[ebisix]

I've heard that Macs do not crash. Is this true? How could it be?

[CyberPet]

My computer crashed today. Reason: My evil PC-husband wanted me to test something and it resulted in a Kernel Panic.

Does it happen often? No. This was the first crash I had in a month. Before that I had a few crashes, but that was due to a hardware problem.

So to answer your question: Yes Mac's does crash, but not very often. OS X is very stable and if something crashes it's usually badly written software, not the whole machine.

[fetopher]

Never is the wrong word, but seldom certainly works. There are extreme cases where it a machine will crash all of the time, but its usually a result of bad memory or logic board or someting. I've used my share of PCs and there is really no comparrison. Win2000, XP, whatever, nothing is as stable as OS X. Also, X has the ability to protect all of the apps that are running. If one crashes, nothing else is touched and the system need not be rebooted to regain stability. Also, X is moving toward file journaling, so in the event that an app crashes, the file you were working on will be saved with the last modification. Pretty cool huh?

[laxthxdude]

I had 1 kernal in 10.0, none in 10.2 or 10.2. There has been nothing that I couldn't fix with ssh from my ibook.

Being an NT Admin., all I can say about X is "wow". Its the reason I no longer have PCs in house and now have an iMac and iBook (Not to mention that my mother and grandma also have iMacs). You will not believe how much fun computing can be until your tried a Mac.

[arekkusu]

Originally posted by ebisix:
I have heard from various sources that Macs do not crash or freeze. Can anyone tell me the truth? Do they ever crash?

It is quite easy to crash OS X if you are a developer:

1) Create an OpenGL context.
2) Spawn a second drawing thread.
3) Issue GL commands to the context from the drawing thread and the original thread, without locking.
4) Watch the whole OS freeze.


So the OS is far from "crash proof", but, I assume you're asking about the average user's experience. You will probably be very happy with the stability. I and many others have gone for months without an OS crash, under normal use.

[cambro]

Sometimes I feel bad becuase I have never had OS X crash on me except for one classic-related kernel panic in 10.0. I guess I'm just a low-level user

I do a lot of digital photo and graphics work and run mySQL and apache to run php web forms for my databases. That's about as complicated as it gets for me, but no panics/crashes yet. I DO have MS $#^#% Word tank now and then, and a few other apps. will sometimes "quit unexpectedly" but the OS is rock solid stable in my experience.

That said, I do have some occassional wake-related querks on my Ghz PB right now, but that may be hardware and it still doesn't crash X.

From my experience. X is indeed crash proof and you can kiss the blue screen of death good bye with it! Jump aboard, you won't regret it!

P.S. If you do get a kernel panic let us know how it happened! These things are so darn rare that I'd like to know what, if anything, causes them in day-to-day use.

[Dave Hagan]

I have a PowerMac G4 933 tower for just about a year. The only time I have had to reboot this computer is when the Software Update downloads a new version of something that requires a system reboot. That's mostly a system update every three or four months. Sure programs have occasionally crashed ("unexpectedly quit"), like Internet Explorer, but I have never had to reboot the computer because a program took down the system.

Otherwise my computer has been on 24/7 since I got it a year ago, expect for when the power goes out or I turn the computer off during a thunderstorm.

When I'm not using the computer, I put it into sleep mode. On the new towers it is fantastic because it goes into "deep sleep mode" and you would never know the computer is on. No fans, no noise...I press the button on my display to put it to sleep and wake it up. It wakes up and within 10 seconds the computer is ready to use where you left off. Much quicker than booting it up.

On the PowerBook, sleep is even better. The computer is ready to use in about 2 seconds from the point you wake it from sleep. When I had my first PowerBook G4, I don't think I ever shut it off for the first six or so months I had it...I'd just put it to sleep. Fantastic!

[scottiB]

I use Jaguar consistantly on an iMav 400 DV and a dual 800. The iMac has had just tremendous uptimes--only rebooting for updates. I had a spate of kernel panics for a week with the dual, but it had more to do with user futzing around. I haven't had a hard freeze in memory.

[SOLIDAge]

i've had a powerbook for a year and i've had one kernel panic ONE...my iMac has never paniced...thats pretty damned good. The only time i hear of KPs are usually in corilation w/ Firewire drives/devices i don't know why.

