Mac crashing?

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Hi everyone,

As some of you may be aware by my recent posts I am looking at switching. However, a friend of mine has had his apple about 2 months (powermac, good spec - can't remember exactly) and the thing won't stop crashing! Even when trying to load an application such as imovie. Apparently it started doing it on a a regular basis - he also claims that the OS "chuggs" at times, takes forever to load and occasionally freezes up.

Thing is, he has had a lot of experience with mac's and he told me not to beleive the rumours that they are more stable than windows, apparently most of his have crashed frequently.

Just wondered if anyone else has had these problems.
 
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Occasional crashes can be due to many reasons. I would suggest him to back up all the important information and do a fresh install. I have the feeling that he accidentally deleted some critical files. That sort of behavior is not normal to OS X.
 
J

jamesx

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there is something wrong with his computer. a mac is more stable than a windows machine, but it can still have problems if something is wrong with it.

it seems as though people see one mac crash and they think they all crash and wonder if they should get one... but people can see hundreds of windows machines crash and its no big deal. A mac should not crash if everything is working correctly and your not trying to use some top heavy software with an outdaed computer (as with a pc).
 
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2011 MBP, i7, 16GB RAM, MBP 2.16Ghz Core Duo, 2GB ram, Dual 867Mhz MDD, 1.75GB ram, ATI 9800 Pro vid
Your friend is generating tachyon pulses because of his guilt that he is not following the '95%' Windows market. All will be solved by switching to Microsoft products. ;)

But seriously, Macs are VERY stable. Something is messed up with his system. Given his track record that you mention, I wouldn't be surprised that he caused it.

[rant]
Has he asked questions here or elsewhere? Has he sent it in for repair? I had more to add regarding diagnosing the issue, but it does not belong in this thread.

My first used Powerbook had a few hard issues over the years but was mostly stable. My G4 tower has been rock solid (excepting the bad iSight firewire cable that caused sytem crashes when I installed a third party USB 2.0 card). And my recent refurb Mac Book Pro had a video issue that Apple fixed. OS X is been very reliable on all of those machines.

My two brothers have been on Macs longer than I have and had few issues. The biggest issue for them seems to be the stability of the Pro Tools audio editing software. It is even know to be more stable on the exact same model with a different number of processors or processor speed. They also report which OS versions they have tested it with because even a point release can make less stable.
[/rant]

Anyway, sure problems can arise, but they are usually solvable without a reinstall. Even without a reboot. And Apple can fix the hardware side easily enough.
 
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vaughan80
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Fair enough. I did think it was slight scaremongering. I do know people who have had mac's and thus far - no major problems.

I suppose my biggest fear is that if something does go wrong I couldn't diagnose or fix it like I could with a PC.
 
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If you're a geek, which by the sound of it you are (no offense, really, but you can diagnose and fix PC problems), you'll probaby figure it out within a month.
 
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vaughan80
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:D heheh!
Well, I can fix some problems. I'm no IT expert. It's just that mac's are so different I wouldn't even know where to start.
 

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