Whats the low down on OS X stability - issues

Just trying to get feeling for a few things in the mac world -- The last mac I touched was back in 1993 and got an occasional "cherry bomb" on the screen when running one app or another ... of course Windows 3.1 would blue screen regularly.

Not trying to say which is "better" from a ease of use point of view -- more interested in security - stability - etc

So right now I'm runnning XP - have DSL so its like monthly "patches" from MSFT - prior to XP SP2 it was weekly "patches" (what fun). Of course I've got full shields up all the time Macafee antivirus - Spy Sweeper - Pop Up blocker - and a Linksys router as a HW firewall.

I'm meticulous on keeping all this up to date on latest signatures for viruses etc. -- even stopped running Internet Explorer and run Mozilla Firefox browser to eliminate IE holes. Since I keep both school data and financial data on the PC -- paranoia is the order of the day so I can stay connected --- but not get infected !!!

And in general XP is pretty stable - have never seen a blue screen - but its not uncommon for some app or combination of apps / actions to blow XPs mind and force it to shutdown those apps (what fun). And of course .... the best part of XP is that after running it for a couple of years -- loading and unloading SW -- the registery gets so F'ed up you really need to save your data - nuke the OS - reload from scratch - reload your data (a ton of fun)


So how does all this compare to running OS X ??

- Are you guys really immune from viruses / spyware
- Do prudent users run virus SW ?
- How about pop-ups
- How stable is OS X
- When did you last have to be forced to "exit" an app and loose your work ?
- When did you last have to reload / rebuild your disk because the system had just become to unstable ?
- How frequent are just flatout systems crashes (of the fatal type) where the HD contents are just scrambled
- How secure is OS X to hacking either from the net ... or if someone steals your system (assuming you've setup password protection)
- How does Apple handle updates and notifications of updates


Lots of questions - so thanks for any feed back -- just in the final stages on making the switch (in my head )

PC_Puke said:

1 So how does all this compare to running OS X ??

2 - Are you guys really immune from viruses / spyware
2.1- Do prudent users run virus SW ?
3 - How about pop-ups
4 - How stable is OS X
4.1 - When did you last have to be forced to "exit" an app and loose your work ?
4.2 - When did you last have to reload / rebuild your disk because the system had just become to unstable ?
4.3 - How frequent are just flatout systems crashes (of the fatal type) where the HD contents are just scrambled
4.4 - How secure is OS X to hacking either from the net ... or if someone steals your system (assuming you've setup password protection)
4.5 - How does Apple handle updates and notifications of updates


Lots of questions - so thanks for any feed back -- just in the final stages on making the switch (in my head )

Click to expand...

(Numbers added for my convenience.)

1) OS X is less maintenance intensive than XP. But both, when properly maintained, are fairly stable.

2) Sort of. OS X is not immune, but currently there are no exploits out in the wild. OS X is a harder platform to create a successful virus for but I would not say it is impossible. On the other hand with no exploits in the wild there is little reason to install anti virus software to protect the Mac itself at this time.
2.1) Prudent users who do no want to carry virii to other users computers will use virus protection. There are no known virii for OS X in the wild, this does not stop a Mac from carrying a Windows virus in a Doc file or mail attachment.

3) Pop-ups, or more accurately pop-unders, happen. There are pop up blockers for most of the major browsers though. Either built in or as a plug-in.

4) Fairly stable. Not counting a hardware issue I have not had a kernel panic (OS X equivalent to a BSOD) yet.
4.1) Never, but it does hapen to people upon occasion.
4.2) Same as 4.1
4.3) Same as 4.1
4.4) Protection from remote access is fairly good by default. I would turn on the firewall though as a matter of course. For protection of data on a stolen laptop, unless you encrypt you home directory, not very. File Vault enters into its own unique set of problems though. In general if physical security is violated most files can not be protected without taking some extra precautions.
4.5) It checks automatically on a scheduled basis, or can be updated manually. Basically the same options as XP.