So to answer your question does it crash? yes...will you probably ever make it crash? no.

[cenutrio]

I had a couple of crash during the last year, always relating to external devices.

My PBti has been on during at least 2-3 weeks, my iMac during last update to Jaguar around 4 months ago.

Very impressive overall

[Over Achiever]

Well...I have a PC laptop that hasn't crashed in a while...over a month now i think. And yes, it is running XP.

[rustyclockwork]

Originally posted by arekkusu:
It is quite easy to crash OS X if you are a developer:

1) Create an OpenGL context.
2) Spawn a second drawing thread.
3) Issue GL commands to the context from the drawing thread and the original thread, without locking.
4) Watch the whole OS freeze.


So the OS is far from "crash proof", but, I assume you're asking about the average user's experience. You will probably be very happy with the stability. I and many others have gone for months without an OS crash, under normal use.

Does that crash the window manager? Or does that actually crash the OS? If that only crashes the window manager, you can telnet into the system, and restart the window manager (aqua right?)... you should be able to save it.

Jason

[BkueKanoodle]

My ibook gets a kernel panic about once every 2 -3 days. So yes it does crash. Its marketing hyperbole on apple's part to say that their macs don't "crash" Of course, my XP laptop crashes less, but has more frequent system hiccups then my mac. In the end I would call them equal on the stability level.

Now before you call me a Mac basher, let me state that even though my XP laptop is much faster then the ibook 700, I still prefer to use the mac. I've got a pb 12" on order and we'll see how long the XP laptop holds up after that

[rustyclockwork]

kernel panic that often?

you should look into that my friend, my dual G4 had those when it was brand new, and one of the chips was bad... got it replaced.

or, it could be just an OS fix, have you wiped the system and re-installed?

Jason

[mcaswell]

Both my Powerbook and desktop machine usually go months without restarting (aside from software updates that require it). I do web development, photo retouching, Flash stuff, DVDs (not professionally, though), audio/midi recording, etc. on my OS X machines.

Personally, I've never had a "Kernal Panic" (been an OS X user since the first version went retail). Of course, YMMV... as others have said, Macs do sometimes crash. Just not nearly as often as PCs from what I've seen/heard.

--Mike

[ebisix]

Wow! Thanks a lot.

[CyberGreg]

Originally posted by ebisix:
Wow! I think all of these comments are proof enough for me. I'm not the advanced user so I don't think there will be practically any problems at all. Thanks.

Eric,

I use a Windows 2000 PC all day at work and an iBook all night. The iBook (w/OS X) is far more relaible than my work PC. It's been my experience that I can easily experience 10 to 15 PC problems for every single problem on my iBook. I can go for several months without a single incident on my iBook while I can rarely go 2-3 days without some problem that forces me to reboot my windows 2000 PC.

Good luck, your mileage may vary....

[hardcat1970]

since upgraded to Jaguar, i only had one crash, the ip over firewire caused kernel panic.

[chadseld]

That is not normal. Getting a KP every month or so is normal, if you do lots of crazy stuff with your system. But every 2-3 days sounds like hardware. Bad RAM or MB is usually the problem. javascript:smilie('')

Originally posted by BkueKanoodle:
My ibook gets a kernel panic about once every 2 -3 days. So yes it does crash. Its marketing hyperbole on apple's part to say that their macs don't "crash" Of course, my XP laptop crashes less, but has more frequent system hiccups then my mac. In the end I would call them equal on the stability level.

Now before you call me a Mac basher, let me state that even though my XP laptop is much faster then the ibook 700, I still prefer to use the mac. I've got a pb 12" on order and we'll see how long the XP laptop holds up after that

[GK]

I had ONE crash in the last two years in OS X. My poerbook is running 24hrs, I just put it to sleep and restart it only if I need to install an upgrade. It is not a myth, the Mac just works.

[shadowplay]

Originally posted by fetopher:
Never is the wrong word, but seldom certainly works. There are extreme cases where it a machine will crash all of the time, but its usually a result of bad memory or logic board or someting. I've used my share of PCs and there is really no comparrison. Win2000, XP, whatever, nothing is as stable as OS X. Also, X has the ability to protect all of the apps that are running. If one crashes, nothing else is touched and the system need not be rebooted to regain stability. Also, X is moving toward file journaling, so in the event that an app crashes, the file you were working on will be saved with the last modification. Pretty cool huh?

