Poll: Which thing bugs you most about your computer?

[MacRumors]

Vote: Poll: Which thing bugs you most about your computer? (http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=394)

[wordmunger]

Well, my computer is three years old (TiBook), and the main problems I have are lack of HD space, Airport reception, a bit of flicker in the screen, and lack of CPU horsepower for the newest games. I really don't experience any of the problems in the poll, except maybe the time it takes to complete a task. I get 20-30 spam a day, but Mail's filter handles most of those, so spam doesn't bother me too much.

Nonetheless, I'm still holding out for a PowerBook G5!

[the_mole1314]

My only Mac is locked by the school. I have another computer, but it's a Dell. I'd rather use my locked iBook than that.......... :rolleyes:

[Plastic Chicken]

What bugs me most is moronic interfaces and software that doesn't work properly.

I also don't like software that just doesn't feel polished.

Waiting isn't that bad, as long as the computer still feels responsive.

[isus]

(i use a pc...)

the fact that i run windows. osx is so much more refined than xp. and despite what all the pro-windows fanboys would have you believe:
WINDOWS XP DOES CRASH.

sometimes it's bad ram, sometimes it's heat. it won't lock up because a program goes nuts, but it still happens.

i also don't like the noise... i can't find a good power supply that's quiet. i have quiet case fans, quiet hard drive, quiet gpu, and quiet cpu... but the power supply is just too loud.

[howard]

only things that apply to me are slowness and app crashes...

since app crashes don't happen often i'm going with slowness

[Mr.Hey]

I voted for App and system crashes but since I did prebinding everything is cool and snappy now. :)

Updating the Prebinding

sudo update_prebinding -root / -force

[shamino]

(i use a pc...)
i also don't like the noise... i can't find a good power supply that's quiet. i have quiet case fans, quiet hard drive, quiet gpu, and quiet cpu... but the power supply is just too loud.
Just out of curiosity, are you aware of PC Power and Cooling (http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/)? They've been making good quality power supplies for a long time. Their Silencer (http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/products/power_supplies/ultra_quiet/) models are supposed to be much quieter than other power supplies. Perhaps one of them might suit your needs.

[SilvorX]

hmmm.. probably application/system crashing, especially a web browser crashing when i need it most

[brhmac]

Where's the all-of-the-above option?

[wrldwzrd89]

hmmm.. probably application/system crashing, especially a web browser crashing when i need it most
Me too - except I have trouble with QuickTime Player and PlayerPRO crashing. Mac OS X hardly ever crashes on me, but those two applications can drive me bonkers!

[macFanDave]

I chose the second half of the first choice, "Waiting for a site to load." Of course,that has nothing to do with my computer, it's the web server's fault. Otherwise, all sites would be slow to load. The other choices and what makes them non-choices for me:

Waiting for apps to start - G5
Spam - Mail
Viruses, worms, hackers - Mac
Banners/Popups - Safari, PithHelmet
Crashes - 10.3.3
Dialers/Spyware - Mac
Hackers - FreeBSD underpinnings
Passwords - Keychain
Loss of Data - Carbon Copy Cloner

My main problem is that programs don't just write themselves -- I still have to put a lot of work in to make a good one!

[luggnutt]

I think it should be phrased "what you hate most about your MAC." I'd bet the app freeze/crash numbers would go down....

[miloblithe]

How about that I only bought it five months ago and it's a pretty slow computer (eMac 1Ghz). I miss having a cheap computer that feels like a speed demon, like my rev.B iMac did.

[MattG]

Application and system crashing...

At work, I have to reboot at least 2-3 times a week. I notice sometimes when I try to use Expose to show all windows, it locks up. The mouse will still move around, but the windows are stuck. Can't force-quit, can't Command-Q...nothin. Reboot.

Also, Lotus Notes crashes all the time (then again, it does this on my Windows computer quite frequently as well).

[Savage Henry]

But according to Microwaft, Spam is the biggest evil to mankind, not the slowness of the connections?

Boy, is my finger not on the pulse! :rolleyes:

[pimentoLoaf]

Site loading is a problem? Tsk, tsk... what's your modem speed? 9600bps? :rolleyes:

Yes, many sites load slow, largely due to poor understanding of graphical compression on sites with imagery, sometimes it's poor HTML coding, and usually it's modem speed.

And PLEASE!! If you're using broadband, give yourself a really-large cache, as a webmaster's bandwidth limitation suffers from speed-demons able to download a large site easily.

My answer? Spam. Despite junk mail filtering on Entourage (of which I have to program a good many rules), I still need to wade through it to insure stuff I need isn't deleted.

[redAPPLE]

I voted for App and system crashes but since I did prebinding everything is cool and snappy now. :)

Updating the Prebinding

sudo update_prebinding -root / -force

care to explain for our non-computer savvy users? :cool:

[MatMistake]

microsoft windows........
but thats kind of a given if you are using a pc.

things randomly failing to work annoys me the most, particually network stuff. just breaks for no reason.

[KLFloyd]

I use a 3 year old 500mhz Titanium PowerBook on DSL so...

Waiting for a task to finish / site to load - Not really, and Safari is quite snappy.

Spam - I have a junk mail only account, not a problem

Viruses, worms and hackers - I'm on a Mac

Banners and Pop-Ups - Thanks again Safari

Application and system crashes - Mac OS X: stable and secure

Dialers and Spyware- See above

File abuse by hackers- See above

Too many passwords- Thanks Keychain!

Loss of data- Again, I'm on a Mac

My biggest complaint is lack of airport reception and my machine is starting to feel a little slow. I'm giving the iBooks one or two more revisions and then I'll probably upgrade. Though if the prices on the G5 Powerbooks aren't too high I could be tempted.

[macguymike]

(Windows XP) won't lock up because a program goes nuts,

Oh, yes it will.

[parrothead]

I just got a new ALbook, so I will have to say none of the above!

[medea]

Having a good memory of how things used to be I'm quite content with the current status of computers but I chose app crashes etc. Honestly I would have rather voted for compaiblity issues as my main gripe.

