6 ms·

I've been a Mac user for 6 months (MBP), I hardly tax the machine but it has crashed a dozen times. Twice today, and five times this week in total. Not since

I've been a Mac user for 6 months (MBP), I hardly tax the machine but it has crashed a dozen times. Twice today, and five times this week in total. Not since Windows 98 have I seen such an unstable OS. I've seen less BSOD in the last 15 years than I've seen kernel panics in the last week.

vemy 12y ago
My Windows PC never crashed like my Macbook does.
- Goopplesoft 12y ago
  This is all anecdotal. Mac user for years and never had a crash. These types of comment provide very little to these threads.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Its data. The existence of crashes is evidence of something.
    - wlesieutre 12y ago
      It may be data, but it is not a statistically significant amount of data. And there's an awful lot of selection bias in product complaints.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Crashes are not statistics. Code crashes or it doesn't. So something smells in Denmark.
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Cmon. There's no such thing as a 'false positive' in code crashes. Its a binary thing - correct code doesn't do it. So something is wrong with an OS that crashes for somebody. Its got nothing to do with selection bias. And if it crashes for certain people chronically, then there's a syndrome that's reproducible. Meaning it is likely to affect a lot of people in similar circumstances.
        wlesieutre 12y ago
        Crashes aren't new. OS X has had them for a long time, they're just less common than some other operating systems. The question is whether you can go from "2 or 3 friends of mine said they have more crashes than before" to "10.9.3 is more prone to crashing than 10.9.2." For all we know, the entire sample is using some 3rd party utility that crashes under the new update, which is bad, but is also not something you can completely blame Apple for.
  - wyclif 12y ago
    I'm still developing on SL. That's one way of never having a crash or kernel panic...
  - Pacabel 12y ago
    It isn't just "anecdotal" when you happen to be the one who has to use a computer that crashes in such a way, regardless of who makes it, or what OS it's running.
- epmatsw 12y ago
  As a counter-anecdote, I've been running 10.9.x on my laptop since the first beta and haven't had a grey screen since beta 2 came out. On the other hand, my 1 year old Windows desktop running Windows 7 has had 4 BSODs this year.
x0x0 12y ago
another mac user with the same problem. I've had 7 macbooks pros on various oses since 10.5 and osx is the first OS I ever just came to trust to run updates. But now, 10.9.x is a piece of shit. It hardlocks all the time (2-3 times a week), seemingly around external displays. I'm really feeling burned at this point. These 6-7 locks in the past 3 weeks since I got a new laptop are probably 50% of my macos crashes since 2007. It's really really disappointing, and is making me question why the hell I pay this much money for a laptop. Apple needs to pull their thumb out of their ass and fix their fucking os. This [1] seems to have helped a little bit, but seriously, fuck apple. I'm hunting for a way to downgrade my laptop to 10.8 Edit: to be clear, the really appalling bit here is how frequently these locks occur. This isn't a subtle bug; it's a symptom of apple being asshole cowboys. Given the frequency of these crashes, I believe it's impossible they used their laptop with an external monitor at all or their devs would have hit these too. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5538012?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5538012?start=0&tstart=...
- Rudism 12y ago
  I noticed that a system update installed itself yesterday at the end of the day. This morning I had two kernel panics (my first since getting the MBP a few months ago)... I'm also finding it seems tied to external monitors (both panics occurred when I tried to set an app as full screen on the external monitor). I had to unplug and just stick with the retina display to get anything done.
- mturmon 12y ago
  I have seen increased lockups with 10.9.2. I replied because mine seem also to involve external displays (and/or Thunderbolt accessories). A possibly-related issue causing app lockups (Matlab) was caused by an old Java runtime interacting with multiple displays. Updating JRE fixed that. I have also gotten system-wide lockups on Thunderbolt plug-in (never used to happen with 10.8).
lord_quas 12y ago
I've kept this same mbp up to date for 2 years and... It hasn't crashed once in that time.
astrange 12y ago
Please pastebin some of the panic logs.
guywithabike 12y ago
In my experience, people who've had exorbitant numbers of kernel panics on Macs have had tons of things installed that muck around with MacOS X internals. VirtualBox, old SIMBL hacks, manual fan controls, etc. Those are all notoriously unstable and can cause lots of kernel panics.
- agotterer 12y ago
  You mean all the thing I use to do my job? I actually lag 4-6 months behind releases now on both my macbook and my iphone. While I used to love being an early adopter and downloading the latest release the night it came out. Over the past few years I've had so many stability issues that I can't afford the annoyance, frustrations, and hit to productivity. It definitely seems that the quality of apple os's out of the gate have more problems then they did in the past.
  - aragot 12y ago
    It may not be a process & quality question, but simply staffing with very highly experienced and smart people. Some analyze that the Windows kernel has that problem[1]. [1] http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74 http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74
- gtaylor 12y ago
  It seems more like a buggy OS that doesn't handle certain combinations of external monitors and GPUs. Let's call it like it is: 10.9 needs some fixing. Plugging in an external monitor shouldn't be a big thing. I shouldn't have to tread on egg shells as far as what I do with such an expensive piece of equipment.
- hollerith 12y ago
  >VirtualBox . . . notoriously unstable Is there virtualization software that is not unstable on OS X?
  - plorkyeran 12y ago
    I've only had one kernel panic clearly linked to Parallels, but I still haven't made it to a month of uptime after over two years of using OS X, so it's quite possible that's it's causing non-obvious problems even with no VMs running.
MisterBastahrd 12y ago
I have a mac mini at home and work primarily for development and neither of them have ever crashed. Anecdotes are fun. I used to have a problem (twice) of extreme slowness in networking, but a reboot fixed the problem.
rbanffy 12y ago
I have to raise a counterpoint. I have, in my house, 3 Macs, two of them running 10.9, and the only one that ever panicked was the one that's not on 10.9. 10.9, at least here, is rock solid on both an aging MBP13 and on a 2 month old MBPr13. Both are regularly plugged to external displays, via DVI or VGA adapters and through AppleTVs/Airplay. The only thing that bothers me is that, for some reason, all three have some difficulty reconnecting with the wifi after they wake up - they take more than 20 seconds to reconnect while the Linux laptops do it in less than 5.
- jkmcf 12y ago
  Ditto on the wifi reconnection problems. I thought I had it narrowed down to the 5GHz band, but that seemed to be a different issue. Also, I would say I've had relatively zero problems in recent years. Every now and again there will be a weird freeze, but so infrequently (i.e., a few times per year at most) that I don't blame the OS for it because I don't have any useful info.
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    Indeed. There is something very wrong with Brandon's Mac.

