In this column, Pierre Igot would like to review some of these benefits, in order to get a better idea of how much things have improved in the area of Mac OS stability ? but also of what ‘still remains to be improved in the never-ending quest for the perfect computing experience for inexperienced and advanced users alike’. On another Apple-related story, Steve Jobs’ appearance at an Intel internal sales conference reignites rumors of collaboration between the two companies.
Mac OS X and the Promise of Stable Computing
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I have installed OS X on several computers including 2 of mine. It IS very stable but there are some pitfalls. I have found that if you install it as an upgrade there could be major problems as a carryover from the old OS. If you are upgrading from a slightly unstable OS X configuration you will carry it over through the upgrade.
The best solutions to preventing problems are:
1. Erase the hard drive (format under OS X)
2. Install a partition on the drive and place 9.2 on the small one and OS X on the large partition
3. Set OS X to automatically install Classic at startup time (I was informed by Apple tech that just double clicking an OS 9 document or application may result in an incomplete install of Classic. Hence, problems).
4. Get a good disk utility like DiskWarrior or Drive10.
After struggling through unstable OS X’s I finally did the above items. That was about 9 months ago when I installed Jaguar. Since then the problems have been minimal rather than monumental.
I have two OS X systems, I leave them on 24/7. One of them, an iBook crashed once. The other system has never locked or crashed ever (Power Mac). Of course there are a few program lock ups every now and then, but I can always force quit them, and the whole system stays stable.
I would say the same for my three linux desktops as well, Gnome may crash every now and then, or evolution.. But the accutall system NEVER fails…
My XP box is fairly stable too, but ever since I joined a domain, then left the domain.. Then the next day re-joined (Always restarting in between) I get a blue screen from time to time when connecting to network shares.. So I stay away from XP now.
I bought a brand new 17″ flat panel iMac when they first came out, upgraded to Jaguar and all. I had a ton of problems with stability on it, every time I would work with digital video I would have some crazy issue that would lock the machine completely up.
My wife, who wanted it in the first place finally gave up and went back to our Windows XP Pro based machine, which oddly enough never crashes…
At least the iMac held it’s value – thanks to eBay!
OS X by itself is very stable. However, I find that many of the applications are ports from Windows with not as much effort in testing being done before its released. I tend to see more application failures with OS X than other operating systems, including Linux. For instance, IE in OS X is not nearly as stable as XP. I also find MS Word crashes quite often while using OS X.
“I recently had a general Mac OS X system failure myself. All of a sudden, I started experiencing strange, unexplained behaviors: iTunes failed to launch with a misleading alert message about my iTunes Music Library file being “locked” or having the wrong permissions (it was not locked, and had the correct permissions). Then iTunes became unresponsive. Then a little while later other applications started freezing as well. Force-quitting them ceased to work, the Dock itself froze, and I had no choice but to do a hard reset.”
This is a textbook example of a fix_prebinding crash. One application will have problems, then another, then another until finally you’re left with just the “beach ball of death” as your system will be entirely unresponsive and you have no choice but to do a hard reset.
I did nothing special, on that day, which would explain the cascade of events that led to the general system failure. I did not install any new software. I didn’t plug in any new pieces of hardware. I just did what I do every day, i.e. use all kinds of different programs for all kinds of different purposes. In other words, this incident was a manifestation of an intrinsic flaw in Mac OS X itself.
Yes, fix_prebinding is simply a buggy program. Unfortunately, it plays a critical role in day-to-day operation of Jaguar, as it’s executed upon every new process started on an Jaguar system.
…there seems to be an agreement that this particular kind of issue, with a “cascade” of freezes leading to a general system failure, has been present in Mac OS X since the very first versions (Mac OS X Beta and Mac OS X 10.0).
I find this strange… I never experienced these sorts of problems with MacOS X 10.1. What I did experience were kernel panics while using SMB (which would bring up the multi-language please-restart-your-computer screen)
Jaguar was the first revision of MacOS X to enforce prebinding systemwide.
Finally, there is still the issue of kernel panics. I haven’t experienced one myself in ages, but in my (admittedly limited) experience troubleshooting other people’s computers, kernel panics are mostly related to third-party hardware issues, and especially USB and FireWire devices.
I’ve experienced one kernel panic with Jaguar, and I don’t remember specifically what I was doing to cause it. (Then again, I’ve experienced one blue screen with Windows XP during day to day operation… it was bizarre to be sure as it’s otherwise completely stable. I hadn’t had any problems before or since)
I experienced quite a few more in 10.1 as SMB support back then was much more buggy. It’s certainly been overhauled in Jaguar.
I’ve installed a workaround for the fix_prebinding bug (let me know if you want more information about it), and now instead of my system crashing every few days it seems to crash every 30-40 days. Instead of the “beach ball of death” my system simply hard locks.
I think these are all disadvantages of Apple deciding to mung together their own kernel out of pieces of other kernels instead of using an existing kernel. My suggestion would have been, of course, to add Mach messaging to the FreeBSD kernel and use that instead of XNU. Well, obviously that will never happen, so I hope Apple will continue working to improve XNU and the stability of OS X as a whole.
responding to froogle..”I bought a brand new 17″ flat panel iMac when they first came out, upgraded to Jaguar and all.”
