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Why does nobody restart their Macs?

PYR0M310N

PYR0M310N

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 29, 2006
543
0
I have noticed something recently whilst going through the macrumours forum.

everybody seems to have a phobia of restarting their macs when they have a problem. most issues i have are solved by restarting. so i was wondering if there is some reason why people seem to like doing it
 
Restarting is, most of the time, unnecessary in OS X. If there's a problem it often pays to try and find out the cause of it and nip it in the bud rather than just reboot and hope it goes away.

Restarting just isn't the Mac way.
 
miniConvert said:
Restarting is, most of the time, unnecessary in OS X. If there's a problem it often pays to try and find out the cause of it and nip it in the bud rather than just reboot and hope it goes away.

Restarting just isn't the Mac way.
Click to expand...

Au contraire. Restarting occasionally is the Mac way. Reinstalling the OS is the Windows way.

Reboot your Mac about once a week, is my advice. It doesn't do anything that can be fixed in a better or easier way.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Au contraire. Restarting occasionally is the Mac way. Reinstalling the OS is the Windows way.

Reboot your Mac about once a week, is my advice. It doesn't do anything that can be fixed in a better or easier way.
Click to expand...

I agree. I find that my mac needs to be rebooted about once a week. It never slows down like Windows does after long term usage but funky things sometimes do happen after a while.
 
Unless my computer starts doing something weird, I just leave it running. If it starts acting up, which happens rarely, I'll reboot.
You'll notice that people just like bragging about their machine's "uptime," and even get upset about having to reboot for a security update.
"Uptime bragging" seems silly to me.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Au contraire. Restarting occasionally is the Mac way. Reinstalling the OS is the Windows way.
Click to expand...

God, that sounds cheesy.


On topic:
My Mac doesn't run 24/7. However, I very seldomly need to reboot it. As long as you know what you are doing and don't run alot of resident nice-to-have apps, you should be fine. That's at least how it works for me - in both MacOS and Windows.
 
QuarterSwede said:
I agree. I find that my mac needs to be rebooted about once a week. It never slows down like Windows does after long term usage but funky things sometimes do happen after a while.
Click to expand...

The main thing rebooting does of unique value is delete your virtual memory swap files. Building up large swap files slows the Mac down and eats hard disk space. Rebooting will also reclaim any RAM which might have been stranded by memory-leaking applications. I don't know of any other way to do either one.

Carlsen said:
God, that sounds cheesy.
Click to expand...

Meaning? :confused:
 
Like people said before, there is most of the time a way around it.

For example:

My external harddrive sometimes doesn't want to eject. I figured out that I just have to restart the finder to solve the problem immediately. It only takes 2 sec. and I don't have to go through the whole restart process.

EDIT: Thank god for switching.
 
I do! I restart mine quite frequently actually but this is cause I need to use WinXP for my assignments :eek:
 
Restarting is just an annoyance - especially since I have to do it so rarely for technical reasons. Normally I have a lot of stuff on the go - tabs open, things minimised, downloads, chats. Rebooting just gets in the way.

In fact, the only reason I reboot is for updates...
 
Restarting is a pointless waste of time, I mean maybe on a desktop computer it would be ok, but on a notebook just close the lid!!
 
QuarterSwede said:
I agree. I find that my mac needs to be rebooted about once a week. It never slows down like Windows does after long term usage but funky things sometimes do happen after a while.
Click to expand...

I find that windows is always slowest after a restart or right after you log in, but right after you log in after a restart, wow, sooooooooo slow.

No problems like that on my mac though :)

EDIT: PS I usually end up restarting my mac once a week, wether it be for update of for a random restart
 
Allotriophagy said:
Restarting is just an annoyance - especially since I have to do it so rarely for technical reasons. Normally I have a lot of stuff on the go - tabs open, things minimised, downloads, chats. Rebooting just gets in the way.

In fact, the only reason I reboot is for updates...
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. Rebooting is a monumental pain in the you-know-what. Not so much for the time it takes to restart, but for the time it takes to get back to where I was in 5-10 different applications running simultaneously. If all you do is surf the web a bit and check email, fine. It takes 5 seconds to launch Safari and Mail. But if you're actually working on projects with many components to them, you can have several applications open with various data loaded and in various states of editing/processing. Rebooting and getting back to that point is a huge waste of time.

My Mac's current uptime is 28 days, and I consider that to be unusually low. Of course, I also come from a unix background where unix servers are meant to run for months if not years between reboots, so maybe I have a little bias there.
 
IJ Reilly said:
The main thing rebooting does of unique value is delete your virtual memory swap files. Building up large swap files slows the Mac down and eats hard disk space. Rebooting will also reclaim any RAM which might have been stranded by memory-leaking applications. I don't know of any other way to do either one.
Click to expand...

That's way I rebot every week or so.
 
*shrugs* If it aint broke, don't fix it. If it doesn't need restarting, why restart? The only time mine's off is for a update (which frustratingly these days always requires a restart) or if the battery needs calibrating.
 
In fact, I do not even SLEEP my 24" iMac. It just turns off the display after a while. Did the same with my G5 iMac.

My PowerBook is never turned off - just the lid gets closed when I am finished with it.

Ah, good old Apples. Only problem I have ever had was the G5's power supply, which was a recognised problem and took over a year to kick in.

My old Athlon PC was treated the same way and it's CPU just frazzled out one day. Nice smell.
 
Carlsen said:
>Cheesy
–adjective, chees·i·er, chees·i·est.
1. of or like cheese: a cheesy aroma; a cheesy taste.
2. Slang. inferior or cheap; chintzy: The movie's special effects are cheesy and unconvincing.
Click to expand...

Obviously, I was not looking for a wise-crack response. But if you don't care if people know what the heck you're talking about, then who am I to insist?
 
IJ Reilly said:
Au contraire. Restarting occasionally is the Mac way. Reinstalling the OS is the Windows way.

Reboot your Mac about once a week, is my advice. It doesn't do anything that can be fixed in a better or easier way.
Click to expand...

I just had mine up to 68 days recently.
 
Osarkon said:
*shrugs* If it aint broke, don't fix it. If it doesn't need restarting, why restart? The only time mine's off is for a update (which frustratingly these days always requires a restart) or if the battery needs calibrating.
Click to expand...

If you know a restart won't help, then fine. But in my experience, users often complain about performance issues without having a single clue about the cause. More often than not these issues can be fixed with a simple, quick restart. It takes all of a minute or two at the most.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Obviously, I was not looking for a wise-crack response. But if you don't care if people know what the heck you're talking about, then who am I to insist?
Click to expand...

I didn't think you were, just thought it would be funny. Meant no offence in that way.

I did however think your statement was "cheesy" as it is incorrect and pretty much a clishé, an example of the ignorance many Windows users shake their heads at.

But maybe it was meant that way, as a joke. I certainly hope so.
 
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