Does your Macbook 'just work'?

Once of Apple's taglines is that Macbooks or OSXs 'just works'.

I love OS X and my macbook and in many ways it does just work - there are so many neat and fun features that I love using.

But recently, there have been a few things that have not 'just worked'. First of all was Front Row - very laggy at times and I wasted time trying to figure out whether it was just MY Macbook or whether it was generally laggy; turned out that it is generally laggy at times. Secondly is that I've been getting some 'application quit unexpectedly' crashes recently from Safari, Skype, Word. I wasn't doing anything strenous, most of the time I was just quitting the program or closing a window. Again, I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out how to solve these problems - I have come to no resounding conclusion as of yet. Thirdly, and I have created a new thread about this, is the built in microphone. I've just spent 2 hours trying to figure out why my microphone is so quiet compared to my other friend's macbook which is crystal clear.

One of the things I hated about Windows was the seemingly constant need to 'fix' problems, be they crashes or to make things just work the way they're supposed to.

Any recently, i've just felt the same way on my Mac. Like i said, there's so many great things about it but I just wish that my Macbook did 'just work'.

front row was probably "laggy" because you dont have enough ram in your macbook. i noticed this with the stock 512 then i switched my sticks to 2x 1GB and now my macbook is a whole new machine. it is running faster then my friends who has a 2.0 with 512 mb and mines the 1.83 with 2gb ram.

This is certainly not a general MacBook issue. This sort of unexpected crashes could cause due to various reasons. The general practice avoid that is to keep your system clean. Onyx is a free maintenance software does just that. If not, use Disk Utility to verify permissions after installing new software. You can also try to remove the respective .plist files to avoid corrupted configurations.

Have you been using your Front Row remote extensively? Lag can cause due to dieing battery on your remote.

Mine just works. I haven't had any problems with it. I love this MacBook, it has been my favorite computer I have owned thus far.

My remote likes to eat batteries. My wife's remote doesn't seem to be defective. Other than that, yes FrontRow is a tad laggy, but everything else 'just works'. Let's see, yep, just put a new battery in yesterday and I'm already getting the battery indicator after having used it maybe twice since then. Probably gonna AppleCare that one.

Well, maybe not the video iChat all the time, but that's because my wife is glommed onto a wireless network that is being used by college kids. This means they're probably playing World of Warcraft or downloading something via BitTorrent when we want to conference and there isn't enough bandwidth. Can't fault the Mac for that (it's worked pretty well otherwise.)

In all, it's the best notebook I've ever had. Parallels even works pretty well to let me do the corporate stuff.

brianj08 said:

front row was probably "laggy" because you dont have enough ram in your macbook.

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I have 2 GBs of RAM. That's what makes it even more annoying! My friend has only 1GB of RAM and she gets no lag whatsoever using her Front Row!

novicew said:

This is certainly not a general MacBook issue. This sort of unexpected crashes could cause due to various reasons. The general practice avoid that is to keep your system clean. Onyx is a free maintenance software does just that. If not, use Disk Utility to verify permissions after installing new software. You can also try to remove the respective .plist files to avoid corrupted configurations.

Have you been using your Front Row remote extensively? Lag can cause due to dieing battery on your remote.

Click to expand...

Now you see, that just reminds of too much of PCs and windows - I regularly ran adware and spyware and virus etc scans which kept my machine running fine but it was such a cumbersome process.

But let's say that I don't mind maintaining my Mac (and I will from now on). I still had to experience the problems, research it, post here before I even realised that I NEEDED to maintain my Mac! When I read that 'Macs just work' I asummed no maintenance is needed to simply have the software do what it says its going to do without crashing on me!

A lot of people aren't even like me - they don't bother researching a problem that comes up with their Macbook. Those people will probably never 'maintain' their system cos they assume that it should just work. I'm not saying Macs are all of a sudden poor but I just feel slightly aggrieved when my Macbook doesn't work - it really takes the fun out of using it which is the main attraction for me.

I took the following quote from the Apple getamac page:

Apple said:

"Your toaster doesn’t crash. Your kitchen sink doesn’t crash. Why should your computer? Think of the countless hours you would save if your PC worked on your time — not the other way around. Then think about a Mac.

If you spend more of your precious time figuring out why your PC crashes than you spend taking out the rubbish every week, you need a Mac. Still not convinced? Just ask the millions of people who use and love a Mac why it’s become such an integral part of their lives, and most will tell you the same thing: it just works. Letting them do what they want to do. When they want to do it. All the time.

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I don't have to maintain my toaster now do i? Note that I made the final two lines bold - this is what I would love to have - it is nirvana for me NOT to have to maintain my Mac.