[MagnusDredd]

Well. problem is that I run two machines for normal use, although since I bought this house and moved in one of them (Athlon 2100+,1733Mhz/384M RAM/40G Storage/Radeon 9000 Pro 128DDR) hasn't been on in a week.

Mostly I use a Quicksilver G4 733/1.25G RAM/175G Storage (75G of which is U160 SCSI)/Radeon 7000 32M SDR.

I have two connections to the net. I use Cox Cable for filesharing, massive downloads and other things that drive latency through the ceiling. I also have DSL for my web server, my VPN connections (which I have to reinstate), online gaming and anything that requires a static IP and/or low latency connections to the net.


Waiting for a task to finish / site to load
The mac has really become kinda long in the tooth. This was my vote. I push computers very hard. The 733 is simply not a fast enough machine to keep up with me anymore. It's not slow, however there are things that I do that cause the finder to run slow, and apps to run slowly. Generally it's running a whole ton of stuff at the same time. I generally have quite a few things going at the same time. 9 applications currently in use now. Warcraft 3 however runs like crap, and Halo is unplayable.

The Athlon is faster, having another 100 million cycles a second to work with, but even it is slow for some of the things I do, like browsing 200+ page pdf files, which actually the mac is faster at *shrug* go figure. However because of the UI, WinXP, doing anything takes more steps and besides which doesn't have a decent level of *nix scripability for automation, meaning more has to be done by hand.

They both scream at loading pages due to my net connections.


Spam
I use a friends email server since he is far better with sendmail than I am. He subscribes to several RBLs, and then mail takes care of another chunk, and my filters take care of even more. I rarely have all that much spam. I also create email account on my own server for one time use, that I can later remove.


Viruses, worms and hackers
No Microsoft machines touch the outside world directly. I also don't web browse with windows at all.
My Slackware machine on the DSL is fairly secure.
This machine OS 10.3, Kidding right?


Banners and Pop-Ups
No banners...
http://phroggy.com/bannerfilter/

No popups
Safari on OSX, Konquerer under Linux/BSD, Mozilla on Windows


Application and system crashes
Running OSX I have locked the machine a few times, especially while executing some less than well thought out shell scripts (no indeed, the system will not boot without a hostconfig file). However for normal usage even under me, it has been very stable. Most apps I use are pretty stable, but I rarely run anything in classic. Working with apps in classic is almost painful at times, for some reason Pagemaker is very unstable in classic.

WinXP has been far superior to 98SE and ME for stability. However if you are aware of the fact that most XP machines are set to reboot when they crash instead of going blue screen, the stability picture becomes more clear. When I first started using it I was plagued by spontaneous reboots. An MCSE friend of mine pointed out the setting. It is in fact far less stable than my OSX machine and it is more apparent when you change the setting back from reboot. Programs also seem to be a little less stable.

*
Dialers and Spyware
OSX, no.
Windows, don't web browse or download crapware applications. (Bonzo buddy, etc)

*
File abuse by hackers
Nope*


Too many passwords
Keychain, and cookies. Also I have 10 or more passwords at work, I don't have difficulty keeping up with a bunch of passwords.


Loss of data
When I used to be big into windows I had several FAT corruptions back to back. So I switched platforms to FreeBSD and then OSX.

I did lose a hard drive on OSX, but it was a Western Digital, and I have had poor luck with them. The drive had crashed.

[Mr.Hey]

care to explain for our non-computer savvy users? :cool:

A few maintenance tips I got from O'Reilly. download the rest here (http://users.rcn.com/muisca/O'Reilly%20Network_%20Panther%20Maintenance%20Tips.pdf)


Updating the Prebinding

Sometimes, for some (apparently) inexplicable reason, your computer slows down to a crawl after you have installed a big application. In that case, you may want to "update the prebinding."

This means forcing Mac OS X to go through all of the application files and make sure that they are correctly linked together. The Mac OS X default installer usually takes care of this by itself, but some third-party installers may be less cautious. To do this, simply open your Terminal and type:

sudo update_prebinding -root / -force

Then, enter return, type your password, and enter return again. Don't worry about the lines of text that will scroll on your Terminal. This simply means that the command is doing its work. The whole process should only take a few minutes.

However, it will considerably slow your computer down and for maximum efficiency, you should not use it at the same time. Once the command has exited, immediately reboot your computer.

[nslyax]

I voted for web pages loading too slowly. With a 2 Mbit cable modem though, they do load pretty darned fast.

Honestly, I think my lack of RAM (a mere 256MB, I can't afford $117 for an upgrade to 640) and the "looseness" by ibook case has developed bug me most.

[dontmakemehurtu]

:(

[Doctor Q]

I picked "Application and system crashes", but it's only applications that crash for me. Lately, I've been working in an AppleWorks spreadsheet and, many times, it has crashed when I insert or delete a row. I've also had a few Safari crashes, and it seems to be a problem that somehow builds up, because it usually crashes when I first go to a new URL. But when I relaunch it, I can go to that same URL with no problem.

Yes, I do submit the crash reports to Apple.

[Mord]

Where's the "nothing" option?

same here none of the things affect me there should be an option at the bottom that says: "I use a mac"

(whats this about halo being unplayable on a quicksilver 733 I run it on my 450MHz g4 cube and i have played it on my 600MHz ibook with only minimal slowdown get some ram and run it from a fast HD and it should work fine.)

[blue&whiteman]

I picked "Application and system crashes", but it's only applications that crash for me.

same here

[pkr]

In a word, it is "wires" that bug me. No matter what I do there is always a rats nest of wires in/around my desk.

[awulf]

There should be an 'other' option...

I am really annoyed how my computer (Power Mac G4 466) doesn't have a Microphone port. Also my Apple Pro Keyboard feels like an old style type writer, I have become used to it but if someone else uses my computer they have a very hard time typing.

Sometimes web sites take a while to load and time out, so I have to refresh. Programs feel pretty zippy (apart from Adobe GoLive 7) on my computer.