Why would you need to upgrade to Jaguar on an iMac G4 17? Think about that one for a sec since the G4 iMac 17 comes with Jag preinstalled. Did you really buy a iMac G4 froogle?
I am sure you did, of course
Make sure you have enough RAM to do video and do a custom install.
MacOSX is stable as a server and desktop. There are some apps that crash but fortunately they don’t take the whole house down like MacOS9 can.
froogle’s post is a good example of a post from a Mac bashing windows fan. Only this time, he goofed up and didn’t bother to check that the imac comes preloaded with jag.
– Mark
“Think about that one for a sec since the G4 iMac 17 comes with Jag preinstalled.”
Just a quick FYI.
I bought the 17″ flat panel for my Mom. It came with 10.1 installed and came supplied with the Jaguar upgrade CD, it was not preinstalled. That be told, since I had bought Jaguar for my own sytem, I just did a clean install with my [full] copy and all went well, she hasn’t called me with problems once. I *have* heard bad stories of instability from people who have went the ‘upgrade’ path vs ‘clean install’. I’ve had my Quicksilver 733 for about a year now and have never crashed yet, for what its worth…
> IE in OS X is not nearly as stable as XP. I also find MS Word crashes quite often while using OS X.
Notice a pattern?
I find M$ apps to be consistently less stable on OS X.
The folks that have their machines up for months and months are not updating their machines. A significant amount of updates require reboot.
having said that, my machine crashes once every month or so, max.
Please give us some details about that prebinding workaround Bacule. I for one would like to hear what you have found about it.
My problem is, that everytime my IBook 14″ 800 MHz goes into sleep mode, I lose my network connection. The same happens if I replug the network cable. When I type “ifconfig” there is no IP assigned to my ethernet card.
Also I had problems when I played DIVX-movies on battery. Sometimes everything freezed and the only way to get controll over the Mac was hard reboot.
So in my experience the current version of MacOSX (I have the latest one with the latest updates) is no more stale then Windows. But Linux also crashed several times (ok it was long time ago, when I tried to bring Linux on my Amiga).
If anyone can help me, welcome.
Anton
Please give us some details about that prebinding workaround Bacule.
Create a directory in your home directory called .MacOS and open ~/.Macos/environment.plist in your favorite editor. Paste the following into the file:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd“>
<plist version=”1.0″>
<dict>
<key>DYLD_NO_FIX_PREBINDING</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>
Save the file and reboot or logut/login.
open ~/.Macos/environment.plist
For UFS users, this won’t work… it should be:
~/MacOS/environment.plist
One more problem. The directory should be “MacOSX” instead of “MacOS”
So…
Create a directory in your home directory called .MacOSX and open ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist in your favorite editor. Paste the XML from my original post into the file.
Anton, change your power saving settings for playing divx files on battery, it slows your processor (which is almost barely able to run high res divx files as it is) down to save power.
And if you dont have maxed out memory your doing a ton of swapping and most divx files I view are 2-300+ megs each, so with that and power saving any system would lockup.
Your network issue hasnt been an issue for my 700/640/14.1″ ibook.
For instance, IE in OS X is not nearly as stable as XP. I also find MS Word crashes quite often while using OS X.
What you say is true about IE. Consider, though, that when IE does crash in XP or 2000 it tends to bring down the entire system with it (maybe “tends to” is too strong – it seems to happen about 20% of the time). Working in IE on OS X I have never had it do any damage to the system when it crashed. Of course, IE was quickly discarded on my system and replaced with Chimera/Camino and Safari for all but the most finicky banking sites.
Using Office v.X I have never had a crash (but I should add that I have never had Word crash in XP or 2000 either).
My problem is, that everytime my IBook 14″ 800 MHz goes into sleep mode, I lose my network connection.
I have the same problem on my iBook 14″ 500 MHz.
This bug was introduced with 10.1.5 I believe, when they fixed a problem I’d had since day 1: dialup connections would hang for a moment the second time, longer the third time, &c, until finally the machine would crash. I’m glad they fixed that, but rebooting with the new network bug is even more annoying, to tell the truth.
I’m afraid that, beyond confirming your complaint, I can’t help you work around it.:-(
OK, finally there is anyone who can confirm the network problem. Jack: do you have VPN-software from Cisco installed? I´m not sure, maybe this causes the trouble.
Anton
DJ: you have to realize the circumstances. iexplore.exe IS mostly explorer.exe, the shell. IE on the Mac is just another application. I’m sure if you were using Netscape or Opera it wouldn’t bring down the entire system…only with IE because it IS a main component of the operating system.
oberto… what is your issue? I have no reason to lie about buying an iMac, and mine did come with 10.1 (along with an upgrade pack).
Mark – your post is a good example of people that are so ‘religious’ about their os of choice that they can’t see straight.
I repeat – bought OSX, had a lot of problems, sold it on eBay and went back to XP which has been stable for my family.
If you are offended by my real-life experience, than so be it, get a life.