My Macbook is still by far the best computer I've ever had (even better than the speccy systems I used to build myself) and I love it like its my baby. What I guess I'm trying to say is that if I was to rate it I'd give it 95%, and if these little niggly things would just dissappear I would enjoy using my Macbook just that bit more which would make it 100%.

p.s. I was gonna start another thread but I might as well just ask it here: How often do you say you guys experience an 'unexpected application quit'?

walkerj said:

My remote likes to eat batteries....Let's see, yep, just put a new battery in yesterday and I'm already getting the battery indicator after having used it maybe twice since then. Probably gonna AppleCare that one.

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Are you talking about putting a new battery in for the remote? If so, how do you check the battery indicator?

StevenH said:

I have 2 GBs of RAM. That's what makes it even more annoying! My friend has only 1GB of RAM and she gets no lag whatsoever using her Front Row!



Now you see, that just reminds of too much of PCs and windows - I regularly ran adware and spyware and virus etc scans which kept my machine running fine but it was such a cumbersome process.

But let's say that I don't mind maintaining my Mac (and I will from now on). I still had to experience the problems, research it, post here before I even realised that I NEEDED to maintain my Mac! When I read that 'Macs just work' I asummed no maintenance is needed to simply have the software do what it says its going to do without crashing on me!

A lot of people aren't even like me - they don't bother researching a problem that comes up with their Macbook. Those people will probably never 'maintain' their system cos they assume that it should just work. I'm not saying Macs are all of a sudden poor but I just feel slightly aggrieved when my Macbook doesn't work - it really takes the fun out of using it which is the main attraction for me.

I took the following quote from the Apple getamac page:



I don't have to maintain my toaster now do i? Note that I made the final two lines bold - this is what I would love to have - it is nirvana for me NOT to have to maintain my Mac.

My Macbook is still by far the best computer I've ever had (even better than the speccy systems I used to build myself) and I love it like its my baby. What I guess I'm trying to say is that if I was to rate it I'd give it 95%, and if these little niggly things would just dissappear I would enjoy using my Macbook just that bit more which would make it 100%.

p.s. I was gonna start another thread but I might as well just ask it here: How often do you say you guys experience an 'unexpected application quit'?




Are you talking about putting a new battery in for the remote? If so, how do you check the battery indicator?

Click to expand...

You have to accept that occasionally things dont work, last year my toaster broke and i had to fix it, my light bulbs went for no reason, i had to buy a new kettle and a microwave, these things usually just work aswell but sometimes things go wrong. If its that seriously broken you should take it to an apple shop or get someone who is very good with macs to have a look at it.

I wish mine just worked. I had a case of the hard drive failure, and now it seems like nothing works right. Any programs from the Microsoft Office suite take forever to load, and then are really unstable. Photoshop doesn't work for me anymore. I can't get my printer to work. There are so many more.

But on the brighter side, I had no problems before my hard drive failure.

By and large, your Mac will maintain itself, providing that you leave it on all the time. The problem with notebooks is that we tend to shut them off or let them sleep to conserve battery life. That said, IMO, Apple's claims of "it just works" are justified in comparison to other operating systems - what little maintenance you need to do is far less than what you would have to do to a Windows machine. Particularly when you consider viruses and assorted other malware. Think about it, you don't need a host of different maintenance and preventative utilities to keep you Mac running.

Just like with a car, you need to do a little maintenance with any complex machine. Will you have to do less maintenance with a Honda, than say... a Ford? Sure, but you still have to do maintenance.

Even the computer in the Enterprise NCC-1701D needed maintenance now and then!

For the most part, OS X is fairly self-containing and self-sustaining.
Yes, it does crash occasionally... ALL computers do.

Try not to take company taglines and propoganda too literally.

+Microsoft makes promises of how much more productive you can be with each incarnation of Windows.
+Automobile makers tout how much smoother the newer models drive.
+Televisions supposedly make your viewing experience more robust with each new update and upgrade.
+Nike AirJordans will make you able to slam dunk
+Axe deodorant will get you chicks
+The RonCo food dehydrator is going to save you sooooo much time and money
+Red Bull gives you wiings.... etc.

Are all of these things true? Does everything a company tells you end up as the solid gold truth?

No. It doesn't.

Apple saying "it just works" is nothing more than a clever tagline. Don't read into it so deeply.

walkerj said:

My remote likes to eat batteries. My wife's remote doesn't seem to be defective. Other than that, yes FrontRow is a tad laggy, but everything else 'just works'. Let's see, yep, just put a new battery in yesterday and I'm already getting the battery indicator after having used it maybe twice since then. Probably gonna AppleCare that one.

Well, maybe not the video iChat all the time, but that's because my wife is glommed onto a wireless network that is being used by college kids. This means they're probably playing World of Warcraft or downloading something via BitTorrent when we want to conference and there isn't enough bandwidth. Can't fault the Mac for that (it's worked pretty well otherwise.)

In all, it's the best notebook I've ever had. Parallels even works pretty well to let me do the corporate stuff.

Click to expand...

My remote does the same thing! I don't have AppleCare, but I noticed that I got the low battery indicator after using FrontRow maybe about...5 times or so. I thought Apple had just put in a "not-so-fresh" battery, but maybe it's the remote.

