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Quite unhappy with Snow Leopard

PowerGamerX

PowerGamerX

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 9, 2009
673
1
Don't get me wrong, I really love my Mac, and the aesthetics of it. The hardware is enough for my needs, and overall I would be happy...

Problem is I have had nothing but trouble with SL. Every application I have seems to have crashed at least one point in time. I never really had a problem with Leopard and, Leopard is what convinced me to switch to the Mac OS in the first place. However, now, I'm contemplating switching back to Windows (rather, using BootCamp full time).

It doesn't seem to matter if I use a different hard drive, swap out ram, etc. None of the problems I have are hardware based. It's all software.

I'm really just curious to see how many people feel the same way about Snow Leopard. In fact, the experiences I've had remind me of Windows XP. Nothing really wrong with any of my hardware. It's just none of my software seems stable.

I'm really hoping Lion turns out good though.
 
I agree that SL isn't the best of Apple's OS's. Hopefully it is Apple's Vista and Lion will be Apple's 7.
 
Do you use software for longer?

Are you using different software?

How often is often?

Are there any repeat offenders?

Are you doing different things now?

Your description is incredibly vague.

If applications are crashing, that may or may not have anything to do with Snow Leopard.
 
elppa said:
Do you use software for longer?

Are you using different software?

How often is often?

Are there any repeat offenders?

Are you doing different things now?

Your description is incredibly vague.

If applications are crashing, that may or may not have anything to do with Snow Leopard.
Click to expand...

Nope

Nope

Couple times a week

Steam, iTunes, and the iWork apps come to mind

Nope
 
I've had no issues with SL like you're describing, including the applications you've mentioned. Remember that crashing issues may or may not be related to the OS... there's as good a chance of the software application in question being at fault as SL.
 
There's something very wrong with this picture.

I've used Macs for ages, and I've had excellent service from Snow Leopard under very strenuous computing.
 
iThinkergoiMac said:
I've had no issues with SL like you're describing, including the applications you've mentioned. Remember that crashing issues may or may not be related to the OS... there's as good a chance of the software application in question being at fault as SL.
Click to expand...

Except I've had the same results on all the machines I've had that ran Snow Leopard.

MacBook Pro 2.33ghz Late 2006
MacBook Pro 13 2.26
Mac Mini 2.26
Mac Mini 2.4
MacBook Pro 2.66

It's been equally problematic on all of them.
 
Strange. SL works on all my stuff without ever crashing, including my Hackintosh.

Have you ever tried a clean reinstall?
 
-Ken- said:
Strange. SL works on all my stuff without ever crashing, including my Hackintosh.
Click to expand...
Me too, it works on my hackintosh. Yet with that said, I'd say that SL was not one of apple's greatest OS upates. I did have more issues initially with this then prior versions and had to hold off longer because of those problems then other versions of OSX.

While its been clearly documented that apple did a lot of under the hood type stuff. SL offered very little for the consumer. i think apple knew this when thy priced it much less then prior versions. 25 bucks vs. 125.
 
SL has been rock solid for me...can't remember the last time i even had a crashed. You've probably something over thats being screwing up somethings. Maybe rebuild launch services, repair permissions, run cron scripts, clear out your cache and do a file systems check.

SL for me has been arguably a better OS than Leopard with the exception of it's expose implementation.
 
SL has been great for me too. The problems your having must be maddening tho. I had a MDD g4 that would randomly freeze for no reason, drove me up the wall!
 
I have found SL to be very stable.

I am curious as to how you define "crash". As a software developer, I have always considered a crash to be a segfault in which some bug causes the program to unexpectedly exit. However I have found that, via feedback from my users, that folks have many different perceptions as to what a crash is.

As for the software you mentioned having issues with - I don't use steam (not a gamer), I use itunes somewhat regularly to play some music while I work, or to update my phone's software, don't have any crash issues. I use iWork from time-to-time - don't recall it ever crashing. The most unstable software I use is MS Office.
 
Never had any of these issues. Used SL since it was released, and all the available updates. It's been rock solid.

Since you've pointed out a few of the apps already, why not try to eliminate the problem piece of software by process of elimination? Use one at a time, and find the culprit. If not, like the others said, do a clean install.
 
ScoobyMcDoo said:
I have found SL to be very stable.
Click to expand...
At this point in time, I think apple has a very stable OS. Third party drivers have been out for a while, lot of the bugs that have snuck through 10.6.0 have been dealt with. It is a solid product to use at this stage.
 
No problem with Snow Leopard here.

What software crashes.

PowerGamerX said:
Except I've had the same results on all the machines I've had that ran Snow Leopard.

MacBook Pro 2.33ghz Late 2006
MacBook Pro 13 2.26
Mac Mini 2.26
Mac Mini 2.4
MacBook Pro 2.66

It's been equally problematic on all of them.
Click to expand...

Seems to be user problem. You probably have one piece of software that's causing the problem.
 
aeaglex07 said:
SL is stable and solid for me. Leopard was Apple's Vista
Click to expand...

Except leopard ran great right from 10.5.0. If anything Apple could ever be compared to Vista, it'd be 10.0 & 10.1. To be fair to microsoft though, 10.0 & 10.1 were considerably worse than vista. It wasn't til 10.2 that OS X actually became a usable OS.
 
I would say that OS 9 was Apples Vista and that was over 10 years ago.

Things I like about SL:
+1 I gained back about 20 gig on a 160 gig drive.
+1 App store. Yes I like the app store and the only thing I have mixed feelings about is it wants to put everything I buy in the dock. That's not gonna last long.
+1 $29. It's been a long time since I got a new OS for only $29. No wait. Never. This is the first time I've got a new OS this cheap without going through some OEM or student status ritual.
+1 Dock. I like the tweaks SL brought to the way the dock works.

Things I don't like about SL:
-1 Less stable than Leopard but the biggest culprits I found for making my machine lose its mind were: Firefox 3.x, Eyefi center (previous version), Handbrake (previous version). On the latest versions of these programs I rarely see that dastardly beach ball.
-1 More about stability. I seem to get more "quit unexpectedly" issues under SL than I used to see under Leopard.
-1 Speed. I find SL to be efficient compared to Windows but it seems to be slightly slower than Leopard on the same hardware.

As for iWork, iTunes and Steam having issues, I haven't used Steam but I do find iTunes to be less than stable no matter what OS you use it on. iWork, OTOH has been rock solid for me. I also use LibreOffice and my wife uses MS Office 2011 all of which are stable on SL.
 
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