vemy 12y ago

My Windows PC never crashed like my Macbook does.

Goopplesoft 12y ago
This is all anecdotal. Mac user for years and never had a crash. These types of comment provide very little to these threads.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Its data. The existence of crashes is evidence of something.
  - wlesieutre 12y ago
    It may be data, but it is not a statistically significant amount of data. And there's an awful lot of selection bias in product complaints.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Crashes are not statistics. Code crashes or it doesn't. So something smells in Denmark.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Cmon. There's no such thing as a 'false positive' in code crashes. Its a binary thing - correct code doesn't do it. So something is wrong with an OS that crashes for somebody. Its got nothing to do with selection bias. And if it crashes for certain people chronically, then there's a syndrome that's reproducible. Meaning it is likely to affect a lot of people in similar circumstances.
        wlesieutre 12y ago
        Crashes aren't new. OS X has had them for a long time, they're just less common than some other operating systems. The question is whether you can go from "2 or 3 friends of mine said they have more crashes than before" to "10.9.3 is more prone to crashing than 10.9.2." For all we know, the entire sample is using some 3rd party utility that crashes under the new update, which is bad, but is also not something you can completely blame Apple for.
- wyclif 12y ago
  I'm still developing on SL. That's one way of never having a crash or kernel panic...
- Pacabel 12y ago
  It isn't just "anecdotal" when you happen to be the one who has to use a computer that crashes in such a way, regardless of who makes it, or what OS it's running.
epmatsw 12y ago
As a counter-anecdote, I've been running 10.9.x on my laptop since the first beta and haven't had a grey screen since beta 2 came out. On the other hand, my 1 year old Windows desktop running Windows 7 has had 4 BSODs this year.