I get no spam in my Personal e-mail account, I get some spam in my web site's e-mail, but I think I have handled that. For uncertain sites or guaranteed junk-mail I send them to Microsoft (my hotmail account).

Viruses... I haven't ever seen a Mac virus.

Pop-ups I haven't seen since using Netscape/Mozilla (I never could put up with IE).

Crashes hardly occur anymore.

Spyware; I have this program called Spy (http://www.silvernetwork.net/products/spy/) that allows people to 'Spy' on me and see my computers specs. Of-cause I let this program be run intentionally.

I wish a hacker could access my computer, that would mean I could access my computer from another computer on the internet.

Keychain solves all my password problems.

I experience no loss of data.

[Bear]

Man: You sit here, dear.

Wife: All right.

Man: Morning!

Waitress: Morning!
Man: Well, what've you got?

Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;

Vikings: Spam spam spam spam...

Waitress: ...spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam...

Vikings: Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!

Waitress: ...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.

Wife: Have you got anything without spam?

Waitress: Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.

Wife: I don't want ANY spam!

Man: Why can't she have egg bacon spam and sausage?

Wife: THAT'S got spam in it!

Man: Hasn't got as much spam in it as spam egg sausage and spam, has it?

Vikings: Spam spam spam spam... (Crescendo through next few lines...)

Wife: Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then?

Waitress: Urgghh!

Wife: What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like spam!

Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

Waitress: Shut up!

Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

Waitress: Shut up! (Vikings stop) Bloody Vikings! You can't have egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam.

Wife: I don't like spam!

Man: Sshh, dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam!

Vikings: Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

Waitress: Shut up!! Baked beans are off.

Man: Well could I have her spam instead of the baked beans then?

Waitress: You mean spam spam spam spam spam spam... (but it is too late and the Vikings drown her words)

Vikings: (Singing elaborately...) Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam. Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Spam spam spam spam!

[wdlove]

I seem to be with the majority voting; Waiting for a task to finish / site to load. Really don't blame my current Mac, it's a 450.

[SiliconAddict]

I run Windows 2003 on my home server Windows XP on my Desktop, a dual boot 2000/XP on my Tosh laptop, XP on my Dell Latitude, and XP and 2000 on my 2 work computers and I can say in all honestly there really isn't anything on the list that bugs me. I never get spyware, I never get a virus (Even though I don't run AV on anything cept my home server and my 2 office workstations, I only run Windows updates once ever couple months, spam? I have a 3 tiered system that keeps most spam at bay, I do the occasional defrags (Once or twice a 1/2 year.) crashes? None. Period. I'm not playing this up as a wintel vs. Mac thing. I honest here. Everything just works. That being said It takes a lot of time and effort to configure a PC to a point where is stable, solid, and not a PITA. Tech heads love tweaking windows to try and get it to perform better but what people don't get is that you SHOULDN'T NEED TO DO THAT!!!! It should "just work" out of the box. No disabling 20 services, no turning off MS's unseen spyware, no tweaking the NTFS security rights, no disabling of the hidden shares. No of that. Out of the box. Plop it down on your desk and go. Simple as that. Something Windows has yet to achieve.

But I picked the password thing. OMG! **thinks* I have about 40 password for home, work with its various servers, websites ( banking, XM Radio, online shopping, etc,) I can't keep track of all the passwords which is why I have my Pocket PC and Pocketwallet that stores any relativly important info in a Blowfish encrypted file.

Beyond that I'm always concerned about losing data. Not from the OS blowing up on me but a hard drive failure.

[xRob2k4x]

Running Windows Xp Pro
My Windows Is Stable but thats probably because ive got it tweaked to perfection.(C++/Vb/Perl Programmer here) The thing that bothers me the most is my dialup connection :-).

[Snowy_River]

care to explain for our non-computer savvy users? :cool:

Here (http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/stories/2002/08/24/prebindingExplained.html) is an excellent article on the subject. Personally, I don't buy into all the hype about prebinding, as it's pretty well explained in this article. For example:

Under 10.1, prebinding never needed to be updated on anywhere as regular of basis as a lot of people assumed. * The only time prebinding information would be out of date is if you installed an application on the boot volume via drag-n-drop. *In that case, only that application's prebinding information would be out of date and updating the prebinding would only affect the freshly installed app's launch time.

Under 10.2, prebinding information is automatically updated as a normal part of system operation. *There is no need to ever manually update prebinding information.

Prebinding only affects application launch times and only for native OS X applications. * It does not affect the runtime performance of an application, the speed with windows can be resized or moved, or the speed at which finder updates various views. *There has never been any reason or benefit to updating prebinding on a regular schedule.

[jihad the movie]

For my Graduation/Eagle Scout present from my parents, and to be quite honest, I dislike three things already.


Size:

The machine is massive and by far the heaviest machine I have ever had. No LAN parties with this beast.

Upgrades:

It was a pain to install a USB 2.0 card (see next problem) I liked the drop down door of my G4 better, but whatever. I shouldn't spend too much time opening this beast anyways!

Problems:

It does not recognize my USB 2.0 card that I had in my Quicksilver. I don't like hot plugging my printer, scanner, Palm Dock and Wacom Tablet.


But everything else is sweet.

dual 1.8, 160gb, 1gb of Apple Ram, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, 9600 (waiting for the next gen of ATi Cards) Pioneer DVR-107 black bezel. ($109 at www.esbuy.com last weekend)

[rickvanr]

For my Graduation/Eagle Scout present from my parents, and to be quite honest, I dislike three things already.


Size:

The machine is massive and by far the heaviest machine I have ever had. No LAN parties with this beast.

Upgrades:

It was a pain to install a USB 2.0 card (see next problem) I liked the drop down door of my G4 better, but whatever. I shouldn't spend too much time opening this beast anyways!

Problems:

It does not recognize my USB 2.0 card that I had in my Quicksilver. I don't like hot plugging my printer, scanner, Palm Dock and Wacom Tablet.


