Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

new powerbook crashed the 2nd thing I did with it!!!

motulist

motulist

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 2, 2003
4,236
611
I just got a brand spankin new 15" powerbook and it's gorgeous. One of the main reasons I got is it I wanted the stability of OS X which I couldn't run on my old mac. The second real thing I tried to do with it was play a vcd. I open up the quicktime player, select the movie and then... beachball. I go to the finder to waste some time. I click on the qt player in the dock, and it dosen't switch to it. I command tab to it and it switches, but the beachball is there. I force quit it. It accepts the command but does not force quit, it remains opened. try again same thing. try to restart. the finder and all apps quit but it comes back instantly, it does not restart. I go to shut down, it quits everything and gives me the shutdown spinning thing, forever. finally I have to hold down the power button for a few seconds to force it to shut down! wtf! One of the main reasons I bought a new comp was for the stability of OS X! I feel robbed. btw, this bug is fully repeatable. I had to vent a little as I do feel kind of lied to and swindled.

Josh
 
This is not the OS crashing, this is quicktime crashing. It's possible that the vcd you're trying to play is an unsupported file type by quicktime. Go download VLC for OS X to play VCD's. I switched to a 1 ghz 17 in. imac in Feb. and since then have purchased a 12" rev. B powerbook and my windows pc has been reduced to playing games...

VIVA LA MACINTOSH! :D
 
Originally posted by bpd115
This is not the OS crashing, this is quicktime crashing. It's possible that the vcd you're trying to play is an unsupported file type by quicktime. Go download VLC for OS X to play VCD's. I switched to a 1 ghz 17 in. imac in Feb. and since then have purchased a 12" rev. B powerbook and my windows pc has been reduced to playing games...

VIVA LA MACINTOSH! :D
Click to expand...
;-)

And motulist, try mplayer. It plays litteraly everything. ;-)
 
It's true the app did crash. But then that crashed app prevented me from shutting down, or ejecting the disc and who knows what else. And when I went to shut down and I got the shuting down screen forever, that IS a system level crash. I understand that apps crash even in os x, but they were supposed to not effect the rest of the computer. Or at least that's the way they advertised it.

Josh
 
Originally posted by motulist
It's true the app did crash. But then that crashed app prevented me from shutting down, or ejecting the disc and who knows what else. And when I went to shut down and I got the shuting down screen forever, that IS a system level crash. I understand that apps crash even in os x, but they were supposed to not effect the rest of the computer. Or at least that's the way they advertised it.

Josh
Click to expand...

Yeah... that's usually the case.

As I recall, VCD's actually aren't well supported under OS X by itself.... so u may have hit upon a strange file/os issue with quicktime.

Regardless... sorry for the bad first impression. I would recommended getting VLC (Videolan.org) and trying that before you get too down.

Overall, OS X is quite stable.

arn
 
Granted I only own one VCD, but it plays perfectly in QuickTime in Panther. Jaguar on the other hand won't touch it.

And if it makes you feel any better, my mum's brand new Dell laptop lasted less than an hour before it crashed. It then decided not to boot. It took me 40 minutes to get it going again!
 
Originally posted by motulist
It's true the app did crash. But then that crashed app prevented me from shutting down, or ejecting the disc and who knows what else. And when I went to shut down and I got the shuting down screen forever, that IS a system level crash. I understand that apps crash even in os x, but they were supposed to not effect the rest of the computer. Or at least that's the way they advertised it.

Josh
Click to expand...

I would be careful about blaming the OS for this. I've seen this behavior all to often in Windows. 90% of the time you can end a process successfully but on those rare occasions where the app is a royal PITA it will just sit there. One good example is Lotus Notes. It does not like being end tasked. It all depends on the app and how cooperative it wants to be with the OS.
 
Are running 10.3 or 10.2?

If 10.3 you should report it to apple.
They do fix these things.
Just tell them the VCD your playing (trying to play), and what happens.