1. Protected memory mode is nothing new, nor is it exclusive to OS X. NT has had protected memory since its beginnings in the mid-90's. Unix and Linux also have it. Applications can crash, especially poorly written ones, but they won't bring down anything else in NT/XP.

2. NTFS, NT/XP's file system, is also a journaling file system.

The key to a really stable XP system is drivers. The sheer massive size of its hardware and software support is XP's double-edged sword. But if you get good hardware with good drivers, it's as stable anything gets.

[ngrundy]

I've owned my TiG4 1GHz for about 3 months now and i've seen 2 kernel panics in total. both were caused by me trying to do crazy things with the SMB kernel extention. other than that i have MSN messanger fall on it's face every couple of days but that's about it.

the term 'never' is to absolute, but 'rarely' is one that fits.

to give you and example of the hell i put my PB through.

3 days straight I had VPC running with win2k and publisher 2000 doing some brocures, photoshop, entourage, powerpoint, word, msn messanger, chimera (8 tabs open), iCal and preview all running on the OSX side, iTunes didn't miss a beat playing mp3's and all of this on 512mb of RAM. during those 3 days i probably slept the powerbook about 10 times and it just kept going. and as far as i was conserened responce was snappy(tm).

I rebooted 2 days after that due to an update to VPC.

[t_hah]

I have been using OSX since it came out. I also bought a Ti 800 about a year ago. The OS had been rock solid. I had two or three KPs, and it has actually been solved. My external FW CD writer was unsupported at a time, and it hung. I unplugged it and it ended up kicking back with a KP. Other than that my OS had been very very stable. I have installed all kinds of crap on my computer, and I still do, and I do not have crashes. I use scanners, digital cameras, external CD writers, USB mouse, USB remote controls, external Hard drives, a USB TV tuner...and probably other things that I cannot think of. Yes, most of these things are plugged into my PowerBook at the same time through some hubs. Everything works as it is suposed to. Love the OS.

I do use Windows based computers almost on a daily basis, and I get really frustrated around them. They crash quite often when adding peripherials. I am not complaining about them though...I do not have to deal with Windows that much.

Also my friend is a programmer, and he loves writing code for OSX. He says that Cocoa is an excellent and well thought out environment. At least on his level.

I hope that this helps you.


t

[TheIceMan]

I'm a "switcher" since Oct.2002. So far I have not had any kernel panics (knock on wood). But I have had various apps "unexpectedly quit" or the "spinning beachball of death." I wouldn't consider these thing "crashes", but they are nonetheless annoying. That said, no operating system or computer system is flawless. But I have been pretty happy with my PowerBook.

[ebisix]

What is the "spinning beachball of death?"

[Over Achiever]

Originally posted by shadowplay:
The key to a really stable XP system is drivers. The sheer massive size of its hardware and software support is XP's double-edged sword. But if you get good hardware with good drivers, it's as stable anything gets.

That must be why my computers have been soo stable, and so many others have had problems.

[ngrundy]

Originally posted by ebisix:
What is the "spinning beachball of death" if I may ask?

Heh. when a process is in a wait state in windows you get an hour galss, in osx you get a multi colour pinwill which looks somewhat like a beachball

[Eug]

My assessment of stability, in order of best to worst:

Mac OS X.2
Windows XP
Windows 2000
Windows NT 4
Windows 98SE
Mac OS 9
Windows 95

Note though that I rarely ever got BSODs in XP, 2000 or NT. Hell, even with 98SE, once I got my computer configured properly, BSODs were rare. My "stability" is overall system stability, not just lack of BSODs or kernel panics.

ie. With OS X.2 I get programs quitting unexpectedly and some programs locking up from time to time, but a simple force quit and logout/login cures most ills.

With XP an attempted logout/login may not cure hung programs and I'll have to reboot. NT is even worse.

My computers: XP 24/7, NT 24/7, and OS X.2 about 4 hrs per day with sleeps in between.

Overall I'd say that Mac OS X is the most stable OS I've ever used, but XP is pretty good too. (All I could say about Linux is that installing RedHat 6 on my PC was the worst OS experience I've ever had, so I was too turned off of it to give it a fair shake.)

