hardware is moving on, OS 9 is growing old. 9.2.2 is the end of the road.

There is no choice on this one, the transition has to be pushed through.

OS 9 is no longer supprted by Apple. It has been in the cold since WWDC last year when Steve Jobs buried it.

[Hi I'm Ben]

Originally posted by voodoo:
OS 9 is no longer supprted by Apple. It has been in the cold since WWDC last year when Steve Jobs buried it.

I wouldn't use a Mac if I had to use OS 9. I didn't buy a mac till X came out.. oh and was I ever pissed till X.1 =).

[BuonRotto]

Everyone has covered your main points. Millenium dsaid everything I was going to say.

I'm surprised anyone would consider OS X more fragile, and OS 9 more dependable at this point. Part of this perception. Problems reported in support forums like this and at Apple. Problems concentrate in places like this, and problems snowball. We also have a lot of peopple doing a LOT of tinkering, so I think that accounts for many problems too. Finally, I'm using a lot of (mainly Cocoa) applications that others aren't -- ones that are more stable, behave properly in the system, and are easier to maintain. I think a lot of poorly ported Carbon apps cause problems for people's systems.

[TheIceMan]

Millennium: Damn it man! How are the rest of us going to post after the professor has already spoken of so well? I was gonna chime in, but you said everything already and with even more details than what I could have offered. Damn it man.

[Don Pickett]

I hereby proclaim this troll is not ready for prime time.

[ambush]

Well OSX is pretty stable for me.
But it's kinda slow.. anyways my ibook runs the latest Jag and it's a pretty good work machine. But don't think about playing a big game on it.

I never got a single kernel panic *BUT* I get very weird bugs sometimes ( e.g. the cursor starts warping and finally I can't click anything: i have to reboot ).

Oh yeah. The Finder is pretty buggy too. It sometimes quits like w/o a reason.. pretty annoying.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Eug:
I never trusted OS 9 because it was so crashy. OS X.0 was not very good either.

As far as I remember the first time you ever used OSX for more then a couple minutes was with 10.1

[SMacTech]

Damn, OS X has been my only OS since 10.0 came out. I must be doing something wrong.
Certainly you are not doing something right!

[sideus]

Originally posted by Simon Mundy:
Does anyone remember using that crazy 3rd party extensions manager (can't remember off the top of my head) just to find out which combination of extensions caused OS 9 to randomly freeze?

Conflict Cause'er?

[sushiism]

I havent a clue where all this is coming from all i can say is there something wrong with your system, been using osx every day for most of the day for about 7 months now, not a single kernel panic (Tibook) its fast, its stable, its simple, so much more wonderful than windows 2000 which i came from where updating msn messenger rendered my computer unusable. ahh i love osx, os9 is good too I'd keep it there just in case but i think osx is fine for prime time because it messes up less than any windows system ive seen.

Just to back this up a bit more i've used:
windows 3.1 > XP
macos 9 > X
amiga workbench 1.3
acorn riscos 2 > 4 i think
irix
several linux flavors
TOS
beos
QNX

[raferx]

X.2 is the bomb! OS 9 is so lame it is beyond words... the guy probably complains about everything. Look buddy, go back to watching Dinah Shore re-runs and scratching your nads in public. You're the only thing not ready for prime time. Also, go buy a Dell, you'll be much happier with it and Windows XP for sure.

[lx]

OK a switcher's perspective...

I bought a Cube years ago since OS X was ready to be released.... I used to be a systems analyst working primarily with Windows / SQL databases, so Win32 was my primary platform, but knew Unix well from database administration.

Funnily enough the Mac has become my primary workstation platform since, well, I installed 10.0...... yes the original software had some issues but they were pretty easy to work around. Apple can't be unhappy since I've bought about 6000 GBP of their hardware since I switched (that would buy me a LOT of windows PCs)

I do understand that there are pros out there who use OS9 and Quark / Photoshop / etc. which I have no experience of, which may not run adequately on OS X. This is of course not an OS problem, but an applications problem, unless the only purpose of the Mac OS is to run a limited subset of apps... (flamesuit on)

But as a general purpose Unix workstation, OS X is the utter ultimate. I have a licenced copy of Office X - using Excel (with VB macros) on the same desktop as a bunch of ksh cron backup scripts, and a beautiful Cocoa browser, and the Gimp... well you tell me any other platform that can do that.

As to kernel panics / hardware failures / etc. my Cube has eaten 3 hard disks. This may have something to do with the fact that each drive died immediately after a power cut (obviously the Cube power supply can't deal with the same conditions as an internal PS). It may also relate to the fact that my Cube has 1.5 GB of ram and a 1 GHz processor, and a nVidia GF3 graphics card :-)
My Quicksilver DP 1 GHz has never crashed, ever. The only lockups on my TiBook were due to Office X conflicting with the infrared driver... no ****, Microsoft again... and I run a MS web server so I know :-(

Compared to Windows or Linux, forget it. Sounds like you're a troll. Believe me, I push my hardware, and OS X has really impressed me. Linux is 'pure' and nice but has to deal with some pretty dirty hardware configurations. OS X doesn't - and it rocks....

[Chun Hsu]

Wow. The original poster was very polite. Either he/she is very out of touch or is a complete troll.

I have not used OS9 very much, but OSX has been incredibly stable. My main complaint is with the need to fix disk permissions after installing 10.2.3. Otherwise, I have been amazed at how little trouble I have had with OSX. I tried to run OS9 a couple of times. Once to run RTCW, which didn't work properly in multiplayer mode. Another time to fax an important document. That completely locked up the computer.

