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An unpopular view, i'm sure...

M

movabi

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 24, 2002
85
0
Iowa City, IA
This a reply from another forum here at macrumors that i just did, but i thought it might be relevant as a new thread here...

Thumbs down Well.. this is my perspective on Apple state of affairs...
I keep having crashes for almost every Apple app. The following is a blurb i sent to Apple in a crash report for Safari....

"SAD... Very sad. I am removing safari from my dock and replacing it with Firefox. I didn't think i'd ever be so underwhelmed with an OS experience ever... Tiger has F A I L E D to hook me. It broke my Classic environment. So now i can't even use 'one of a kind' apps that have no OS X equivalent because talented programers are developing software just to make your OS work. Disappointed. I run more 3rd party apps @ anywhere from $5 upwards just to give me functionality that should have already been part of the OS... Fruitmenu, Windowshade, FontCard, Desktop Manger, Default Folder, DragThing, ASM, iClock, Speed Download, DragonDrop (remember OS 9 tabbed Finder windows), Path Finder, Synergy, Window Dragon, PopCharacter, FinderIcon, LockPop, Konfabulator, PicturePop... And now, i have to add Firefox to the list of apps that you should be excelling at. BOO! I won't even mention Shapeshifter, because its obvious that you don't want your users to have any customization or options."

I failed to include finder freezes and beachballs just opening folders with large amounts of files... It takes less time to copy the folder and files to another drive than to actually move the files from one folder to another on the same drive... general kernelpanics (with absolutely no nice gray curtain or message)... machine lockups (i mean hard lockups) using Spotlight for long periods of time... I feel like i'm in pre X days.

As for Microsoft Windows... Vista... whatever. I just wish Microsoft would move faster and give Apple a better incentive to change.

I don't have time to screw around with bugs and wait on the Finder and other parts of the OS. I photograph, design type, themes, graphics and video. I ideate and create. I'd rather do that than fight with my OS. At this point in the game, I just need results. I'm not a programmer (although, sometimes i wish I was and could) I'm just a dumb designer... I've always been a visual person and learner and that's why I fell in love with Macintosh.
Click to expand...

There are countless other quirks and omissions that other people have articulated better... Daring Fireball, Ars Technica etc...

The thing I failed to articulate is this... What is the future of OS X? Apple could enlighten us a bit on what the future and their vision of the future of operating systems will be.
 
Difficult to reply since this is out of context. Maybe include a link to the original thread. :)

Remember the uproar when it was announced Tiger would include widgets? Do you think, if Apple incorporated all these cheap shareware programs, the developers would remain very loyal?


movabi said:
What is the future of OS X? Apple could enlighten us a bit on what the future and their vision of the future of operating systems will be.
Click to expand...


And give Microsoft a head start?... :p
 
I agree with a couple of the statements in the long quotation. But I don't think Apple would be wise to include all these 3rd party apps in their OS. Like mad jew said, it would only discourage developers.

But I have been frustrated lately (past 2 or 3 weeks) with the stability of Tiger. I've had to do a couple hard restarts and many more app crashed than I'm used to (esp. iPhoto). I'm just used to not having to deal with this kind of stuff. I hope 10.4.3 fixes some of this stuff.
 
All this talk about Tiger absolutely dumbfounds me. I've been using it on my powerbooks and emac at work ever since it was available and I've not had a problem at all. no crashes, no hangs, nothing unforseen at all.

Spotlight, automator, dashboard, some classic - they all work wonderfully and I use them all the time. I use illustrator, photoshop, keynote, word, excel, itunes, flash, dreaweaver, safari, firefox, iphoto, ichat etc constantly as well as regularly game and nada in the way of bad things has happened....

Perhaps I'm just a lucky one then.
 
I really think you're crazy..... I haven't had my computer crash for like 9 months.....

Maybe you need some RAM? Remember you can't ask to do video editing on a system that can't handle it. No software will run underpowered......

This might not be your problem but I don't understand how you can say such things about Apple software.......
 
I've been hearing of other people having the same problems as me so I know I'm not alone. iPhoto crashes while saving changes... iDisk causing Finder problems... these are the main two... oh yeah and safari quitting by itself...

I don't doubt that some people are problem free, but there are quite a few of us out here with issues (albeit somewhat minor issues) as well.
 
Hmmm....

Heb1228 said:
I've been hearing of other people having the same problems as me so I know I'm not alone. iPhoto crashes while saving changes... iDisk causing Finder problems... these are the main two... oh yeah and safari quitting by itself...

I don't doubt that some people are problem free, but there are quite a few of us out here with issues (albeit somewhat minor issues) as well.
Click to expand...


Ever considered the plethora of third party apps you have installed MIGHT have something to do with your system instability?
Are they even ready to work with Tiger?
And don't even get me started on your "it broke classic" complaint. Move on just like the rest of us...OS 9 is long dead.
 
appleretailguy said:
Ever considered the plethora of third party apps you have installed MIGHT have something to do with your system instability?
Are they even ready to work with Tiger?
And don't even get me started on your "it broke classic" complaint. Move on just like the rest of us...OS 9 is long dead.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice but the list you are referring to was posted by someone else. I don't use classic.
 
I just noticed Konfabulator in the list of shareware made by movabi. A genuine question: what does this offer in Tiger? I never used it in previous versions but from what I've gathered, Dashboard kind of makes it redundant.