D3v1L80Y said:

+Red Bull gives you wiings....

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What? Red Bull doesn't give you wings? So much for trying to get to florida before my break is over without a plane.

mine works great i love it

todd51 said:

My remote does the same thing! I don't have AppleCare, but I noticed that I got the low battery indicator after using FrontRow maybe about...5 times or so. I thought Apple had just put in a "not-so-fresh" battery, but maybe it's the remote.

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I've gone through about four of them now. The battery I put in last night appears already to be showing the 'low battery' indicator on the screen.

I check to see if it is completely dead by launching PhotoBooth and pointing the remote at the camera. If I see a light, it's still got some juice. If I don't I know it's dead, and thus new battery time (until I get it to Apple to fix/replace.)

Of course, as I was authoring this post, I attempted to launch PhotoBooth, when something that happened before happened again. Every now and then I'll launch something from the Dock, its icon will bounce, and keep bouncing never actually launching the app. Even if you try to launch from Finder, the icon will bounce but never launch. This would be for all Dock items, and requires a restart as far as I can tell.

Oh well, it's only done that twice. I tend to leave my Macbook on all the time, letting it sleep when I'm travelling from one place to another. For all the abuse (virtual, of course) I provide it still works pretty nicely.

cwa107 said:

That said, IMO, Apple's claims of "it just works" are justified in comparison to other operating systems - what little maintenance you need to do is far less than what you would have to do to a Windows machine.

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D3v1L80Y said:

Try not to take company taglines and propoganda too literally.

+Microsoft makes promises of how much more productive you can be with each incarnation of Windows.
+Automobile makers tout how much smoother the newer models drive.......

......Apple saying "it just works" is nothing more than a clever tagline. Don't read into it so deeply.

Click to expand...

I agree. That's completely true. When you think about it, it is more of a dig towards windows than a fact about macs.

I can imagine a lot of people being content with believing it's just a tagline - I mean, all machines crash. But that's the same excuse that Windows users have - "All machines crash. It is just something that you have to put up with. Machines are so complex etc". But why are we justifying to ourselves that we shouldn't expect something to just work for even the basic things?! Why not?!

Although I except that there is considerable less maintenance/fixing than on Windows and PCs in general, with all these crashes it feels like I'm getting the windows experience rather than the Mac experience.

And its not just about believing a tagline. The tagline's proposal is probably the main reason that I and many people switched! I particular hate how windows completely just 'doesn't work'.

The tagline appeared to be true for the first 2 weeks that I had my Macbook. But within 4 weeks of use, without doing anything real strenous besides using the native apps and installing one or two applications like VLC Player and Adium, I've started to experience reoccuring crashes.

It feels like Windows all over again where I can't even do the BASIC things without getting a crash/annoyance or two. Note that some of the problems I'm experiencing are not even from external applications like VLC Player and Adium - they haven't crashed at all - in fact it is actually native, preinstalled applications that have caused me the most annoyance. I mean, my god**** System's Preferences crashed on me the other day! System's Preferences!

So in answer to the question of this thread: "Does your Macbook 'just work'?" the answer has to be a resounding No absolutely but a yes relatively.

In spite of all this, I genuinely do believe that Apple have done their best (and much better than windows) at trying to achieve this perfectionist goal - where things just work. Its a claim that I think is plausible and I genuinely hope that one day Macs do behave like that.

Mine "just works" - with the only exception of cross-platform printing. Other than that, everything is fine.

StevenH said:

I agree. That's completely true. When you think about it, it is more of a dig towards windows than a fact about macs.

I can imagine a lot of people being content with believing it's just a tagline - I mean, all machines crash. But that's the same excuse that Windows users have - "All machines crash. It is just something that you have to put up with. Machines are so complex etc". But why are we justifying to ourselves that we shouldn't expect something to just work for even the basic things?! Why not?!

Click to expand...

Well, if one manufacturer made all of the devices and peripherals you use, that would be a reasonable expectation. The problem is that Apple (and Microsoft) in the consumer's mind, is liable for overall stability when they have very little to no control over aftermarket products and quality control for their drivers.

Where I take exception with Apple's marketing is when they claim that on a Mac, you don't need to spend "hours looking for a driver when you bring your new digital camera home". That may be true in certain cases, but Apple certainly doesn't include near enough aftermarket drivers with the OS to support that claim. I remember seeing that ad years ago and it really got under my skin. There are many digital cameras that will plug and play on a PC, even running Windows 98 - the same can be said for OS X, but at the same time, there are many that will not.

Ok - I'm missing something here?

I have a 2Ghz Macbook, but note people talking about Frontrow? I cannot seem to find this, and wondered is this a addon, or should it be installed as standard?

Thanks

Celtic

Celtic, grab your remote, point it at your Macbook and press some buttons...enjoy!

If there's still any confusion: Apple Front Row