You can tell them at the OSX feedback page on thier website.
 
let's not rule out a lemon computer. My brother's FP imac crashed and would not even power up again minutes after being turned on for the first time. The machine was simply broken... (so we took it back)
 
I dont think it's the hardware. So far with my limited use of the machine in these past 3 days, this is the only crash I've come across so far. Hopefully it stays that way! As for reporting the error to apple, I like that idea. Perhaps some good can come from my misfourtune.

Now let me give the positive feedback. All in all this powerbook is pretty darn sweet. Fast as a rocket, though I have yet to give it anything intesive to do. The screen is beautiful, no white spots (yet) or dead pixels. Infact the screen is capable of going so bright that I dont run it at the maximum brightness even when running on ac. It's an incredible machine, I think I just believed the hype too much so I was diappointed when it didn't really attain the performance of it's press. But when does any product ever live up to it's press releases?

Motulist
 
and oh yeah, this is a brand new computer so it came with 10.3 pre-installed
 
Funny thing is when I got my TiBook 500 almost three years ago, it crashed on the registration/setup assistant. I found out just last month that the base memory chip was bad and had been the cause of various problems all along. All of the hardware tests showed it as OK, but after swapping out the original chip for another, everything worked fine.
 
Lied to and swindled?

Well if you think OS X will never crash and tuck you in at night then you're in for a rude awakening.

OS X is pretty stable, but it does crash on occasion and applications crash too. To be honest coming from a PC recently, I can't honestly say it's more stable. BUT... It is a lot more fun, and I enjoy messing with the computer more and find myself missing OS X features at the office now.

Download a copy of mplayer and vlc, they are free and rock. Between the two you can play just about anything. (I use mplayer mostly) Quicktime is ok, but I found it's only really reliable with quicktime movies. Maybe pro is better, but don't know.
 
In my experience, OS X has rarely (never?) crashed on my iBook. Application crash once in a while, unexpectadly quit (damn I hate that) or hang. Patience usually defines the term crashing for me: I'm usually not patient enough to let the application finish what's doing and think "damn, it's blocked". Serves me right for me impatient ;)

Stability is overall excellent and extraordinary when compared to OS 9. I've only force-powered off my iBook once or twice because I was unable to eject a burnt CD that totally froze the system. I do however get way too many kernal panics on my Rev. D iMac. Maybe bad memory?

-motulist

Next time it crashes, try "Command-Option-Escape" (that's "Apple-Alt-Escape' if you're still unfamiliar with the weird Mac terms). It acts as the famous 'Ctrl-Alt-Del' and allows you to force quit the crashed application. Nuff said.
 
Quicktime

Quicktime is a major part of the Core Operating system. I would imagine that is the reason this caused the system to go haywire. Quicktime does not seem to do well with unsupported formats.
 
For me, Quicktime has been getting more functionality and less stability since version 3. Version 3 may have been not pretty, but if I remember back in the days of OS 9, QT and OS 9 went well together.

Earlier today I looped an AIFF music file in the background under Quicktime . . . (pretend that the sound cuts out, the clock on the corner of the screen is suspended, and you can click anywhere on the screen without a listener action take place) . . . (15 seconds later, actions take place, the clock is back, and my AIFF file skips). This occurance occured to me twice.

Oh, and working into 12:00AM this morning (12.2 into 12.3 because I wanted to get a lab report done in one day) I get a textbook 10.2 kernel panic, and my printer only gets through part of page 10 of my report.

Now, as for bad first impressions with a G4...I have one that still scares me. When I first got my Cube, it ran fine, stability was fine, apps opened, workable. So I go to shut down the machine... every time I shut it down without forcing it, it started right back up again. 7.5 seconds after the screen goes out and the Hard Drive begins to spin down, the Hard Drive spins back up again, and the Cube/monitor light appear. We took the machine to Apple, and THEY could not find the solution. (May I mind you that if you're looking for Apple to FIX your hardware, you better know EXACTLY what the problem is that has to be fixed. If employees under your local AppleCare/warranty can't find the problem using logic, you will be screwed over.) The problem was I had the USB Audio port and the USB monitor port switched.

Some real scary s*** can happen on a first impression, and that also happened to be my key 16th birthday present.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back