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I'm going to "Unexpectedly Quit" using Macs!

jimjiminyjim

jimjiminyjim

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 24, 2003
441
37
Canada
An operating system that gets touted as the most stable operating system around starts to get a reputation. I don't recall ever having to manually restart this computer, probably thanks to problems being local to individual applications. I'm used to that. I expect it. And now I expect my applications to "just work." I can sorta understand if non-Apple software "unexpectedly quites" when it's safari, appleworks, or mail, I'm less forgiving. Not only had the next generation operating system bring an incredible find feature and metadata system (whoohoooO!) it had better bring us closer to an end of unexpected quiting.

Ok... now that rant paragraph is over. What are your experiences with "unexpectedly quit" dialogue boxes? Is there something you've found (a particular system setting or third party system setting, for example) that causes significantly more problems? Is there something I can do to stop these tireless dialogue boxes? Sometimes it seems like I need a popup blocker just to stop them!
 
jimjiminyjim said:
An operating system that gets touted as the most stable operating system around starts to get a reputation. I don't recall ever having to manually restart this computer, probably thanks to problems being local to individual applications. I'm used to that. I expect it. And now I expect my applications to "just work." I can sorta understand if non-Apple software "unexpectedly quites" when it's safari, appleworks, or mail, I'm less forgiving. Not only had the next generation operating system bring an incredible find feature and metadata system (whoohoooO!) it had better bring us closer to an end of unexpected quiting.

Ok... now that rant paragraph is over. What are your experiences with "unexpectedly quit" dialogue boxes? Is there something you've found (a particular system setting or third party system setting, for example) that causes significantly more problems? Is there something I can do to stop these tireless dialogue boxes? Sometimes it seems like I need a popup blocker just to stop them!
Click to expand...
If this were normal behavior for MacOS X, Apple would have been out of business decades ago. The inescapeable conclusion is that you or one of your friends screwed-up things on your computer. It is up to you to fix it. We may be able to help if you tell us what you did.
 
Last time anything crashed in any sense on my computer: At least two weeks ago.

Not to mention, if it's non-Apple software that's unexpectedly quitting, that's their fault and not Apple's. It's Apple's operating system that makes sure that funny-actin' application is not bringing down the whole system.
 
I just had my first "Unexpectedly Quit" with mail tonight. It really surprised me. Oh well... :( Not sure what happened.

How often does this occur?
 
The only app I get Unexpectedly Quit on is Safari, and it's on a site that causes it to Unexpectedly Quit. Yes, consistently - every time I load that site, there it goes.
 
My Favorite Unexpected Quitting

I have to say that my favorite was Netscape (on OS9). Every time I'd quit the application, I'd get a "Netscape has unexpectedly quit" message.

It wasn't unexpected to me. I did just choose "Quit" from the File Menu.

I run into them every day or two, but I just accept that as my punishment for running OSX on a machine that wasn't built for it.
 
Only programs that quit on me are Flash mx '04 and Dreamweaver mx '04. Other than that I don't usually have issues.
 
hcuar said:
and I do that how?
Click to expand...

The easiest way, if you have Panther is open /Applications/Utilites/Console -> Click Logs -> Click the ~/Library/Logs/ twisty -> CrashReporter twisty -> voila.

If you have Jaguar, open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and type:

cd ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter
ls
more name_of_crashlog

And now that you see them, you learn to interpret them.
 
The only "unexpectedly quit" i have had is a few days back, with a program called voodoopad lite.
I had safari, mail, msn messenger, ichat, terminal (folding), preview (with a rather large pdf), neooffice/j and voodoopad lite open at the one time, and worked out that the reason was that i was kinda running out of ram (I have 512, and about 508 of it was in use).
 
I go months without an Unexpected Quit but I'm fanatical about repairing permissions after I install new software and making certain that the volume structure is stable.

I've found that most problems are caused by applications accessing memory incorrectly. It's amazing how much software is not checked thoroughly for these kind of errors. I was using Borland CodeGuard back in the mid-1990s to detect and correct them.

Hopefully, more companies will use quality checking tools in the future.
 
I've also had a few problems with Safari and Mail "unexpectedly" quitting. Sometimes Mail does what someone mentioned Netscape used to do, say it unexpectedly quit after you actually select quit. Hopefully these things will be a lot better in Tiger, but that's a long wait.
 