Oh, and does anyone else think movabi might be more suited to Linux? It's much more customisable than OSX and you can run it on arguably much better/cheaper hardware. :)
 
mad jew said:
I just noticed Konfabulator in the list of shareware made by movabi. A genuine question: what does this offer in Tiger? I never used it in previous versions but from what I've gathered, Dashboard kind of makes it redundant.
Click to expand...
I've heard of a few people that still use it because either they like the widget choices or because they want a widget or two to stay on the desktop instead of disappearing with dashboard.
 
.Andy said:
All this talk about Tiger absolutely dumbfounds me. I've been using it on my powerbooks and emac at work ever since it was available and I've not had a problem at all. no crashes, no hangs, nothing unforseen at all.

Spotlight, automator, dashboard, some classic - they all work wonderfully and I use them all the time. I use illustrator, photoshop, keynote, word, excel, itunes, flash, dreaweaver, safari, firefox, iphoto, ichat etc constantly as well as regularly game and nada in the way of bad things has happened....

Perhaps I'm just a lucky one then.
Click to expand...
Same experience here, though I have had two strange/minor problems:

1) Finder is slow...not as slow as described by the OP...but it does take a frustratingly long time to open folders with large numbers of files in them.

2) Weird deal on the iMac where hot corners no longer activate screensaver. I can set them up to activate the other stuff (exposé and Dashboard)...but when I choose screensaver, nothing happens.
 
stevietheb said:
1) Finder is slow...not as slow as described by the OP...but it does take a frustratingly long time to open folders with large numbers of files in them.
Click to expand...
Slow finder is one of my complaint as well. And have you tried adjusting the criteria in Smart Folders? Some things I change I have to wait 5 minutes for the beach ball to quit spinning. No exaggeration! But regular spotlight searches work perfectly. Doesn't make sense to me.
 
Heb1228 said:
Slow finder is one of my complaint as well. And have you tried adjusting the criteria in Smart Folders? Some things I change I have to wait 5 minutes for the beach ball to quit spinning. No exaggeration! But regular spotlight searches work perfectly. Doesn't make sense to me.
Click to expand...
One of the first things I did after booting up Tiger was create 5 Smart folders (that still reside on my desktop...they are quite useful)...it was sluggish, but not 5 mins! That sucks...

It seems to me that when setting up a Smart Folder it would be better if you could setup the criteria and the have it start searching when you hit "Save." That way you can just set the criteria without having it search after each change.

Spotlight rocks my world though!
 
I use my Macs for video editing, graphics, web design, DVD authoring, etc as well as regular everyday stuff like internet, email, IM, iPhoto and Office. I basically never have any problems with either Panther or Tiger (I use both daily, Tiger more than Panther at this point). The Finder rarely locks up, moving files on the same drive is instantaneous, copying them between drives is also very quick. Linux gets touted as being incredibly stable, but I've had way more trouble with KDE on linux (Kubuntu and Xandros) and fvwm on Solaris than I have with Aqua on OS X as far as general stability goes. Safari has also been a very good browser for me. Firefox is great, but for me personally it has zero advantages compared to Safari (and a few minor disadvantages). OS X is by far the most efficient and user-friendly OS I've used (I'm a switcher from Windows, and a Linux user too).

I sympathize with your problems, I remember the same kind of feeling when I used Windows. However, I wonder if maybe there's something wrong with your hardware that's causing you trouble. Frequent kernel panics and general lockups are generally a symptom of a hardware problem. It could also be a corrupt OS X install, but it's not a general problem with OS X because not everyone experiences the problems you're having.
 
mduser63 said:
I sympathize with your problems, I remember the same kind of feeling when I used Windows. However, I wonder if maybe there's something wrong with your hardware that's causing you trouble. Frequent kernel panics and general lockups are generally a symptom of a hardware problem.
Click to expand...
Haha, sorry I really didn't mean to make it sound that bad! The issues I'm having are no where near PC-type problems. Ive just come to expect pretty much glitch-free computing with Panther. These are minor annoyances. I've only had one kernel panic and maybe 2 or 3 lockups since installing Tiger on its release date, thats just way more than I'm used to.

EDIT: But I am still convinced there is a bug in iPhoto that needs to be fixed! :)
 
To the OP - are you sure that your RAM is OK? I read an interesting article a while ago which suggested that RAM can go 'bad' and start corrupting files without you noticing too much aside from the odd freeze. It suggested though that when you do an upgrade when many of the System OS files go through your RAM, they may become corrupted which is why there are more calls of x.x.x borked my system than 'oh, my RAM suddenly went bad'.

Tiger really isn't that unstable for the majority of users; there's more likely some problem making it so on your computer (not that it makes you feel much better). Try running Memtest and give your RAM a good going over just to be sure and then try reinstalling just incase you have corrupt something. It may take some time but if you're losing that much in crashes etc, it may prove well spent.

Lastly, you say that there are lots of problems in the Finder and copying things over. Are you working on a network where Spotlight is perhaps trying to index remote drives? That would explain quite a lot...
 
I have a fairly clean OS install but I've noticed that since 10.4.2 I've had my first tiger kernel panic and lots more beach ball fun.

Prior to 10.4.2 I only had regular Safari crashes to put up with, now it's a lot worse.

I can only hope that 10.4.3 fixes these problems.
 
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