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Freakin' pinwheel of death on new alumibook w/4GB Ram. WHY?!?!
- Thread starter mac-a-delic
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So...
Did anybody ever find a solution? I'm a recent purchaser with this problem and its more than annoying! I'd appreciate suggestions, since the Genius Bar was unable to solve it. Thanks!
Did anybody ever find a solution? I'm a recent purchaser with this problem and its more than annoying! I'd appreciate suggestions, since the Genius Bar was unable to solve it. Thanks!
you guys need to learn how computers work. just like someone said, you can have a ton of RAM but thats not going to stop it from filling up. One of the reasons OS X is so great is because it will use all of the ram you have.
Did you ever getting around to inspecting your Firefox add-ons to see if any of them are memory/resource hogs? Like several here suggested, Flash is a common culprit in causing beach balls. Even javascript can cause beach balls, especially if an infinite loop is encountered. The new v4 Safari has some big improvements in javascript handling, so you might be better off using Safari v4 -- at least for those web sites that are causing beach balls under Firefox.
After a clean install and updates to Mac software only (and no 3rd-party apps installed) its still doing it just while browsing with Safari. There's no way this requires 4GB of ram. I can just be reading a page and the stupid thing comes up for 20-30 seconds. I'm starting the think the hard drive is bad.
I also have the pinwheel of death often when loading webpages. Using the new Safari 4 beta. I feel like I noticed it after switching but not sure. I also installed a new HDD around the same time, so I'm not sure. I used a system restore that's been around the block lol. I'll prob do a clean install once snow leopard gets released.
This^^^
I use it all the time but FF does from time to time blow up - it's just about the only thing that does for me. I'd switch to Safari or Omniweb but I rely heavily on Gmail and all the offline functions in Google Apps.
I think there's something to this...I am on a stock 2.4 UMBP and I'll have a few things open (Safari, iTunes, Word etc.) and I get the pinwheel. My last Mac was a 2.16 MacBook with 2gb DDR2 Ram and I expected to be blown away with the performance difference of the MBP and it's faster Ram, processor and FSB. It's faster but i haven't noticed the huge performances increases I thought would come.
I do plan on upgrading the HDD to a SSD when a cheaper 200+ gb is released but all that said, I think there's something to the DDR3 RAM - not sure what, but it's really the biggest change from the last generation of notebooks which didn't seem to have this problem?
It's the Flash player.
It's happening on my G5 quad with a Quadro 512mb video card and my new 2.4ghz Macbook Aluminum with four gigs of ram.
Apple needs to patch Flash for the Macs... it's rendering our machines obsolete before their time. It is a serious problem, think about it. Four years ago, my PPC machines ran flawlessly with one gig of ram or thereabouts.
Now, faster processors, tons more ram, better video cards and we are beachballing? It is the Adobe Flash problem. Apple needs to do a software update and stop benefitting from the forced Mac sales to us on this fake obselesence.
Oh, and it WILL NOT be acceptable when Snow Leopard comes out for Apple to say -- "we fixed it in SLeopard, we can't be responsible for older machines anymore, it's been three years since the switch to Intel"
because this is obviously a firmware/software/patch issue. Apple needs to realize that we have overcome their former 'hands off our hardware" problem -- I mean I remember physically shaking and perspiring the first time I had to open my Titanium Powerbook to put ram into it -- I was so scared of the Apple warranty and implied 'hands off" dictum that Apple had over their hardware.
This is a FLASH patch problem. I love Apple but resent having to upgrade every three months in hopes of overcoming beachballs.
It's happening on my G5 quad with a Quadro 512mb video card and my new 2.4ghz Macbook Aluminum with four gigs of ram.
Apple needs to patch Flash for the Macs... it's rendering our machines obsolete before their time. It is a serious problem, think about it. Four years ago, my PPC machines ran flawlessly with one gig of ram or thereabouts.
Now, faster processors, tons more ram, better video cards and we are beachballing? It is the Adobe Flash problem. Apple needs to do a software update and stop benefitting from the forced Mac sales to us on this fake obselesence.