What are your experiences with "unexpectedly quit" dialogue boxes? ...
Click to expand...
Well, the last app that crashed on me was on the first of August (2004). It was GoLive (an application I use pretty much daily). Other apps require going back even further... Create's last crash was in July of 2004 (pre-release copy, sent the developer the logs to have the problem fixed). Others:

  • Adobe Acrobat 5- 10/03/03
    Adobe LiveMotion 2- 03/14/04
    Adobe Photoshop 7- 08/26/03
    Adobe ImageReady 7- never
    AppleWorks 6- 03/06/03
    Curator- 05/15/2003
    Mail- 07/16/04
    PStill- 05/12/04
    RBrowserLite- 05/01/03
    Safari- 04/01/04
    TimeEqualsMoney- 02/09/03
Most of those have only crashed once or twice (since September 2002).

For me, an app crashing is a really odd event. And my system going down would be quite a cause for alarm (specially as my current uptime is at 117 days).


yellow said:
The easiest way, if you have Panther is open /Applications/Utilites/Console -> Click Logs -> Click the ~/Library/Logs/ twisty -> CrashReporter twisty -> voila.

If you have Jaguar, open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and type:
Click to expand...
Ummm... why would you use the Terminal in Jaguar and not the Console for this?

Or better yet, just look at the logs in the Apple System Profiler. It should display the last three logs for any applications which have crashed.

It seems like an odd choice to send someone to the Terminal to do what a number of GUI apps are designed to do.
 
This past week, everytime Safari fails to load a webpage, it "unexpectingly quits". I ran DiskWarrior and reparied permissions under Disk Utility, but no go. I believe it started after downloading the last Security Update.
 
RacerX said:
Ummm... why would you use the Terminal in Jaguar and not the Console for this?
Click to expand...


Ummmmm.... because that wasn't supported in the Jaguar Console.app like it is in the Panther Console.app. Not everything has to be GUIfied for your safety.
 
IE 5.2 keeps quitting on me *a lot*.
Dreamweaver MX occasionally.
Eudora occasionally when I send large messages to lots of recipients (20+).

I vaguely suspect the IE crashes might be an incompatibility with DoubleCommand which I use to de-activate the CapsLock key, but I'm not sure at all.
 
I canot stress it enough, unless you have desperate need to use IE, as in Enterprise software that doesn't support anything else ( :rolleyes: ), do not use IE. It hasn't been updated since 2003-06-16. It's terrible behavior cannot be blamed on the Mac OS. Do yourself a favor and move to something more modern/current like Safari, Camino, Mozilla, or FireFox.
 
QuickTime Player Unexpectedly Quit...Again

QuickTime Player is the application that "unexpectedly quits" on me the most. It only does it when I try to play certain MIDI files, and it isn't consistent. I filed a bug report, but it was closed because Apple couldn't reproduce the behavior I was experiencing. It never quits on me when I'm playing movies or MP3s, but it does lock up the whole computer temporarily for about 3 seconds sometimes when playing an MP3. It's highly annoying, and I have no idea what is causing it.
 
I've had a few "unexpected quits" with some third-party apps (DVD Attache comes to mind), but nothing of any real frequency. Even if it happened once a week, it's still better than back in the os9 days when it happened with almost every application :D
 
"Unexpected Quit" - no Apple apps

My experience with Panther 10.3.5 and the dreaded "unexpected quit" of a program has been limited to NisusWriter Express 2.0. I am inclined to believe the Nisus team has additional work ahead on optimizing the performance of their OSX word processor.

The real strength of MacOSX surfaces when the operating system continues on unfazed while an app under construction by the developers bombs out.

All Apple applications, including Safari, iPhoto, Quicktime Pro, have run virtually flawlessly on a B&W G3. This G3 has been hot-rodded to provide acceptable performance while waiting for Apple and IBM to push the PowerMac G5 line to rev. C or rev. D status.

With the exception of NisusWriter Express, all other 3rd party OSX applications have also run flawlessly on my G3.
 
Since I downloaded firefox with the new security update, i've had two unexpected quits. That's just this afternoon!
 
Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Pro HD when you batch export. If you don't have things rendered before you trying exporting, it gives you an unexpected quit. It really sucks too.

DVDwannabe
 
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