Do Mac computers really never crash?

[Napier]

How often do Mac computers crash? Are some Mac models more prone to crashing than others? When they crash, do they reboot faster? All this is realtive to the Windows (non-NT) world...

[XJETGIRLX]

Well, I'm sure someone will come along with a more techical answer, but FWIW here's my experience:

About 4 months ago my husband and I both bought brand new computers. I bought an iMac and he bought a Compaq Presario. My machine runs OSX 10.2 and he's running Windows XP.

We both leave our computers running constantly. The first time he booted up he got the blue screen of death. Since then, his computer's crashed quite a few times, at least 5 or 6. Mine never has. Now, every now and again I'll have a program like explorer or iTunes just get a little funky on me and lock up for a few seconds, but it doesn't affect anything else I'm doing so there's no need to reboot. You can always use forcequit to close out the offending application.

Every couple weeks I'll reboot just for the heck of it, as some programs will start to run a little slow after awhile, but rebooting is definitely faster than my PC.

[Marathon]

Count me as someone else who, while unable to offer "hard technical data", can at least give personal experience.

"Do Mac computers really never crash?" No. I've used a few different of the late 90s iMacs, and some of them crash a lot, some of them not so much. The new sexy ones seem to be much more stable to me.

I am going to be very careful not to turn this into an OS war - I think that *everything* crashes SOMETIMES. I've used wonderful Macs and terrible PCs (and XJETGIRLX, I've had terrible luck with Compaq). The better operating systems get, combined with my growing knowledge of how to use a computer with TLC, make for a better experience. I bought a brand new Gateway with XP Pro in April, and it hasn't crashed once yet - and I make it work a lot. This leaves me happy, but suspicious.

[ducks back into the warm sea of lurkdom]

[micco]

I run mostly Win boxes - Win2K, WinNT, and an old 95 box for compatibility testing. My wife has a G3, an iMac and a powerbook. Non-scientific testing indicates the Mac OS is a whole lot more stable than Win95^* but not as stable as Win2K (properly installed and maintained). We both push our machines pretty hard and my machines stay on 24/7. I haven't had a crash or failure reboot in months on Win2K, though I have had a couple of maintenance reboots. My wife managed to lock up hers twice yesterday doing some hairy math calcs. And reboot times are comparable - her iMac takes longer than my Win2K box, but just barely.

The main difference between Mac and Win seems that when you have an app or OS lockup and need to selectively kill a process or reboot, it seems much harder on Mac. In OSX there's probably a way to get to a console and kill a process, but I haven't seen the pre-OSX Mac equivalent of the Win task manager (note: haven't seen != doesn't exist). When her iMac locks up, my wife has to hunt down a bent paperclip and poke a little hole, which makes the three-finger salute seem downright civilized.

I find very little difference in performance, stability or capability between the Macs and Win boxes. IMO, the days of objective superiority are gone and choices now are made for subjective and political reasons. The only machine of ours that seems to be significantly superior is the slackware linux box, but in all fairness, I don't push it as hard as the others.

* note: stability problems on the win95 box are probably due to mini-micco as much as any inherent problems in that OS.

[DougC]

- - - No operating system has ever come with a money-back no-crash-guarantee, and there's reasons for that.
~

[jjimm]

My G4 running OS9.2 crashes at least twice a day.

[RealityChuck]

I run mostly Windows; rarely Macs. I have noticed that the Macs I work with crash about as often as Windows computers (taking into account the amount of time I'm using them).

I used to believe Macs were better. Then I went to a presentation by Apple talking about an operating system. "Well," they said, "we're still working on it, but any time you [insert technical details here], it's going to crash. We haven't been able for fix that." My reaction was WTF?

Windows problems are because Microsoft doesn't dictate software and hardware specs to the degree Apple does.

[zoid]

I've had both. Everything crashes eventually if you push it hard enough.

[istara]

OS9 and below crashed occasionally to very frequently, depending on so many factors (software, amount of memory, usage, disk errors, whatever).

OSX never seems to crash. I have been running it for several months, and while certain (unstable) programmes often crash, they never bring the system down. I think it's the "protected memory" thing.

Also - bear in mind that Mac OSX is essentially UNIX. IMO it was a bit of a mistake calling it OSX, because really it is New Mac OS1.

[ZipperJJ]

I agree with what RealityChuck says regarding software and hardware. I think there's alot more factors to crashing than just the OS.

I worked with iMacs at school when they first came out (Apple was happy to give our journalism dapartment a whole buncha them) and they didn't crash but froze up. We had to disconnect the power cord from the back of the .. thing .. and reconnect to reboot. This happened constantly. Of course, this was NOT OSX (i have no clue what OS it would have been. Teal?)

