Imac crashing

I just bought a 20inch Imac with the 2.0ghz duo processer. This is my first mac and I am finding it terribly unstable.

My problem is two fold. First, I went to aol.com and downloaded AIM for my mac. It constantly crashes and forces me to restart it about every hour. It is impossible for me, for example, to throw up an away message, go to dinner, come back and still have it online. It just simply shuts down and makes me send a report to apple. I don't like the 3rd party chat applications and prefer AIM. Is there a patch for this? How common is this? Tonight alone it has crashed at least ten times. Secondly, The OS/System crashes/locks up a lot. This crashing seems to happen if I go to like a flash intensive website or have multiple applications running, by that I mean, Safari, Iphoto, and Itunes. Bascially, the little pinwheel comes up and I can't move anything on the screen. If aquisition is running, I honestly cannot do anything, the entire desktop is totally lagged, I cannot move a window and the pinwheel never goes away. I realize I only have 512 ram but I was hoping for a little more flexibility from my OS.

I love mac's I use them daily at work. However, I just design and use Photoshop and Indesign. From that standpoint everything works perfect. However, at home I am finding it hard to do simple things like chat, use the internet and listen to music. Something always freezes. Is there an update or a patch I need, or am I just nuts?

Thanks everyone.

-sb

1) I think its just AOL Instant Messenger. Its HIGHLY unstable, search around and see how everyone who uses it, it crashes. Use iChat if you have only one AIM account and Adium for multiple ones. Many prefer Adium.

2) ask someone else..?

Yes i have heard that AIM is unstable too. Just get Adium and use it and i have heard that it is very stable.

With your system freezing there is something wrong. There are sometimes pauses say if you access a network share that is no longer there, but what you have having is not normal in any way at all.

On the AIM problem, it's not the Mac. AOL is the problem sorry to say. Poorly written code. Most people who try AIM for OSX have similar problems with it. Why don't you try iChat and maybe you will like it if you give it a chance and it's very stable on all my macs here. If you simply do not like iChat, give Adium a try. Sorry, but AOL's stuff is not well written on the Mac side. I really don't like anything AOL on the PC but it's at least more stable there.

Now Adobe bridge through photoshop crashes every time i use it. Same thing as AIM. "unexpectedly quit, didn't affect any other applications, send this report to apple" I tried to reopen from that window and it failed again. I canceled it out. Tried to reopen bridge, it opens starts previewing the pictures off my camera then quits again.

Ugh!!! I think I just need more ram.

512 might slow it down a bit with a lot of things running but no way would apps crash that easily with a few things open and 512Megs. I would up the RAM to 1GB or more but for better multitasking and speed when a lot of things are running, but not for the apps shutting down. AIM does that to every one I know on both Intel and Power PC macs.

That almost sounds like bad RAM and/or a reinstall of the OS.. It's usually something like that that is wrong since OS X is very stable, as you know from work.

I guess I can reinstall the OS, however I dont know how cleaner of a install one could get other then fresh from factory with nothing else really on it.

Hopefully things improve. ichat seems to be more stable btw.

now just to get the pinwheel to go away

You'd be suprised.. I've heard a lot of people reinstalling the OS after they received their computer and it fixed all the problems that they were having. If that doesn't fix it then it sounds like you might have some bad RAM.

Quick question. are there some baseline tests I can run on my imac to figure out if it is running terribly slow. For example, is there an application or test that can be downloaded that evaluates the system performance. I guess I am looking for like a FPS/benchmark test ala Quake 3 but for the entire OS. I would be curious to compare my results vs. those with more stable systems.

any ideas? I am eager to get to the bottom of this. I am at work now but will be home later and am dedicating myself to fixing this. Last night after my 1st post I opened photoshop and tried to take 10 pictures from my camera and open them right into photoshop. It literally took over 3 minutes to open them the 10 of them.

For comparison sake, when I opened Adoble Photoshop CS2 on my PC (1.3ghz AMD i believe) the CS2 splash screen cycled through all the extensions/filiters/setting quicker than I could read them. On my new Imac it is painstakingly slow to the point I can read almost all of the components that scroll by upon start up.