x0x0 12y ago

another mac user with the same problem. I've had 7 macbooks pros on various oses since 10.5 and osx is the first OS I ever just came to trust to run updates. But now, 10.9.x is a piece of shit. It hardlocks all the time (2-3 times a week), seemingly around external displays. I'm really feeling burned at this point. These 6-7 locks in the past 3 weeks since I got a new laptop are probably 50% of my macos crashes since 2007. It's really really disappointing, and is making me question why the hell I pay this much money for a laptop. Apple needs to pull their thumb out of their ass and fix their fucking os. This [1] seems to have helped a little bit, but seriously, fuck apple. I'm hunting for a way to downgrade my laptop to 10.8 Edit: to be clear, the really appalling bit here is how frequently these locks occur. This isn't a subtle bug; it's a symptom of apple being asshole cowboys. Given the frequency of these crashes, I believe it's impossible they used their laptop with an external monitor at all or their devs would have hit these too. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5538012?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5538012?start=0&tstart=...

Rudism 12y ago
I noticed that a system update installed itself yesterday at the end of the day. This morning I had two kernel panics (my first since getting the MBP a few months ago)... I'm also finding it seems tied to external monitors (both panics occurred when I tried to set an app as full screen on the external monitor). I had to unplug and just stick with the retina display to get anything done.
mturmon 12y ago
I have seen increased lockups with 10.9.2. I replied because mine seem also to involve external displays (and/or Thunderbolt accessories). A possibly-related issue causing app lockups (Matlab) was caused by an old Java runtime interacting with multiple displays. Updating JRE fixed that. I have also gotten system-wide lockups on Thunderbolt plug-in (never used to happen with 10.8).

lord_quas 12y ago

I've kept this same mbp up to date for 2 years and... It hasn't crashed once in that time.

astrange 12y ago

Please pastebin some of the panic logs.

guywithabike 12y ago

In my experience, people who've had exorbitant numbers of kernel panics on Macs have had tons of things installed that muck around with MacOS X internals. VirtualBox, old SIMBL hacks, manual fan controls, etc. Those are all notoriously unstable and can cause lots of kernel panics.

agotterer 12y ago
You mean all the thing I use to do my job? I actually lag 4-6 months behind releases now on both my macbook and my iphone. While I used to love being an early adopter and downloading the latest release the night it came out. Over the past few years I've had so many stability issues that I can't afford the annoyance, frustrations, and hit to productivity. It definitely seems that the quality of apple os's out of the gate have more problems then they did in the past.
- aragot 12y ago
  It may not be a process & quality question, but simply staffing with very highly experienced and smart people. Some analyze that the Windows kernel has that problem[1]. [1] http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74 http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74
gtaylor 12y ago
It seems more like a buggy OS that doesn't handle certain combinations of external monitors and GPUs. Let's call it like it is: 10.9 needs some fixing. Plugging in an external monitor shouldn't be a big thing. I shouldn't have to tread on egg shells as far as what I do with such an expensive piece of equipment.
hollerith 12y ago
>VirtualBox . . . notoriously unstable Is there virtualization software that is not unstable on OS X?
- plorkyeran 12y ago
  I've only had one kernel panic clearly linked to Parallels, but I still haven't made it to a month of uptime after over two years of using OS X, so it's quite possible that's it's causing non-obvious problems even with no VMs running.

MisterBastahrd 12y ago

I have a mac mini at home and work primarily for development and neither of them have ever crashed. Anecdotes are fun. I used to have a problem (twice) of extreme slowness in networking, but a reboot fixed the problem.

rbanffy 12y ago

I have to raise a counterpoint. I have, in my house, 3 Macs, two of them running 10.9, and the only one that ever panicked was the one that's not on 10.9. 10.9, at least here, is rock solid on both an aging MBP13 and on a 2 month old MBPr13. Both are regularly plugged to external displays, via DVI or VGA adapters and through AppleTVs/Airplay. The only thing that bothers me is that, for some reason, all three have some difficulty reconnecting with the wifi after they wake up - they take more than 20 seconds to reconnect while the Linux laptops do it in less than 5.

jkmcf 12y ago
Ditto on the wifi reconnection problems. I thought I had it narrowed down to the 5GHz band, but that seemed to be a different issue. Also, I would say I've had relatively zero problems in recent years. Every now and again there will be a weird freeze, but so infrequently (i.e., a few times per year at most) that I don't blame the OS for it because I don't have any useful info.
- rbanffy 12y ago
  Indeed. There is something very wrong with Brandon's Mac.