[merge]

I will add my 2 cents...

Home computers -
Apple iBook 800 - OSX
PowerMac 8500 - OSX
built my AMD 1Ghz Athlon.. Winows XP

work computers.
Dell Optiplex 2.0 Ghz. Windows XP
Dell Optiplx 500 Windows 2000

My 2.0 Ghz work computer has only crashed twice in 6 months... I do not really do anything tasking on that computer.

My work computer running windows 2000 crashes a lot because of 3rd party software issues... and has very little RAM...

My home PC also crashes a lot because of 3rd party software....

I think that is why Mac's are more stable... I rarely add 3rd party software on them.

My 8500 is like 5-6 years old... It took some work to get OSX on it, but since I havem it runs pretty damn well.. I love OSX..

my iBook is great... I bought it on Jan 7th... and it hasn't crashed yet... explorer froze a few times, but I was able to force quit without restarting..

I think either way you go, you will be happy... I think you have more options to mess with a PC and that is why they crash more...
If you install your basic needs... and leave it alone you will be fine...
but on a PC, you have more options for more software, add a card here, upgrade a card there.... all of which will make it less stable..

[rookie523]

I work as tech support in a company with windows and mac machines.

I would say the mac crashes but not as often as windows.
But from what I've seen, windows users use it for a whole lot more different things. I mean the windows system gets tons of things installed and uninstalled every week it seems.

Here is a little info to make the numbers significant.
35 Machines with Mac OS
950 with Windows XP

In one week we would get about 3 calls that Mac crashes or freezes. 40 calls that a Windows machine freezes or crashes.
I'm pulling out actual stats(tickets).

[Yorikke]

I've owned / used extensively 3 comps in the last 6 years.

1) I forget the brand, either HP or Packard-Bell, few problems

2) Compaq fairly high-powered PC, but it was my sis-in-laws, and I don't know its stats, few problems

3) Power Mac G4 Cube, problems only when I try do open multiple programs too quickly, that is, not letting, say, Word open up because I'm in such a fool hurry, and trying to do something else in the 4 seconds it takes for Word to start.

But the Mac was ridiculously expensive, and doesn't play the games I want. It was Mrs. hrhomer's idea. I'm getting a PC when we can afford it.

hrh

[jjimm]

ZipperJJ
[i]they didn't crash but froze up[/b]

I would call that crashing.

[kasuo]

At work, we have about 20 iMacs and 50 G4's, all running OS 10.2. I would say about 10% (or 7) crash in a given semester (18-week) period. Not such a bad record considering we have over 100 Pentium-III's and at least 10 regularly crash on a daily basis.

[Balthisar]

I'll second the "everything crashes eventually" motion. For technical purposes, the OP is answered -- no, Macs aren't uncrashable; they can crash.

This will hopefully contribute to reasons and so forth, without errupting into a flame war and getting us booted out of GQ. These are personal experiences based on years and years of use with both dominant operating systems (Mac/Win).

The Mac has gone through a long steady evolution from System 6 (my earliest use) through Mac OS 9 (I'll call these the classic OS). A complete genesis occurred with Mac OS X, though. Windows evolved from a DOS shell program into the XP of today (NT was introduced halfway through, so NT and the 9x series co-grew) -- XP is the integration of the 9x and NT platforms.

The Mac OS was originally released in 1984. It was a single-task operating system, meaning a single system process was in control of the computer at all times, and the operating system was designed around this. Gradually the Mac OS was made multitask capable, albeit in an awkward fashion. "Cooperative multitasking" allowed a single program to hog all of the system resources; it was up to the program to cooperate with the rest of the system and give other resources time. Additionally, the Mac OS was traditionally NOT capable of dynamic linking. The toolbox was built to be asking using processor traps, which means the assembly language tries to execute an illegal instruction, a trap dispatcher handles this, and the correct operating system routine is run. In short, intentionally faulting the processor to get things done. The PowerPC changed all this, though, and allowed dynamic linking to take place for real. Finally, the OS was expandable through the use of system extensions, which were little pieces of code that were patched into the operating system proper, i.e., they became part of the operating system. The whole point is, as awesome as the Mac was, there was a lot of funky voodoo going on under the hood to keep the whole thing working. To its advantage, Apple kept great, strict control over the hardware and this went a long way to make the classic Mac exceptionally stable. However tinkering with the underworkings -- such a extensions that touch naughty parts of the OS or that conflicted with each other -- could make a make very unstable. Because programs didn't have their own untouchable memory space, a single misbehavior anywhere in the system would make the entire Mac bomb. The good news was, you COULD make a Mac uncrashable by being selective in what software you used. But if you really, really needed to use Wordperfect, you'd have to realize you risked an unstable system. In my experience, I had a lot of system bombs, but not nearly as many as on Windows-based machines up to but not including XP. Accepting them was a tradeoff for the software I wanted to use, though.

