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Most Unstable Part of OS X

Most Unstable Part of OS X

  • iLife Apps

    Votes: 5 3.6%

  • Apps like Safari, Mail, iChat...

    Votes: 32 23.0%

  • Sleep

    Votes: 21 15.1%

  • Front Row

    Votes: 13 9.4%

  • OS X itself

    Votes: 10 7.2%

  • 3rd Party Apps

    Votes: 27 19.4%

  • Other

    Votes: 19 13.7%

  • Nope, I have ZERO problems with it

    Votes: 30 21.6%

  • Hardware related

    Votes: 9 6.5%
  • Total voters
    139
runninmac

runninmac

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Over the past few days I've noticed that OS X does have its quirks. The things that are the worst on OS X for me are Front Row, about once a week it just seems to hang there and not respond. Forcing me to do a hard restart. Also a close 2nd is when I would normally wake up my MacBook it sometimes doesn't wake up and just gives me a kernal panic, that happens about once every 2 weeks.

Whats your most quirky part of OS X?
(Hopefully this poll works)
 
In terms of just OS X applications (Microsoft Word/Excel exempt), Front Row is probably the only glitchy application I use...

...it's really not too bad, tho - sometimes it just hangs a bit when opening iTunes in the background, and the 'Movie Trailers' take a while to get going.
 
I'd say the most quirky park of OSX for me is connecting to servers, especially wireless ones. When i'm at school and I access server webspace for my class, if I were to disconnect in any way without dismounting the volume, OSX halts immediately (ie. turning off airport or putting my iBook to sleep). This would be understandable, except for the fact that it often freezes for more than a minute, all services crushed while trying to relocate the server. Definitely something that needs fixing.
 
Sherlock in Jaguar (OS X 10.2) on my 3rd hard drive on my Dual G4 Power Mac does not work, but it is fine on the 1st hard drive in OS 9.2 on the same machine.
 
Ummm... how could something hardware related possibly be a problem with OS X software. Maybe you should replace that in your poll with the notoriously buggy Help app.
 
OSX is supposed to be immune to system-wide crashes (Save kernel panics, which i believe are usually caused by a RAM glitch and would be all but avoided with ECC RAM), but back when i played WoW, I noticed that I would sometimes get system-wide freezes if I ran WoW at the same time as either Y!M or MSWord... So I'm going to have to go with 3rd party apps.
 
realityisterror said:
Dock.
Not OS X. Not Finder. Dock.
Click to expand...
What do you find glitchy about the dock?

sunfast said:
Finder is the only thing I ever have problems with
Click to expand...
What do you find glitchy about Finder?

I don't seem to have most of the problems you guys have.😕 I can say, though, I would prefer if OS X worked better with Network Drives, and servers.
 
On my PowerBook, I would have voted the zero problems option. However, on my new Intel iMac, Safari really enjoys crashing. Other than that and a problem with a sticky command key on my keyboard, everything's great.
 
Finder problems mainly occur with connecting to shared wireless resources - lengthy freeze up with continual spinning beachball. Cured by a relaunch.

That was only on my PPC mac though. Haven't noticed it on my MacBook.
 
Erendiox said:
I'd say the most quirky park of OSX for me is connecting to servers, especially wireless ones. When i'm at school and I access server webspace for my class, if I were to disconnect in any way without dismounting the volume, OSX halts immediately (ie. turning off airport or putting my iBook to sleep). This would be understandable, except for the fact that it often freezes for more than a minute, all services crushed while trying to relocate the server. Definitely something that needs fixing.
Click to expand...

Yep, this gets my virtual vote. They badly need to fix this (the iDisk too) from screwing up Finder response.

Then, as Hector mentioned (and as I was saying to him the other day), Expose doesn't work as well on my new Intel Mini as on any previous Mac I've owned. This is definitely a drawback of the crummy integrated graphics.

Third, any kind of plugin that tries to make us of the previews in Finder column mode. Flip4Mac or whatever that WMP plugin is called is the big offender here. Causes a relaunch of the Finder whenever my Powermac tries to access a preview of a Windows Media file.

But generally I'm very happy with Mac OS X.
 
Generally everything under Mac OS X is very stable. I mainly find sleep with password protection somehow glitchy. Also Spotlight in Finder has also some minor issues.

And Front Row is the most unstable Apple software i've ever seen...
 
I'm answering OSX Itself because the ONLY significant stability problem I have is with unresponsive network volumes hanging the system. I just REALLY wish OSX failed more gracefully when a mounted volume stopped responding, but "stalled" disk access will actually hang the kernel, preventing even force quitting.

Otherwise my answer would be "sleep"; it works absolutely perfectly on most Macs I deal with (literally hundreds of sleep-wake cycles without an issue), but the only times my G5 tower needs a forced restart (maybe every few weeks, so not often) it's related to sleep.
 
Chaszmyr said:
OSX is supposed to be immune to system-wide crashes (Save kernel panics, which i believe are usually caused by a RAM glitch and would be all but avoided with ECC RAM), but back when i played WoW, I noticed that I would sometimes get system-wide freezes if I ran WoW at the same time as either Y!M or MSWord... So I'm going to have to go with 3rd party apps.
Click to expand...

Kernel panics are most often caused by errant code running in the kernel. This could be Apple bugs, but in my experience its from 3rd party kernel extensions. The kernel is protected from user space applications, but a kernel extension is loaded into the kernel's memory space, so if a kernel extension accesses invalid memory or calls certain functions incorrectly it will cause a panic.
 
This is kind of a bogus pool. How is a typical user to know to cause of a problem. At best he would know what application he was using when the problem occured. Most people think the if the graphic interface freezes up the machine has crashed and don't look much futher then a reset and reboot.

I strongly suspect that the weak link is in the graphics subsystem
 
Considering I'm running on a 59 day uptime and and had no applications unexpectedly quit within recent memory, I have a hard time believing that OS X itself is to blame for most problems.
 
One more vote for the abysmal non-responsive network volume handling by OSX. If it ain't responding, drop it, don't hang the entire OS waiting to reconnect.
 
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