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OS X Intel

S

SC68Cal

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 23, 2006
1,642
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One thing that I've noticed, is the fact that my roomate's G5 has an uptime of about 10 days, while my Macbook Pro just crashed (Thanks to Safari) and burned, forcing a reboot, only after two days. We both use Safari, and his surfing habits would be more likely to crash his system since he watches lots of youtube and stuff.

Safari locked up and took my whole system with it, when I closed a window, that was viewing a NY Times video.

Could it be that the Intel builds of OS X are not as optimized/reliable as the PowerPC builds?

I guess it makes sense... OS X updates for Intel machines are massive, in comparison to the PPC updates.

Discuss...
 
How about reboot your computer every once in a while? I rarely see the point of going more than a day without a reboot. There is no prize for running your machine for 2 days straight, much rather 10 days.
 
What do you mean by "... took my whole system with it"? Unless you get a kernel panic, it should be possible to recover from one application causing the system to freeze. The only time I've seen an unrecoverable freeze unrelated to a kernel panic was when my wife's HD silently died while she was using her MB.

And since it doesn't seem your MBP is crashing constantly, so I wouldn't read too much into one crash. Come back in six weeks and tell us what happens.
 
But rebooting takes time, time I don't want to spend. Safari should NOT crash and take your system down with it. Force quitting almost always works for me, not sure what that problem is, but it is a problem.
 
Phatpat said:
But rebooting takes time, time I don't want to spend. Safari should NOT crash and take your system down with it. Force quitting almost always works for me, not sure what that problem is, but it is a problem.
Click to expand...

You probably spent longer writing that post than an Intel Mac takes to reboot my Macbook takes around 30 seconds (or less!), its quick enough, especially as I switch it on at breakfast (getting the milk from the fridge/making tea is much slower...)
 
No rebooting is irritating. I like my MBP to be available whenever I need it. OS X Intel is actually very bad when it comes to uptime (better than my Dell though).

I have also had a few problems with the whole system going down too, but not a kernel panic. It just kind of freezes up and you can't do anything other than switch applications. You can't even move windows and the mouse just beachballs. I hope Leopard is a lot more stable. I mean, OS X Intel is very very stable, just not as stable as the PPC version!!
 
Killyp said:
No rebooting is irritating. I like my MBP to be available whenever I need it. OS X Intel is actually very bad when it comes to uptime (better than my Dell though).
Click to expand...

Mine reboots faster than any computer I've ever used. I'm completely ready to go in under 30 seconds...you consider that bad?
 
i thought they were more stable than anything else.

my bet is os 10.5 aka Mac OS X.5 will take care of the issue in the spring.
 
The whole system stopped responding. I couldn't change the system focus from safari, all the progress bars for an FTP transfer from cyberduck stopped animation. I think Safari somehow brought down WindowServer
 
Killyp said:
No rebooting is irritating. I like my MBP to be available whenever I need it. OS X Intel is actually very bad when it comes to uptime (better than my Dell though).
Click to expand...
How about turn it off at bedtime and have it turn on before you wake up?

I hear what you are saying but I guess you will have to wait for 10.5. Which, when combined with your Intel is going to be Super-Fan-dibular!
(Yes that's a word).
 
heh my Beige G3 AIO in my sig only takes 34 seconds to boot OS X 10.4.8 to a fully working order. i haven't has safari crash once yet (or anything else for that matter, knock's on wood)
 
JHacker said:
Mine reboots faster than any computer I've ever used. I'm completely ready to go in under 30 seconds...you consider that bad?
Click to expand...

Less than 20 seconds for my iMac.

If you can't spare 20 seconds in the morning... I waste more time than that wondering what side to get out of the bed.
 
I use my MBPro at work - I run windows XP in parallels, Office for Mac to connect to the exchange server, excel, powerpoint, word (note - lots of MS products...)

and boy, this machine works its butt off.