But everything else is sweet.

dual 1.8, 160gb, 1gb of Apple Ram, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, 9600 (waiting for the next gen of ATi Cards) Pioneer DVR-107 black bezel. ($109 at www.esbuy.com last weekend)

buy a hub

[Snowy_River]

buy a hub

No joke. You already have 3 USB 2.0 ports. All you need it one more (well, two given that one will be taken by your keyboard). It's simple enough to buy a hub, and I believe it'd be less expensive than the card you stole from your G4.

As for the weight, forgive me if I don't shed a tear for you...
http://www.ghwphoto.com/smilies/rolleyes.jpg

[Stella]

Using the majority of the world to substitize the US customers.. By undervaluing exchange from US to the local currency, this allows Apple to hike up prices and make more profits from NON US customers.

Apple treat non US customers like 2nd class consumers and so its no wonder they have a very poor market share. Another example is by giving more US only discounts to its .Mac customers. No excuses..

I don't care if Apple is a US company - they are an international company selling to international customers, competing in a global market. Unfortunately, you wouldn't have thought this... Its about time they started being such a company.

[rainman::|:|]

i said "too many passwords", first because too many things require passwords (not computer specific, just in general on the net-- keychain saves them for me, but i still have to remember them), but most importantly: my partner and i share an iMac, and we use fast-user switching. We switch back and forth maybe 8-10 times a day. Every time we do, we have to type a password... I want to be able to switch between accounts effortlessly, but the only way i've found to do that is to remove your password totally, and i don't want that level of insecurity. i just don't want to enter it when switching to a username that's already logged in.

paul

[matthew24]

When I read the poll I was thinking, typical question for MS sufferers.:rolleyes: Non of those issues applies to me. OSX does have some minor (design) issues, but overall it is my joy and pride. :)

[transistor]

Everything is quite good, but noise, fans and HDs.
Yeah, I know there are options, but why don't they build a silent machine already?

[Kelson]

Using the majority of the world to substitize the US customers.. By undervaluing exchange from US to the local currency, this allows Apple to hike up prices and make more profits from NON US customers.

Apple treat non US customers like 2nd class consumers and so its no wonder they have a very poor market share. Another example is by giving more US only discounts to its .Mac customers. No excuses..

I don't care if Apple is a US company - they are an international company selling to international customers, competing in a global market. Unfortunately, you wouldn't have thought this... Its about time they started being such a company.

Umm..this is Intl Business 101. Apple has to pay alot more to sell you that box in your particular country. This is because of tariffs on imports and exports, VAT, etc. Also, they are not going to match an exact exchange rate, because they fluctuate all of the time. They are going to price a bit higher than the top of the exchange rate fluctuations so they never sell for less than their price point due to rate changes.

Apple is not trying to screw you just cause you are not in the US. They have financial targets they have to meet on top line, bottom line, and margins. They factor in the additional costs for each market area to meet these financial targets.

- Kelson

[Kelson]

When I read the poll I was thinking, typical question for MS sufferers.:rolleyes: Non of those issues applies to me. OSX does have some minor (design) issues, but overall it is my joy and pride. :)

It's very easy to write this off as just an MS thing. But I experience most of these issues on the Mac.

Slow Page Loads/ Task to Finish - I get these periodically, especially when using some freeware that fills a gap for using a mac in a windows work environment.

Spam - I get dozens of spam every day, it's frustrating because I can't afford to lose an email, so I still have to sort through them. Plus junk mail filtering gets flaky on Mail.app after a while.

Virii/Worms/Hackers - Okay, non-issue, just have to delete the few extra emails I get that are generated by them.

Banners/Pop-Ups - No popups, but banners are still a bit annoying, mostly gotten used to them, but those horrendous flash ads that move around the screen really suck.

Application/System Crashes - Okay, this one really has me pretty torqued up lately. Mail.app crashes all the time on 10.3.3. I've had to disable junk filtering, I've rebuilt mail boxes, updated pre-binding, etc. Plus, it keeps crashing in WebCore. If Apple doesn't fix this by the time Office 2004 for Mac comes out, I'm throwing Mail.app out.

Many Passwords - This is just a general issue. I've literally got 50+ different accounts w/ different passwords. I really want digital identities to become a reality, it's a PITA managing them all. No KeyChain has not provided an adequete solution, I also use a password vault type program. It's still annoying tho.

The rest are non-issues. But hey, it's better than my Win2k experiences.

- Kelson

[cb911]

not many of those issues apply to me. i don't mind waiting for stuff to finish.

but software crashes to really annoy me. just a few minutes ago i finished an assignment that's due tomorrow, go to save it and Photoshop just jams up. everything just locked up. i couldn't even do cmd+opt+esc and force quit. just had to reboot. :mad:

[Stike]

*Spoiler: Don´t read this if you have not already voted* ;)

There was originally a poll with exact the same answers conducted by Symantec (the guys who made Norton Antivirus, I guess at least most PC users know them ;) )
The answers were the following... note the differences between the following (mostly PC using) voters and the percentages of the Mac Users.

Symantec Poll:
22 % Waiting for a task to finish / site to load
19 % Spam
18 % Viruses, worms and hackers
13 % Banners and Pop-Ups
12 % Application and system crashes
06 % Dialers and Spyware
04 % file abuse by hackers
03 % too many passwords
02 % Loss of data

MacPoll (currently):
40.15 % Waiting for a task to finish / site to load
19.86 % Spam
17.89 % Application and system crashes
9.98 % Too many passwords
4.83 % Banners and Pop-Ups
4.49 % Loss of data
1.53 % Dialers and Spyware
1.09 % Viruses, worms and hackers
0.19 % File abuse by hackers

Its very nice to see those numbers side by side. My conclusions:
- Many Mac voters seem to have (apparently) slow machines, although it includes slow internet connections. Not much to say there. PC users seem to be less concerned about waiting... maybe they are used to it? ;)
- Spam is the same on both polls. Its a really system independent annoyance.
- Viruses, hackers, dialers, banners & pop-ups: OS X, anyone? Safari etc.? Here we really discover the advantages of having a Mac.
- Crashes: Apparently, crashes are so common on Wintel systems that the users have accommodated to this and started bothering about other stuff ;) Thats just my interpretation. I really think most crashes on the Mac side are App-related.
- One more thing: As security issues, viruses etc. are not the thing Mac users are usually bothering about, they start bothering about convenience of the system - too many passwords, for example.