[photoeditor]

Read through this, it gets progressively better. Apple's latest OS X 10.2.3 system is the BEST computer OS I have ever used in terms of stability, going right back to Mac OS 6, Windows 3.1, and 1980s-era versions of MS-DOS, and 10.2.3 is actually a very substantial improvement on 10.2, demonstrating the rapid progress Apple is making with OS X.

OS 9 was never especially stable for me. Overall, system performance wasn't bad; it was probably, after OS 8.6, the most crash-proof Mac system since 7.1 in the early 1990s. The worst offender? Internet Exploder, of course -- sporting a cache bug that, upon waking the computer from sleep or restarting the application after an application-only crash without restarting the computer, frequently simultaneously froze the computer and produced two files in the Trash, "download cache" and "cache.lck". This freeze-and-trash bug existed in IE 4, IE4.5 and all IE 5 versions on OS 9. Also, persistent sleep-related problems in OS 9; the Starmax, of course, didn't support Deep Sleep, and the G4 wouldn't support it with a third party USB card and generally became slow with it if I had made the mistake of leaving (of course) Internet Exploder open before sleep.

Then I got 10.2 Jaguar. Life got somewhat better, but still (now with Apple's own Mail application), I had irritatingly weird sleep-related behavior, this time relating to an application hang that had something to do with updating the system clock. And Internet Exploder "unexpectedly quit" on a regular basis.

And then came 10.2.3.

My life is now wonderful. I have had NO crashes with 10.2.3 in a month and a half, and only a couple of "unexpected quits" from IE and NOTHING from any other application. Perfect Deep Sleep behavior with third party USB cards. Perfect behavior with SCSI (though the true acid test on that will be when I get my Polaroid scanner back out and run a few slides through that). Faster overall operation. And all this in a two year old computer.

In fact, the only crash of any kind I have had with 10.2.3 occurred with my Powerbook GHz on sleep, when I made the mistake of ignoring Apple's admonitions against disconnecting the power supply from the mains BEFORE disconnecting it from the computer, and upon wake the computer froze and I had to reboot. Disconnecting from the computer first has NEVER given me a problem.

[Eug]

I have had a few issue of waking up my TiBook, which never occured on my iBook. About once a week, the TiBook just doesn't wake up. I'm not sure exactly why.

But that's a lot better than my Windows machines, which never seemed to sleep properly. If I shut it down, I really always had to do a complete shut down.

[craigthomas]

Crash just may need to be redefined for OS X.

Remember when we used to have to remember to save all the time? System freezes from doing nothing at all. Hey, I don't know what this is doing in the PowerBook forum, but I for one am quite happy to be a Macintosh user when I don't have to even consider a crash anymore. Just work and play baby.

Yes my applications do crash on occasion, including classic, but it seems no time before the app is launced and I 'm right back to work again. I still can't believe how quickly classic launches. Unfortunately I still need classic do to lame-ass Quark, but that's another story.

[Superchicken]

I had one panic when I upgraded from X to X.1 and I'm running X.1 still nothing since then. The worst thing that happend other than that in OS X was I let someone access my Mac through afp and I was fiddling on his desktop and it froze my finder, hence I just relaunched the finder and it worked fine all my other apps were OK, it was funny typing in MSN while the finder was reloading hahaha

Sometimes an app may crash but it won't crash your system. And the beach ball doesn't deserve the of death... maybe of annoyance but not death.

Yeah Macs are purdy awsome, if you're a comp geek you can get windows to be stable... if not the Mac is the best choise because who wants to fiddle with every little driver and .dll file and what not... and if you find you're getting weird system profformance come on the forums and somone'll tell you how to fix it... a kernal panic every 2-3 days!?
I would say reformat that harddrive or something and see if that fixes it because that's freakish OS X profformance.

[arekkusu]

Originally posted by rustyclockwork:
Does that crash the window manager? Or does that actually crash the OS?

The OS, you can't ssh in, and all tasks die (iTunes stuck repeating 1 second loop, etc.)

But, for the average user, the window manager locking up is just as bad as a kernel panic, isn't it? Odds are they won't have ssh enabled, and have another machine handy to get in.