And so far, in a month, I've had one reason to restart it - which, in truth, had I the patience and technical know-how, I could probably have sorted out. (the problem was network related - I was still set to my home network, not the corp one).

Without a doubt this is the most reliable stable computer I've ever used - bar none.

I only wonder what took me so long - and why I spend oh-so-much-money on PCs...
 
perhaps its the Safari build that isn't as stable?

remember force quiting is better than forcing a restart. :)
 
PlaceofDis said:
perhaps its the Safari build that isn't as stable?

remember force quiting is better than forcing a restart. :)
Click to expand...


Safari does require a reset on occasion. But never to the point where I have to restart my MBP.
 
dmw007 said:
Safari does require a reset on occasion. But never to the point where I have to restart my MBP.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with that. If you have safari running for two days straight with lots of browser use, it gets unstabil and uses up loads of ram. I find that after a few days of work, safari eats up 300-400 megs of ram, but fortunately it resets if you quit it. Maybe this is your problem.
 
JHacker said:
Mine reboots faster than any computer I've ever used. I'm completely ready to go in under 30 seconds...you consider that bad?
Click to expand...

I would consider it bad paying top dollar for an apple computer, and having it behave like some lower end pc. So, my five cents is even if it reboots in a blink of an eye, it should never crash.
 
I think my G4 has crashed maybe once since I upgraded to OSX two years ago.

my Intel Mini I've only had for about 6 weeks, and it's been well-behaved thus far.

I rarely shutdown completely...I usually just set them both to sleep.
 
I've had my Macbook for almost 4 months now and I've only had Safari crash on me like 3 times. But that's going on MySpace or something. :p

My boot times are awesome. 20 secs with CS2, Final Cut Studio, MS Office, and Macromedia Studio 8 installed. I haven't had any kernel panics or system crashes, yet...

I'd say that for the system to be more stable, get more memory...? Psh, I dunno...The Intel builds seem as stable as the PowerPC builds...
 
I certainly can't speak for the reliability of intel vs powerpc. For one thing, I never owned a ppc system. But what I can do is tell you my experience with my MacBook Pro & let you put together the stories you hear. I restart my MacBook about once every week to week & a half. I've had it for I guess about 2 1/2 months, and it's crashed only once. But safari was not the problem, I was trying out some very poorly made software that used a lot of ram & cpu usage, and I wasn't too suprised by the result. Other than that, my restarts are purely out of choice.
 
SC68Cal said:
The whole system stopped responding. I couldn't change the system focus from safari, all the progress bars for an FTP transfer from cyberduck stopped animation. I think Safari somehow brought down WindowServer
Click to expand...
That sounds like what happened, since it wasn't a KP. I've had that happen too, numerous times since OS X came out (much more often than KPs). Even if the OS hasn't technically crashed, there's no practical way around it other than rebooting.

Though, Safari really should not be doing this. I don't think I've had any problems with Safari, for me it's usually QuickTime or (most recently, for the first time on my Mac Pro) Crossover. Hm, were you viewing some sort of video in Safari when this happened? *looks* oh you were viewing a NY Times video? *gets suspicious* Maybe it's a QT bug.
 
Occasionally I'll be using Safari and it crashes on me, but the little triangle underneath the icon is still there. The dock and windowserver seem to believe the application is still running, but using top from the terminal or viewing the activity monitor shows no signs of safari still running. This has also happened with Font Book, and once this happens, I know my system will be going down VERY soon. I used to get this problem back when I was using Mac OS X on my crappy Dell, and thought it had to do with the lack of SSE3 on my system, but getting it now on my Macbook Pro disappoints me. I've never had this issue on my old B&W G3. That thing NEVER crashed. It ran like crap, but it never crashed.

I too am hoping they fix this issue since it's very annoying to have one program crash and drag the whole system down with it slowly.
 
Had safari go down on me a handful of times in the last few weeks. Had my machine hard-lock just now with WoW, Safari and iTunes open. Dunno what caused that.
 
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