My conclusion: Mac users are one step ahead of the crowd ;) :D

[Stella]

Excuses excuses...

Apple *IS* screwing over international customers, full stop -esp. with the exchange rates. A perfect example - the US get the discount of $500 with a G5 + Display, whilst the discount in Europe is only 400 euros... WTF!!!!????!!!!

Ask any international customer... not to mention the 'US' only Mac offers... and the US only software (OK, so its getting better, extremely slowly)..

The UK is a soft target - even with cars - they are made in the UK and they end up being more expensive in the UK than mainland Europe - and the manufactuers have the nerve to say its due to Exchange Rates and Duty Taxes!!!

As I said, no wonder Apple have such a low market share..


Umm..this is Intl Business 101. Apple has to pay alot more to sell you that box in your particular country. This is because of tariffs on imports and exports, VAT, etc. Also, they are not going to match an exact exchange rate, because they fluctuate all of the time. They are going to price a bit higher than the top of the exchange rate fluctuations so they never sell for less than their price point due to rate changes.

Apple is not trying to screw you just cause you are not in the US. They have financial targets they have to meet on top line, bottom line, and margins. They factor in the additional costs for each market area to meet these financial targets.

- Kelson

[edenwaith]

Excuses excuses...

Apple *IS* screwing over international customers, full stop -esp. with the exchange rates. A perfect example - the US get the discount of $500 with a G5 + Display, whilst the discount in Europe is only 400 euros...

According to the USD to Euro conversion I just made with the most current exchange rates, $500 = 405 Euros. So, does that mean Europe is getting screwed out of 5 euros?

But I can understand the frustration on higher prices for Macs outside the U.S. I was somewhat appalled when I figured out how much folks in the U.K. or Germany are paying versus the price in the U.S. I wonder if sales tax is included at all for foreign sales. If not, then that might counter balance some of the price, since U.S. customers have to pay sales tax respective to their state (which is nice for residents of states like Oregon and Montana since there IS no sales tax).

[edenwaith]

(i use a pc...)

the fact that i run windows. osx is so much more refined than xp. and despite what all the pro-windows fanboys would have you believe:
WINDOWS XP DOES CRASH.


From my experience, I've found that OS X is MUCH more responsive than Windows...any version. Win 2000 and Win XP do not offer the multi-tasking capabilities that OS X offers. If some process is taking up a lot of resources, it pretty much locks up Windows for a bit, while OS X will let you still move around from app to app, which is very nice. Even if one application is locked up or spending a lot of time doing something, I can easily move over to another application and work there. About the only time I see something really interfering with other apps is if iTunes is running and it "hiccups" a time or two while something is running heavily in the background. I had a 350 MHz iMac which couldn't play CDs under OS 10.0, but 10.1 fixed the speed problems.

As for my response, I put "applications loading", since I normally run a 400 MHz PowerMac, which occasionally takes a little longer than I'd desire to launch applications, but that is really about my only major complaint. Well, that and I'm still waiting for computers to return to 15 second start up times. It's just too bad there seem to be some nasty bottle necks which are preventing computers from starting up faster. For all of the speed and power we have these days, computers still take a bit of time to start up and go, where it seems that computers from the 80s could be up and running in 30 seconds or less.

I'm just waiting for the day when I have enough money to invest in my next Mac, which I am hoping will be a very nice system and be able to last for 4+ years.

[shamino]

Site loading is a problem? Tsk, tsk... what's your modem speed? 9600bps?
Who ever said that download speed is solely a problem of link speed.

How about the server side? Most hosting companies work on the chep. If a site becomes popular (or gets SlashDotted), it usually falls over and dies. But of course, us users never really know why - we just know that the page is taking forever to load.

[Hemingray]

None of the above: the fact that I've upgraded it about as far as it will go! :(

[Stella]

Mail and Safari are most CPU hogs. I can't leave them running in the background.. if I do, after an 1hour, my Mac becomes a extremely slow..

I've tried deleting the icon cache in Safari.. I have around 2000 mails, but Mail shouldn't really be holding all the email headers in Memory for displaying anyway (between different Mailboxes).

[Snowy_River]

...For all of the speed and power we have these days, computers still take a bit of time to start up and go, where it seems that computers from the 80s could be up and running in 30 seconds or less...

I had a Mac LC from 1991 that could start up and be to the desktop in System 7.1 in less than 10 seconds. Now that's the kind of start up that I miss...

[Snowy_River]

Mail and Safari are most CPU hogs. I can't leave them running in the background.. if I do, after an 1hour, my Mac becomes a extremely slow..

I've tried deleting the icon cache in Safari.. I have around 2000 mails, but Mail shouldn't really be holding all the email headers in Memory for displaying anyway (between different Mailboxes).


I don't know what's up with your Safari and Mail, but something is. I routinely check Activity Monitor, and I don't think that I've ever seen Safari use more than 15%-20% of the CPU, and that's when its in the foreground and I'm using it. When I drop it to the back ground, it drops to 0% (occasionally poking up to 2% or 3%). Same goes for Mail, except that it sometimes goes as high as 40% CPU when I'm using it. Oh, and I have on the order of 17,500 messages stored in various mailboxes, so I don't think it has anything to do with the number of messages you've got.

[idkew]

same here none of the things affect me there should be an option at the bottom that says: "I use a mac"

(whats this about halo being unplayable on a quicksilver 733 I run it on my 450MHz g4 cube and i have played it on my 600MHz ibook with only minimal slowdown get some ram and run it from a fast HD and it should work fine.)

halo was unplayable in battle on a 667mhz tibook with 1gb of ram and a fast hd. i don't know how you are playing it on an ibook.