You would want to use a program called Xbench and their website has a massive amount of people's computer stats and you'll be compared with like configurations.

Um, This has been said here over and over, but I will say it one more time. You have an Intel iMac, not iMac G5. Adobe CS2 due to Adobe is not a Universal Application. It runs under Emulation on all Intel macs. It's a Power PC Application and uses Rosseta to run on the Intel CPU. Because it's not a Native App and under Emulation, it runs slow. Adobe will eventually come out with CS3 which will support the Intel CPU's in the new Macs. Then it will fly. If you want that kind of speed right now, install Bootcamp and a small install of Windows XP SP2.

Good catch.. I had forgotten that Photoshop did not have a universal binary yet.. Im still using PPC for everything so do not have any of these problems and tend to forget that the problem exists.

LOL the solution to fixing my mac is to go "back" to the evil PC enviorment. Mac totally drops the ball with these issues. I guess I will be running windows in order to work in Photoshop. This makes me even happier I ditched my PC. Bill Gates must be loving this! "In order to run mac applications smoothly with consistant stability please install windows"

unbelivable.

Not to be mean, but blame Adobe for the delay. The Intel was a WISE move on Apples part, but everyone has to work together to make the change happen. Adobe is taking their time, Apple has converted their stuff to Universal Applications.

I said nothing about Stability either. The Apps are stable, I know many with an Intel Mac and not one of them has the problems you are having. There is a problem with your system in some way, take it back and tell Apple about your problems, they will either fix it or give you a new machine.

Murlyn, Same here, I do have a Core Duo mini though and it's FAST. I still do most of my main work on my PPC Macs.

Well I am not so sure it is an isolated problem. Nor is it just an Adobe issue. The imac seems to be prone to crash. Just by reading around on these forums I read:

iMac - Emac Freezing!?!?!

"Monday my Mac froze when my entourage and my mercury messenger was loading.. I was able to move the mouse but nothing else..."

iMac - My iMac G5 Keeps Crashing

"The computer has been going fine for about a week, then last night it crashed. While surfing on the web and watching Diggnation in a small window simultaneously it just crashed. Went to sleep, flicked the mouse and it woke up."

iMac - 20" Imac G5 crashing!

"I've been running my first Mac since about Oct. of last year. It's been pretty good up until the last three weeks or so. My 20" Imac G5 has been locking up, not responding, going into a fault mode and telling me to restart. "

iMac Intel Duo:

"is anyone else running into little bugs and problems? I get a lot of programs crashing and that sort of thing. I want to blame it on new technology but sometimes I feel like im back on the PC again "

G5 iMac a weird problem:

Three weeks ago I purchased an iMac G5 and I'm not a happy camper. It crashes whether I'm surfing the net or working in Photoshop. Does anyone have any ideas why it keeps crashing?


Is G5 still a problem?:

"When I first became a member here I noticed that this board was swarming with people who have bought G5 and had tons of horrible problems."


O.K... a question for newly switched Mac owners:

"Well it has been crashing a lot, everything would freeze so I would have to shut the power off. I am going back to Windows, but after my schooling I plan to go back to Macintosh because I will have the time and knowledge about them."

I Thought Mac Applications Weren't Supposed to Crash:

"Granted my new iMac G5 has yet to "freeze" or give me the Mac equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death, but I have had a number of occasions where programs have "unexpectedly quit." The most frequent culprits:

AOL Instant Messenger
Firefox
Entourage"

The slowness in Adobe IS an Adobe Issue.

Ok well I am home now and I Xbenched my Imac I got a score of 50.05 the average for all is 65.48

How large is that disparity?

sbrad009 said:

Ok well I am home now and I Xbenched my Imac I got a score of 50.05 the average for all is 65.48

How large is that disparity?

Click to expand...

Read this article. It will tell you how to disable quartz beam synchronization. Otherwise on the Intel Macs the test is not fair. This URL explains why and what to do. Give it a try.

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-181325.html