One Mac Myth Debunked
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A few weeks ago I made the switch from Windows to OSX, and bought a MacBook Pro. I’m delighted with the system, and it’s radically changed the way I use a computer. Which is to say, now I spend more time using a computer, and a lot less time not using it, because (for example), I’m reinstalling Windows after spending fruitless hours scanning support forums looking for a fix to the latest glitch that’s bedevilling me. It’s been a problem with every Windows machine I’ve owned, at least in recent memory, and I made the switch after finally deciding that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life working for Bil Gates. Oh, and after the umpteenth intractable system hang that hit me just as I was starting a busy day in the office.
One of the attractive features of the Mac, of course, is its reputation for reliability. It’s pitched hard by Apple, including in its latest campaign, which takes a pointed shot at Windows’ reputation for crashing. The ad and the copy that accompanies the campaign coyly (some might say deceptively) avoids any clear statement that the Mac doesn’t crash, but drives hard at suggesting exactly that, while at same time making the lawyerly point that nobody’s perfect.
Before I bought I did my research, and quickly found tons of resources that made it clear that Apple’s marketing savvy has managed to suppress awareness of what are many reasonably common tech support problems. Main takeaway: the support boards are full of frustrated Mac owners. And I found specific resources, like Russell Beattie’s excellent summary of Mac criticisms (see #1), that brought me up to speed on what I could really expect.
I bought warily, but optimistically. And so far, things have worked out well. But, a couple of weeks into my Macbliss, it happened. Application hangs. Systems hangs. Reboot. Hang. Reboot. Hang. And finally, hang, not rebootable. Confoundingly, the hang of all hangs happened at 9 am the Sunday morning before mesh, as I was sitting down to do final prep for the next day. Throughout the process, I reinstalled the OS multiple times, and to Apple’s credit, this is a remarkably painless process. But still - to some extent the utility of any tool - hammer or computer - is the trust you have that it will work when needed, and my trust in the Mac was badly shaken. So - one more Mac myth falls by the wayside, and another one - the potency of Apple’s marketing power - is elevated. I think I would have preferred it the other way around.
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I personally would like to know, what you were doing to get it to hang. Apples aren’t perfect, I have had many applications hang, but only one hang caused damage. and I corrected that with an addition account, that I used to recover the ‘preferences’ from my ‘real’ account that the hung application had corrupted. It was not for the newbe though. Just a little personal experience. One of the things that you should remember about the Mac OS, is, don’t treat it like a PC. That sounds silly, but in may cases, rebooting is the worst thing for a MAC. Many times, just logging out from the ‘hung’ account will solve many problems. And unlike killing an application in windows which mostly doesn’t work, it does in Mac OS, and solves alot of issues.
In any case, sorry for your woes.
Well, I’ve had hangs in Apple Mail and iTunes, and the killer crash happened as I was printing a file to pdf using Adobe Acrobat Pro’s driver. I had just that week updated the system using Apple’s System Update. It felt like a driver used by Acrobat had been corrupted by the System Update - who knows. I found several other similar occurrences of it online. It left me unable to boot - the log in screen hung, too - so I had to boot into safe boot mode, and reinstall the OS from there. It wasn’t pretty :)
That last one, where the login screen hung, that was probabally the preferences being corrupted. I created a another user with admin and selectivly removed application preferences until the hung login worked. I have years of stuff on my mac, and did not want to reinstall. The only time I thought I’d have to reinstal the OS was when I thought I had a corrupt disk, it turned out to be a strange Virtual PC image. I trashed it, and all was fine again
One more, one more thing, did you put any cheap memories in your Mac? Another newbe I know about, did, and he went through much pain. Some PC memorys just do not cut it in Macs.
That’s interesting. I’ve been using Mac OS X on half a dozen different computers since 2000, and I can’t remember the last time the system inexplicitly froze up on me. There are a few buggy applications that will crash, but in my experience these never, ever bring down the whole system. The only exception to the above is when my hard drive on my current laptop started failing–that caused some system crashes. But obviously, there’s nothing the OS can do if the hardware it’s on starts to fail. And getting that fixed was painless: I backed up my data, brought it in to the Apple Store on a Monday, and had the machine delivered to my door by Thursday.
I have used Apple machines since 1991. In the first few months I had a couple of a”hangs” as I got used to using a computer, none since through 6 different machines and from system 6 to 10. Now that most of the programs I once had to add, which did occasionally produce THEIR problems, have been incorporated into the mac software, there are no problems there. I do not get all the characters who camp on my grass, so to speak , in windows. And I do not have to get steamed up about all the little tricks in the Gates product which are aimed at pushing me deeper into Microsoft use, or just plain irritating me into giving up and using their features. (”would you like X to be your Y”, would you, would you, and so on. I still use windows on an office machine, but I can take home a CD and pop it into the G5 without difficulty.
So I wound up reading the above post with a mounting sense of suspicion. I am sure it is very hard to be objective about one’s use of these machines. Yet I suspect a good part of the post is plain bs. You can still use the Apple without a manual, and you really must have to work very hard to get a hang. Quite a few of the observations are personal taste, some are obviously contradictory, and a number feel like the eruptions of someone who has just decided to be against as he has found many others to be “for”. As the cabinet maker would say, don’t try to plane a cross grained board, use it to start the fire.
Well, what can I say, Gerry, it happened and isn’t “bs” - what are you looking for, a DNA test? I’m not trying to convince anyone, and even if I were, I suspect that would not be possible with you, regardless. And no, none of the observations are contradictory (whatever that means). I suspect it’s an Intel chip issue, but who knows. And of course the boards are full of similar complaints, so it’s obvious it’s not just me.
Still using the Mac, still love it. But it’s far from perfect.
I hadn’t thought about it being an Intel processor. The may be one of my bigger objections to Intel over PowerPC. The hardware interrupt is still enabled on the DuelCore and the PowerPC did away with that along time ago. In theory, you could get a spurious voltage on the hardware line, should that be wired and that would make it hang, and have no software solution.
I find it odd that people are doubting your story. I’ve used OSX and Windows machines side-by-side for several years, and I can crash either one equally. The idea that somehow Macs are crash proof is indeed a myth. In fact, my MacBook Pro is hung right now with both fans running at full speed, and it looks like nothing is going to stop it unless I pull the plug.