[rainman::|:|]

Mail and Safari are most CPU hogs. I can't leave them running in the background.. if I do, after an 1hour, my Mac becomes a extremely slow..

I've tried deleting the icon cache in Safari.. I have around 2000 mails, but Mail shouldn't really be holding all the email headers in Memory for displaying anyway (between different Mailboxes).

safari and mail don't blip above about 5% cpu when in the background, for me, safari is idle unless it auto-reloads a page, mail is idle except for checking email every minute. i've had thousands of emails at a time, never made a difference. the only major app i know of that uses wayyy too much CPU when inactive is IE... it uses 20-30% cpu at all times.

So, you might have a problem somewhere, cause that's not typical...

paul

[Roger1]

My Peeves
Tibook- 1st gen, no cd burner. I have to find somebody to burn disk for me after I find what I need. Short wirless range.

PC, running XP Internet Explorer 6 crashes constantly. Drives me nuts. I told my wife to quit using it because I got tired of fixing it for her. She uses Netscape now, and I have almost no problems.
:)

[Snowy_River]

...the only major app i know of that uses wayyy too much CPU when inactive is IE...

Well, while it's not a major app, Canon's CanoScan Toolbox isn't very good in this area. Whether you're currently scanning something or not, whether the app is in the foreground or the background, it will use all available processor time...

[Mav451]

The CPU usage issue is probably both to do with the raw power of the CPU and the motherboard.

If you got a celeron, i don't care how much you overclock it, it just isn't the same as a 800fsb P4 (2.4ghz+). That said, if you already have that requirement satisfied, it may be a mobo issue. For example, i was playing around with the placement of my SB Live! card. I originally had it in the 5th PCI slot (at the bottom of the mobo).

iTunes, Yz Dock, and even Firefox (whenever there was Flash loaded) would consume 17-30% cpu.

Guess what? I tried moving SB Live! to the 3rd pci slot just for kicks.
It works. iTunes goes from 27% constant to 2-4%. Firefox stays at 3-4%.

Probably has something to do with the sharing of resources, IRQ junk, or other chipset related factors, but, yeah, this is a hardware example of a fix for high cpu usage. If you use a VIA board, good luck, cuz those are horrible for resource sharing--bring up the 686B Southbridge bug and anyone who used old school AMD Thunderbird/Palomino's will know about this.

*Btw, if IE6 is crashing, that leads me to think that even explorer.exe (the process for accessing folders) may also be at risk, which is very bad. IE crashes are abnormal and point to possible spyware/security compromises. This probably means a corrupted ntdll.dll which is VERY bad.

Solution? Format, and stick to Firefox and trusted applications.

[Mav451]

From my experience, I've found that OS X is MUCH more responsive than Windows...any version. Win 2000 and Win XP do not offer the multi-tasking capabilities that OS X offers. If some process is taking up a lot of resources, it pretty much locks up Windows for a bit, while OS X will let you still move around from app to app, which is very nice. Even if one application is locked up or spending a lot of time doing something, I can easily move over to another application and work there. About the only time I see something really interfering with other apps is if iTunes is running and it "hiccups" a time or two while something is running heavily in the background. I had a 350 MHz iMac which couldn't play CDs under OS 10.0, but 10.1 fixed the speed problems.



Not true.

I've had iTunes, Firefox, even IE crash on me. And yet, Counter-strike, Winamp, Nero, and Windows Media Player 9 can and ARE still running and operational! Maybe this is some strange urban myth that one irresponsive app can bring down XP, when it is quite untrue.

There's something called Task Manager that handles this.

*3 finger salute (haha); end process.*

Now if you're talking about explorer.exe crashing, then yes it will close all your explorer/folder windows and maybe that's an issue of responsiveness for you (I don't see how it is b/c only explore.exe RELATED windows close), but is extremely rare.

On the other hand, Macs have the similar problems, but Activity Monitor is NOT available from the 3-finger salute.

However, it does have the same "quit process" that the windows has. However, with my experiences, when Finder crashes means, DOCK becomes unresponsive, so if you don't have some sort of short cut to Activity Monitor, good luck trying to get your way out of a Finder crash.

Take the computer i'm typing on rite now (Dual 2G5, 512MB Ram, 10.3.2). I've had Safari crash, consequently bring down Finder. This is eerily similar too a "common" windows problem (more of a windows 98 thing than anything else). IE6 may drag down explorer with it sometimes, but the same thing for Apple? That's not really acceptable, but it has a cruel irony for all you zealots out there who decry the IE6 and explorer. :)

[edenwaith]

Not true.

I've had iTunes, Firefox, even IE crash on me. And yet, Counter-strike, Winamp, Nero, and Windows Media Player 9 can and ARE still running and operational! Maybe this is some strange urban myth that one irresponsive app can bring down XP, when it is quite untrue.

Take the computer i'm typing on rite now (Dual 2G5, 512MB Ram, 10.3.2). I've had Safari crash, consequently bring down Finder. This is eerily similar too a "common" windows problem (more of a windows 98 thing than anything else). IE6 may drag down explorer with it sometimes, but the same thing for Apple? That's not really acceptable, but it has a cruel irony for all you zealots out there who decry the IE6 and explorer. :)

To clarify myself, I never said that an application which is hogging resources in Windows crashes. I just said that it locks up the machine temporarily, and nothing else can be done until that particular process is done (assuming that it isn't deadlocked).

As for Safari crashing and taking Finder with it, I've never seen this before, but then, I use OmniWeb more often. I use Safari from time to time, but I cannot think of a specific time having seen it crash. OW5 is still in the beta stage, so I've seen it crash quite a few times, but that is why it is beta software.

[Koodauw]

What really bothers me the most is the fact that I don't have a G5......yet.

[taeclee99]

What bothers me the most is the fact that my recently purchased g5 does not turn on. A really expensive and heavy paperweight it is. (until it gets fixed that is).