[iChristopher]

I have my Mac "crash" as in a kernel panic that forced me to reboot twice in the last six-months. So "never" is probably not accurate, but OS X is one tough OS that takes effort to bring down.

Originally posted by ebisix:
I have heard from various sources that Macs do not crash or freeze. I am having difficulty comprehending this. Yes, I understand what those words mean. However, I have not used any newer Mac thoroughly enough to see this for myself. Can anyone tell me the truth? Do they ever crash? Does it happen, but way less than a Windows machine? Having used Windows computers most of my life, I am far too familiar with the "blue screen of death" as it says on the Apple web site. Thanks.

[tooki]

My PowerBook has been running OS X 10.2 since November and crashed once. Other than that, only reboots for Software Update.

Anyone with OS X crashing constantly likely has a hardware problem, and most likely, that's the RAM. (A bad OS install, e.g. from a dirty disc, can also cause instability, so you may also want to try a clean install from a known-good disc.)

tooki

[mh0ffmann]

After one year and two TiBooks (currently under 10.2.3), I've had only two kernel panics and have had to reboot about two other times for other reasons, which comes to about once per quarter. Not bad AT ALL considering I have Mail.app, Safari (Explorer before last week), Word, Excel, VirtualPC, iCal, Address Book, DragThing and a couple others open CONSTANTLY, and switch back and forth frequently.

I used to use Win2k prior to X and although the experience was a vast improvement over 98, it was nowhere near X (in any of its versions). Not was it nearly as pleasing to use (if at all!).

Kudos to Apple for what, in an extremely crash-ridden software market, can and should be called "crash-free". It's as close as we'll ever get to that panacea.

Mark

[ebisix]

Originally posted by ngrundy:
Heh. when a process is in a wait state in windows you get an hour galss, in osx you get a multi colour pinwill which looks somewhat like a beachball

That sounds familiar. Thanks.

[Avon]

Originally posted by BkueKanoodle:
My ibook gets a kernel panic about once every 2 -3 days. So yes it does crash. Its marketing hyperbole on apple's part to say

Something is very wrong with your mac. I have only had one Kernel panic caused by SMB in two years.

[CheesePuff]

I have a two week old PowerBook G4 1 GHz, going on three weeks. No kernal panics yet in Mac OS X Jaguar.

Though on my Power Mac G4 800 MHz, I have had a kernal panic, but only once, and it was when I wanted to try to install Mac OS X 10.0 on it to compare it to 10.2.

[MacOSR]

I use my laptop (G4 500) for ~14 hours a day for 2 years and have only had OSX crash on me once. I use Photoshop, Word, Excel, IE, Mozilla, Apache, mySQL, Posgres, GoLive, etc all day long!

The only programs I can crash are excel (bug), IE and GoLive with sites that have over 13,000 files.

We are slowly but surely moving away from windows. We only have 5 of 40 servers still running Windows (and they will stay windows). We have gone Unix/Linux/BSD (OSX) and we aren't looking back!

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by ngrundy:
Heh. when a process is in a wait state in windows you get an hour galss, in osx you get a multi colour pinwill which looks somewhat like a beachball

Thanks ngrundy.

ebisix: From what I've been told or understand, this SBOD (spinning beachball of death) is oftentimes the result of a program conflicting with the OSX. Some of the other members maybe able to explain it ALOT better than me. The SBOD may go on for so long that you have no choice but to "Force Quit" the program. This is what I would consider a crash, a program crash. But OSX is designed to not "crash" even if one or two programs crash. This I like much better than the PC's "blue screen of death." But, realistically...Macs do crash, just like Windows. Only, Macs crash "better" and in my experience, less often.

[ebisix]

Also, is there a version of Ctrl-Alt-Delete for Macs?

[Nephron]

Originally posted by ebisix:
I have something else that I was wondering. Do you know how on a Windows machine you do a "Control Alt Delete" when needed. Is there a Mac equivelant?

Esc .. Opt .. Apple

All computers must have a three finger salute.

I have had 4 system crashes in my 2 years since switching to Mac (and that is between 3 machines).

Lots of crashes of Excel and Word (about once a week of steady daily usage). Nothing significant was ever lost data-wise. These crashes never affected other apps or the system.

Cheers!