Basing stability on problems discussed in these forums is entirely inaccurate. Forums are the natural place to discuss problems that people have. You don't expect us to post every day about how wonderful OSX is do you? Plus OSX being new means that troubleshooting tips are not as well known and need to be discussed more.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
Damn, OS X has been my only OS since 10.0 came out. I must be doing something wrong.
Certainly you are not doing something right!

Well at least it shows that you use your computer for nothing more then surfing the net

[krove]

Originally posted by Hash:
Any new update breaks so many things that it requires another bug fix update which also breaks something and so on

Care to elaborate?

I think many in these forums would agree that we are usually right on the edge, always checking software update for the latest and greatest update from Apple. Many people download these updates and only a fraction actually report problems (one or two noticed problems at most, if any with the updates). As millennium stated, the actual number of users with problems is actually quite small in comparison to the user base applying these updates. I personally apply updates right away and have never had a single problem with any update or upgrade since 10.0.

I would tend to agree with Millennium that the general cause of problems (given that an update from Apple is heavily tested before release) is likely user-induced trauma.

p.s. I love the new stick smiley!

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

OS X isn't ready for prime time.
It IS prime time.

I have four computers (one headless server, two 'books and a cube). Not one has Classic on it. I have no need for any vestige of OS 9 at all.

A thread like this shouldn't even be relevant anymore.

[Richyfp]

I agree with Hash. While I have used OS X for months on end, I have had occasional problems such as the ones that Hash documents (although not data loss) - RANDOM problems, eg...

• I have once lost the ability to drag and drop anything (icons, toolbar items, pictures, text...)
• All the Recent Items in the Apple menu disappeared (at the same time as the drag and drop problem)
• The menu server (for menu items in the top right) has been known to crash
• Sometimes, a CD will not mount on the Dekstop
• Random logout problems whereby the machine hangs on logout, requiring a reboot

All of the above were fixed by a restart, but this does illustrate the problems that can occur.

However, these problems have occurred less with Jaguar than with any previous release, which shows that they are making progress.

Edit: Just thought I'd add that I'm very happy with OS X despite my problems and that I've had stretches of 40 days+ uptime with constant use!

[Eug]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
As far as I remember the first time you ever used OSX for more then a couple minutes was with 10.1

When I was shown 10.0 I was impressed with the GUI, but definitely not impressed with the stability. You're right though. Only played with it for maybe 20 minutes at a time. But even within that short period of time I would see it crash a couple of times.

[krove]

Originally posted by Richyfp:
I agree with Hash. While I have used OS X for months on end, I have had occasional problems such as the ones that Hash documents (although not data loss) - RANDOM problems, eg...
...
However, these problems have occurred less with Jaguar than with any previous release, which shows that they are making progress.

Occurred less? How often do the problems you mention occur? Ever thought of a clean install?

[Richyfp]

Originally posted by krove:
Occurred less? How often do the problems you mention occur? Ever thought of a clean install?

The only problem that's occurred frequently is the "freeze during logout" problem and I think that's only happened once during Jaguar use. It happened a lot while using 10.1.x . My Jaguar installation was a clean install.

[Gul Banana]

Hash, one of your main complaints seems to be that troubleshooting in OS X, although rarer, is more difficult due to a lack of available applications and things. I respectfully contend that rather than being difficult, it is simply different. You don't NEED applications like Conflict Catcher and Norton Thingo, because everything you need to diagnose and fix problems (except hardware problems, obviously) is built into the system, in the soft UNIX underbelly. Yes, most people don't know how to take advantage of that yet, but they will. It's amazing what people are capable of learning when they finally realise there will be a benefit to them in doing so. For the people who aren't comfortable with the command line yet, applications like Diskwarrior and the like are being Xified at a rapid enough rate; the release of Diskwarrior for OS X will coincide almost exactly with the release of the first non-9-booting mac, the AlBook.

An example of what I mean: kernel panics are difficult to troubleshoot, yes, but not impossible - the process is simply a tedious one which involves some specialised knowledge. And here is the first alpha of a program to make it easier.. no GUI yet, but usage is as simple as typing "kpdecode" to get a more human-readable version of What Went Wrong.

SVOTG is right, too, about the irrelevancy of this thread. I haven't used OS 9 for a year; I do all my work for uni and personal projects in OS X, use it for 'playing' activities such as surfing the internet, and use it to run servers for people I know. For my work, which is primarily software and web development, OS X is more "ready for prime time" than any OS that has ever come before it.

OS X may seem scary to you, but I feel a heck of a lot safer trusting important things to it than I would to OS 9, because, from my point of view, it was only the latter that ever 'randomly' crashed. Whenever anything goes wrong in OS X - rare, but I'm not saying it doesn't happen - it's always possible for me to find out why and fix it. In OS 9, I just had to put up with it, and, for example, save every five minutes if I had Netscape open because if I opened a fourth Netscape window there was about a 30% chance that the entire system would freeze. I still remember debugging a complex program I was writing, a process that involved forced restarts every time I found a crasher, which was every five minutes. Never would I consider that a safer operating system.

[Hash]

Thanks, Gul Banana, and thanks for the PRICELESS app! I am gonna test it as soon as i can boot in X. I have mountains of kernel panics logs to decipher! You are the man, really!