[Kelson]

Alright....the current exchange rates have been fluctuating between 1.20$ - 1.30$ per Euro. This means that assuming a fair average of 1.25$ per Euro, your 400E discount is 500$....this is very simple math...please drive through....

- Kelson

Excuses excuses...

Apple *IS* screwing over international customers, full stop -esp. with the exchange rates. A perfect example - the US get the discount of $500 with a G5 + Display, whilst the discount in Europe is only 400 euros... WTF!!!!????!!!!

Ask any international customer... not to mention the 'US' only Mac offers... and the US only software (OK, so its getting better, extremely slowly)..

The UK is a soft target - even with cars - they are made in the UK and they end up being more expensive in the UK than mainland Europe - and the manufactuers have the nerve to say its due to Exchange Rates and Duty Taxes!!!

As I said, no wonder Apple have such a low market share..

[1macker1]

I hate having to reset Safari every week. Finder crashes, then screen goes blank, Finder then reappears **wtf**. This only happens when i'm moving several files from my desktop to a folder. Other than that, i'm A ok.

[Mord]

halo was unplayable in battle on a 667mhz tibook with 1gb of ram and a fast hd. i don't know how you are playing it on an ibook.

the ibook is unplesent to play with but possible all settings at rock bottom and quit all apps keep a clean HD and run mac janitor often (or the terminal commands) and repair disk permissions often. streamline the system

[Mav451]

edenwaith: Hey I think i figured out the problem with Safari/Finder...it was using 1.1 Safari :(

It seems the entire Applications folder is locked down (which would explain why I couldn't upgrade to 1.2 earlier). But anyway, they've updated, and the crashes have disappeared for the most part. The G5's in the library still KP pretty often though (even 1 out of 10 times is a LOT and unacceptable for a Mac). Maybe the BIOS-equivalent needs to be updated (firmware? ROM? or whatever it is).

[Urdam]

I agree

[wdlove]

What bothers me the most is the fact that my recently purchased g5 does not turn on. A really expensive and heavy paperweight it is. (until it gets fixed that is).

I'm very sorry to hear about you G5. I hope that by now it's fixed. ;)

[Urdam]

Maybe if they can update the PowerMac more then just once a year

[18thTomorrow]

Waiting isn't that bad, as long as the computer still feels responsive.

I agree with you there--on my windows machine things just stop happening...but when I'm waiting on my mac, I can tell whether it's really dead or I just need to be patient. I love that about my mac ;-)
Tani

[o1b2]

that they cant make me coffee and buy me cigarettes. And dont listen to my bs. ha ha

[cloud 9]

i'm, for now, a pc person, so it's windows that bugs me,
sometimes it's a little too slow for me...
writing cd's bugs the hell out of me, i just can't...it's stops in the middle of the writing process, or it doesn't start, whatever program i use...
ah and the dvd player sometimes hackles, i hate that too, especially when i use subtitles, dunno why...
and sometimes, windows freezes, when a program goes nuts, so i have to do a cold start

when i start my computer, it's makes this little noise, like wind, and that's it, i hear nothing more...so i'm okay with that...
and i got hijacked once, a big crash, and had to install everything all over again, once in 2 years, that's pretty good i think

and if i work on a mac, and i use messenger for mac, i want to see little pics too from mac users...so msn need to upgrade on that, me thinks....

[cloud 9]

*3 finger salute (haha); end process.*



that's so not true, if my ie crashes, i have to use that task manager for 10 times and i still can't get any response, i really really hate that...

and i can't get to my windows bar, for doing other apps, cause my entire screen freezes...

after some waiting, ie disappears and i have to close 10 windows with 'do you want microsoft to know about this error?' or something like that...

[narco]

Ever since I upgraded to OSX, I don't get many "lock ups", but I still get a lot of crashes. The thing I hate the most is that it doesn't TELL you WHY it crashed, just says "_______ has unexpectedly quit" -- no ****!

I also hate when Mail crashes, then all the mail you moved from your Inbox reappears and now you have doubles. iTunes also freezes up on me every once in a while -- it'll make my G5 painfully slow, then play a second of song every 5 minutes. Sometimes if I leave it alone for 30 minutes it'll go back to normal.

Other than that, OSX is the best.

.narco

[stevehaslip]

The thing that bugs me most about my computer at the moment is that IT CANNOT SLEEP! Its been driving me mad! Since the 10.3.5 update its messed it up and Apple haven't released a fix yet!! At the moment I have to shut down all the time and its getting on my nerves :mad:

[timsq]

You know, the people who ask for endless bits of advise before spending one minute researching their issue. All the people who treat you like a God until you want to bill them for their waste of your time. My compy works well and rarely lets me down. But I 've put $$$ and lots of time into making my machines purr and do my any whim. I guess the thing the bugs me the most is the amount of time and money it takes to have a nice system. So when I send you a bill, you'll know why. Volunteer support aside.

[o1b2]

Not enought hard drive space, I have way to many photos, and films and tap close to 1 tb off stuff, and looking at long big back up of it just never stops of buying and burning dvd's. if I had the cash I would get a sever like that.

[Blue Moon]

I have over 130000 songs organized in iTunes on a computer that also runs and creates files from Digital Performer, Soundtrack, Finale, and Photoshop Elements on a regular basis. I'm constantly teetering on the 500 MB mark with 60 GB worth of space. I do have an external Firewire 60 GB ABS drive but because I use the folder system in iTunes I can never have all my songs on my computer at once, at least not while also seeking to create my own song projects. This is a bummer man, this is a bummer. I know having 45 GB worth of songs to play at once should be enough...but that's not the point....its an organizational thing man. That's what I get for wanting my technology where ever I go...(Powerbook 800 mhz).

[wdlove]

I can't really blame my G4, because I have DSL. It bugs me when I click on something at a web site and I get the spinning beach ball.

[EMKoper]

Seems to happen to me OSX wide, but primarily in Safari... software seems unresponsive to mouse clicks on a regular basis. Mouse click... no response... click again, no response... click #3, no response....