Oh, and it WILL NOT be acceptable when Snow Leopard comes out for Apple to say -- "we fixed it in SLeopard, we can't be responsible for older machines anymore, it's been three years since the switch to Intel"
because this is obviously a firmware/software/patch issue. Apple needs to realize that we have overcome their former 'hands off our hardware" problem -- I mean I remember physically shaking and perspiring the first time I had to open my Titanium Powerbook to put ram into it -- I was so scared of the Apple warranty and implied 'hands off" dictum that Apple had over their hardware.
This is a FLASH patch problem. I love Apple but resent having to upgrade every three months in hopes of overcoming beachballs.
Hmm makes sense. Is it just me or is anybody else like over Flash? I hear all this talk from the iPhone crowd (of which I'm also one) crying out for Apple to put Flash on the iPhone and I'm like NOOOOOO! I don't like it on the computer; I don't want it on my phone--I would much rather see Java used than Flash!
SO, how do you disable Flash on OSX and will doing this affect anything else other than Safari/Internet apps?
My hunch, it's the RAM.
I just bought a 2.0 Aluminum Macbook with 2GB of RAM. Everything was working fine until I upgraded to 4GB Crucial RAM. Now the computer refuses to wake from sleep (or it does and the screen remains black/off). I've noticed a lot of pinwheels in iTunes and Safari. Didn't notice those problems with 2GB. I tried the 4GB on another computer, works great. Did a memtest, everything checks out peachy.
The new Macbooks do not like RAM upgrades with 3rd party RAM.
I just bought a 2.0 Aluminum Macbook with 2GB of RAM. Everything was working fine until I upgraded to 4GB Crucial RAM. Now the computer refuses to wake from sleep (or it does and the screen remains black/off). I've noticed a lot of pinwheels in iTunes and Safari. Didn't notice those problems with 2GB. I tried the 4GB on another computer, works great. Did a memtest, everything checks out peachy.
The new Macbooks do not like RAM upgrades with 3rd party RAM.
The only crash reports I have had to send to apple in the last year have to do with Flash. What are they doing with the reports if they can't program a fix?
my experience
I just bought a new Aluminum macbook recently. I upgraded to 4 GB RAM from OWC, and no problems with this third party RAM. I downloaded flash and use it in Safari 4 Beta. I have so far (crossing fingers) not had the spinning beachball issues mentioned here. Because I was upgrading from a PowerPC mac, I was concerned about apps not running correctly if I moved them over from my old Mac using migration assistant. I only migrated my user account and files, and installed my main apps from scratch. I think this may have limited any software problems I might have had.
I just bought a new Aluminum macbook recently. I upgraded to 4 GB RAM from OWC, and no problems with this third party RAM. I downloaded flash and use it in Safari 4 Beta. I have so far (crossing fingers) not had the spinning beachball issues mentioned here. Because I was upgrading from a PowerPC mac, I was concerned about apps not running correctly if I moved them over from my old Mac using migration assistant. I only migrated my user account and files, and installed my main apps from scratch. I think this may have limited any software problems I might have had.
I'm having this issue too, but only when downloading (no matter what torrent client I'm using). Sooner or later the pinwheel appears and everything freezes when trying to open/close any program. The only solution is the power button. And yes, this is happening on a wireless connection, and I believe it is the network driver that is causing the crashes. It is very annoying. I have to use my old computer to download, since it's almost impossible to get my downloads done when I have to reboot the ****ing computer 10 times.
It doesn't always happens, and it happens more often when downloading more than one torrent. I think both downloading speed and number of connections is the most important factors. And for some reason, the system very likely crashes serveral times if it crashes a first time.
Apple marketing aside, there aren't any huge performance increases to be had. The most significant in recent years was the PPC to Intel switch. Since then, everything's been incremental. I have a 2.16 MB with 2gb of ram, and I'm not "upgrading" until quad cores are standard. It's much simpler this way.
For what it's worth, I had this problem until I stopped using Safari entirely. Now that I use Firefox exclusively, I almost never get any beachballing. Not sure what about Safari was causing the problem, but I'll wait for an update to try using it again.
This browser war has been going on for ever and nobody seems to win because they are both great browsers for different reasons. I have them both open and have very little problems with my early 08 2.5 mbp.