[Vond]

Originally posted by TheIceMan:
From what I've been told or understand, this SBOD (spinning beachball of death) is oftentimes the result of a program conflicting with the OSX. Some of the other members maybe able to explain it ALOT better than me. The SBOD may go on for so long that you have no choice but to "Force Quit" the program. This is what I would consider a crash, a program crash. But OSX is designed to not "crash" even if one or two programs crash. This I like much better than the PC's "blue screen of death." But, realistically...Macs do crash, just like Windows. Only, Macs crash "better" and in my experience, less often.

Yeah, programmers/admins might say and SBOD'ed program is "hung" not "crashed". Usually we reserve "crash" for the "crash and burn" sor of sense, i.e. on Mac OS X when you get the message "Program X has unexpectedly quit" this is a crash. Note that even Windows 9x can handle some degree of program hanging and crashing without going to a BSOD. A BSOD in windows is a kernel panic, just like the "OSX has encountered a problem, please hold down the power button to restart" screen, or a kernel panic message in Linux/BSD. Now in my experience, BSOD's on NT-kernel-based Windows (NT, 2K, XP) are fairly uncommon and are usually the result of a bad driver or hardware bug. They're still more common than on OSX, BSD, or Linux though.

[ebisix]

Originally posted by Nephron:
Esc .. Opt .. Apple

All computers must have a three finger salute.

I have had 4 system crashes in my 2 years since switching to Mac (and that is between 3 machines).

Lots of crashes of Excel and Word (about once a week of steady daily usage). Nothing significant was ever lost data-wise. These crashes never affected other apps or the system.

Cheers!

It seems that the only programs that actually ever do crash are made by Microsoft.

[rustyclockwork]

ya know what? I get those same application hang-ups on mine...

can't wait for the final version of Safari to be released... and I've already replaced MSN messenger with Fire.

Jason

[NathanA]

In the last year I've had:
a Dual 500 G4 running at Dual 550,
a Dual 867 G4 MDD running at Dual 1083,
and a New Ghz TiBook with a SuperDrive.

Since MacOS X.1.4 I have only had lock ups related to hardware failure.

The overclocked Dual 500 would KP running dnetc for RC5-64 if it was 90 degrees or hotter outside.

The Dual 1083 Mhz G4 hard crashed once in WarCraft 3 because the fan on my Radeon 8500 failed and the overheated graphics card locked up the machine.

The Ghz TiBook has never crashed or locked up.

Not a single one of my machines has crashed/locked up under normal usage.

I have a Mastercam file that I can run a tool check operation on which crashes every single version of Windows, it forces an illegal operation and then the system locks up. It's an exploit in the VM subsystem that has been in place since WinNT 3.x and still hasn't been fixed. I guess the only thing I've drawn from my years working with computers and developing for them is that Apple seems to make genuine strides to fix show stopper bugs and holes in their products, whereas MS seems continually content to let some serious bugs just hang around for generations and generations.

-Nathan

[cocamix]

I've been running OS X since 10.0 a couple years ago.
In that time I've had 4 kernel panics and about 6 beachballs of death that I couldn't force quit.

Your mileage will obviously vary.

[leffo]

It kind of sounds a bit ridiculous saying the Mac never crashes but still.. I got my first Mac mid-August last year and to this day it hasn't given up on me once. I haven't had a single crash. Yes, one, but that one doesn't count as I induced it on purpose just to check out the kernel-panic screen

[CyberPet]

This is kind of scary:

A girl was going to buy a 17" iMac and had been scared to death (almost) about a thread in another Mac forum about some guy that wrote that "a Kernal Panic killed my Mac" and she was terrified about having some Kernal Panics and how to deal with them.

I was one of the people trying to comfort her that a Kernel Panic is very rare and it's usually related to a hardware problem (memory, USB or Firewire items hooked up to the computer). I think we all did a splendid job and just as a precausion I gave her my email address and told her to email me if she ever had problems.

Took one day after she got her new iMac before she emailed me and told me that her computer was crashing, and it was crashing alost each time she turned it on.

What are the chances??!!!

Anyway, I helped her calm her down and had her take the computer to the store that sold the computer and who had installed the EXTRA RAM.... it turned out the RAM was bad and after they had exchanged it for a healty RAM chip her computer was stable as a rock.