Like the OS doen't trust me or thinks I am "miss clicking"... clicking on the background or title bar away from the control clears it up and next mouse click on target works fine. If anyone knows how to fix this, that would be great and you'd be my hero for solving/fixing my last remaining day-to-day OSX pet-peeve.

[macsrus]

I can't really blame my G4, because I have DSL. It bugs me when I click on something at a web site and I get the spinning beach ball.

:( Because its cool and I dont have one.... :(

[Converted2Truth]

On the other hand, Macs have the similar problems, but Activity Monitor is NOT available from the 3-finger salute.

Actually Macs do have the three finger salute. Instead of CTRL+ALT+DEL(which actually is available on a mac through a free program written by ambrosia), you can press OPT+APL+ESC... that brings up the force quit menu, no matter what app was in fore-front. I've used it many times to relaunch the finder. If you want a true windows three finger salute, get ambrosia's freebie (called escape pod) HERE (http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/freebies/)

[bviz2]

The lack of a quality and reasonably robust office suite (mainly word processor and spreadsheet) that isn't from Microsoft !!!!

One that is compatible with the Microsoft products and is robust enough to handle writing several hundred page books with solid spell checking and grammar checking. .... (resisting urge to list more) .... Sadly, we haven't found any of the alternatives robust enough and/or stable enough.

I keep hoping the rumors of Apple releasing something are true.

[Converted2Truth]

What bugs me the most is the lack of retail video cards. Apple makes deals with ATI/NVIDIA so that cards are CTO/BTO only... forcing you to buy a new computer if you really want that card. ATI releases retail cards occasionally, but they aren't new. Where's the X800? Damn, mac gaming is frustrating.

[1macker1]

what bugs me is that there is a option in iTunes, where the music playback level can be adjusted to be equal. This feature does not work. Nothing worse than going for a low to a unexpected high.

[macsrus]

The one button touch pad on my Power Book

[danviento]

My biggest beef:
HP's printer driver not working anything like it used to. It's practically impossible to print anything anymore. I think my comnputer isn't running the cron scripts like it used to before I got the update to OS 10.3.5.5, so I'm having to look into that. Other than that, yay apple, boo Windblows.

[Doug_in_the_UK]

What bugs me ? The constant crashing of this totally unstable G5. Wish I still had my iMac. :mad:

[Doga]

Well, I'm happy that my G5 is totally stable. What a pleasure this thing is to use; it runs like a champ.

The only thing that kind of bugs me about it is that when headphones are plugged into the front jack, the sound-out jack on the back of the machine doesn't mute. I've heard this is a Rev A problem but I don't know if all of them are affected. But if this is the most significant problem I'll have to put up with, that's fine by me. It's easy enough to mute or turn off my Creatures when I want to listen through headphones.

[macaddictann]

Mine would be that it's so slow. But then it's 550 MHz, so I guess that's just the way it is. Drives me nuts. I hate going into the Help menu; I swear I can go make dinner while waiting for it to load. And Dreamweaver on here? HA! I could make a 4-course dinner for 20 people while I'm waiting for it to write code.

The computer's dirty, too, but that's not Apple's fault, heh. ;) Then there are these weird things that happen sometimes; maybe it's more a maintenance issue. Oh, and this can't be right... Finder doesn't save my view preferences? Maybe something's wrong. I have to change it to Home and Column every time. And well, that's it, I think.

[Mertzen]

Even though I modded most of the fans in my QS02 it still is pretty loud .. one day it has to go water cooled..

[slughead]

By the way, if anyone has cox for their ISP, I'd strongly recommend using their spam filter.

It kicks the crap out of my bayesian*popfile server.

It's so good I just changed out Mail's junk filter with a filter to catch the false-positives from cox.. and I've get to get any.

[slughead]

that's so not true, if my ie crashes, i have to use that task manager for 10 times and i still can't get any response, i really really hate that...

and i can't get to my windows bar, for doing other apps, cause my entire screen freezes...

after some waiting, ie disappears and i have to close 10 windows with 'do you want microsoft to know about this error?' or something like that...

try logging out next time, if you can.. seems to do a lot of stuff task manager alone wont

[mnstr_trd_sd]

i hate the way the little door for the the superdrive sometime does not shut all the way on the g5


thats it :)

[wdlove]

What bugs me ? The constant crashing of this totally unstable G5. Wish I still had my iMac. :mad:

You should call AppleCare and see if they can't diagnose your G5's problem. That doesn't sound like normal operation. :(

[Windowlicker]

(i use a pc...)

the fact that i run windows. osx is so much more refined than xp. and despite what all the pro-windows fanboys would have you believe:
WINDOWS XP DOES CRASH.

sometimes it's bad ram, sometimes it's heat. it won't lock up because a program goes nuts, but it still happens.

i also don't like the noise... i can't find a good power supply that's quiet. i have quiet case fans, quiet hard drive, quiet gpu, and quiet cpu... but the power supply is just too loud.

if I were a pro-windows fanboy, I would solve your problem like this:
It's keeping noise?? What? I don't have any of your problems.. Why don't you get water cooling? that helps for everything and your computer will turn into a moon rocket! Also remember to put some blue, green or red leds inside it... looks cool.

sorry for trolling ;D

[YoYoMac]

The thing that bugs me the most about my computer is that its NOT a MAC.

[1user]

Viruses, worms and hackers. :mad:

[hob]

Viruses, worms and hackers. :mad:

Ummm... get a mac? :D

Hob

[dsharits]

Viruses, worms and hackers. :mad:

Poor guy. Well, do I need to tell you that you've com to the right place? Here's a good reference for you: www.apple.com/switch
I hope that takes care of your virus, worm and hacker problem!

Daniel

[sjpetry]

My Mac is very close to perfect.

[wdlove]

My Mac is very close to perfect.

So I see that by your profile that you do have one problem not enough memory. How much are you going to purchase?

[verozov]

i love my eMac and wouldn't trade it for anything... except a faster mac i geuss... if i had to pick something it would be the lack of bass on these eMac speakers...