Are you guys really immune from viruses / spyware
for now yes
Do prudent users run virus SW ?
not me and i dont on my linux box, only in XP
How about pop-ups
sad to say yes but firefox is pretty good for that
How stable is OS X
as good as XP slightly better IMO
When did you last have to be forced to "exit" an app and loose your work ?
When i was installing office ironically!
When did you last have to reload / rebuild your disk because the system had just become to unstable ?
not done it yet, but i dont see many posts about it
How frequent are just flatout systems crashes (of the fatal type) where the HD contents are just scrambled
never had that happen not even in win
How secure is OS X to hacking either from the net ... or if someone steals your system (assuming you've setup password protection)
depends on your firewall but its better than M$ for passwords being stolen as most stuff like that is written with M$ systems in mind
How does Apple handle updates and notifications of updates
pass on that one

Occasionally the file permissions on OSX's filesystem get screwed up for no apparent reason, and you have to do a "repair permissions."

No stability issues with my mac mini thus far, except for one application that froze the entire system, which is due to a bug in the video drivers for the mini. There's a workaround for that at least.

My Windows XP system is a bit flaky, mainly because I'm overclocking it and I haven't found the maximum 100% stable overclock yet.

about the pop-ups.. we are not talking about the pop ups PC's get where they are flying over the place and u a shooting them down...that is how my family PC gets sometimes... i might get a pop-up ad when i enter a website tho...u cant really block those becasue some sites have a pop up window for navigation and such

All's I know is that before I got a Mac, I spent half my time forced to be on the PC to fix whatever happened to be wrong with it that week. By the time I fixed the problem I had moved on to the next thing just to repeat.

Since the switch, nada problem.... I'll take that alone.

Linux user say I wasted my money..... But I didn't want to piece together a PC to run a stable OS... I wanted to buy a stable OS from the manufacturer. = Mac

I haven't had any real stablity issues since I got mine, it has crashed to the point that I had to restart only once so far. I don't run anti-virus on it but I also don't run it on my XP machines.

I have found OS X *way* more stable than Windows operating systems. Why?

1) It's not so susceptible to hardware issues - my last PC was a nightmare on this.

2) It doesn't get clunky and overloaded the more you use it. If you use a Windows PC for a long period of time without a reboot, it gets gunked up with rubbish, and you end up rebooting to keep things working OK. (I do, anyway, and have done on every Windows machine I've used.) With OS X you don't.

3) If anything crashes, and occasionally programs will, they almost never affect anything else - they won't crash the whole machine, or leave baggage which messes things up next time round, or affect other programs.

4) OS X seems to be free of the Windows syndrome of the machine gradually getting slower and slower over a period of months, due to registry issues / programs which don't uninstall properly / goodness knows what else, which means you tend to have to rebuild Windows machines every few months or years to keep them working nicely.

I've just done an "uptime" and my last reboot was 11 days ago... I can't remember why but I think it was a security update or something (which do sometimes ask for reboots.) Personally I find the OS X reliability a total revelation after using various versions of Windows for years. It's as good as people say.

- Are you guys really immune from viruses / spyware
Not immune, just that no significant viruses or spyware for the Mac OS X exist out there really. I guess you could try and look at as many pr0n or warez sites to get one but for most people, they should be fine.
- Do prudent users run virus SW ?
No need really unless you are really paranoid or you are used to running your virus software every hour of the day back on Windows.
- How about pop-ups
Used to be rare because I set Firefox to block all pop-ups but there have been new types called pop-behinds or something where a window pops up and the only way you can see it is if you press Expose. Otherwise, it stays hidden (like when you drag a window all the way off the screen). Only way to close it is to press Ctrl+W.
- How stable is OS X
Very stable.
- When did you last have to be forced to "exit" an app and loose your work ?
Camino. Now I'm back to Firefox. I have only ever had crashes with non-Apple software.
- When did you last have to reload / rebuild your disk because the system had just become to unstable ?
Don't think I ever had to before.
- How frequent are just flatout systems crashes (of the fatal type) where the HD contents are just scrambled
Again, don't think this has ever happened with me before.
- How secure is OS X to hacking either from the net ... or if someone steals your system (assuming you've setup password protection)
Well, I don't know anything about hacking so I can't answer here.
- How does Apple handle updates and notifications of updates
Well, I think it's up to you to decide when to update Mac OS X. You can set a notification to remind, or you can do it manually. Apple does give out notices on their website but I doubt many users visit it often anyways.