Incidently, the Apple three finger salute didn't generally need a paper clip -- ctrl/open-apple/power usually reboot the machine on pre-USB keyboards.

Mac OS X changes all of the above. It's a kernel-based operating system with protected memory space. This means the system is as stable as the kernel, and as long as the kernal doesn't panic (crash), then technically the computer hasn't crashed. The kernal is the most basic piece of software that controls the computer -- everything the computer does it arbitrated through the kernal. In a way it's the virtual machine that represents the whole hardware world to all of your computer processes. It also manages memory, and ensures that every process has its own domain. One program cannot violate another task's space. This in itself means that a single naughty program won't bring down the whole system ala classic Mac OS. The Mac OS X Mach kernel is regarded as exceptionally stable as it ships from Apple. However, it's a modular kernal which means kernel extensions (kexts) can be added to it. This is done for certain hardware drivers, for example. The cliche about a chain being only as strong as its weekest link applies here -- a naughty kext can panic the kernel. Once the kernel panics, there's no recovery. I've NEVER experienced a kernel panic with any version of Mac OS X since the public beta, although there are those that HAVE had them.

HOWEVER, from most users' perspectives, there are "crashes" that aren't kernel panics that are just as bad. Because the whole Mac OS is a bunch of processes that run atop Mach, losing these processes effectively kills the Mac OS. For example, if Aqua dies, there's no way for the Mac to draw Mac-stuff on your screen! While technically the OS is still fine, it's not very friendly for a normal user and will be perceived of as a crash. This makes it much more necessary to distinguish between OS crashes (kernel panics) and process crashes, even Aqua. Most program crashes just kill a program without affecting Aqua or the kernel, though, so it's a minor inconvenience that doesn't require a reboot. I've had a couple of times mostly involving games where the computer became unresponsive. This is the game's fault, but the only option is to reboot as if the computer crashed, or take the cool way out and either telnet or ssh into from another computer on your network and kill the bad process or reboot the computer from the shell command line.

Now on to Windows. I'll start right off saying I have a preference for Macs, and I consider myself an expert on both of them. Heck, I'm a Windows programmer (not professionally!) but just getting my fingers dirty on the Mac side of programming. With the exception of XP (and maybe NT I've not much use with), Windows is incredibly crashable.

For most purposes, the "first" Windows was Windows 3.1, which was a 16-bit Windows shell for DOS. This means it was a program running under DOS and counting on mostly DOS drivers to get anything done. Cooperative multitasking with nowhere near the flexibility nor beauty of the Mac OS. Pretty much a piece of crap but it started the momentum towards Windows. Windows 95, though, changed the World, and for the first time made the Intel architecture a consumer-oriented graphical platform -- before you complain, think about the 95% of grandmothers that would have used a DOS box! In any case, it was a 32-bit Windows with support for the old 16-bit programs, more customizable, but still cooperative with globablly-shared, non-protected memory. Blue Screen of Death city! A single bad process could kill the whole system. Windows 98 improved this a little bit, but ME came about and made things worse. Back between Windows 3.1 and 95, though, Microsoft released Windows NT, for Windows New Technology. This was a kernel based operating system intended for business and server markets, where crash-proofness was a necessary goal. I have no personal experience with this other than using NT 4 for a couple of months at work, so feel free to seek the flames on Google groups. Supposedly, it was okay, and it was probably better than classic Mac OS as far as stability if not usefulness. Kernels are slow, though. They add an extra layer of arbitration and handshaking between the program and the devices (like the monitor or disk drive). So to speed things up, Microsoft added lots of user interface elements to the NT kernel! Now remember that the kernel is what supports everything else, and a bug in the kernel will kill the entire system. Kernels are "meant" to be small and generic, and for this they gain stability via experience. Throw a whole, complex, complicated user interface into the kernel, though, and what happens if there's a small bug? Whooosh to the whole system. I don't know if this is still the case with XP -- anyone know for sure?

XP is the merging of the consumer cooperative multi-tasking lines with the NT protected memory preemptive multitasking OS. I've used XP for over a year now, and have only had very few problems. Granted it's more problems than my Macs give me, but if you consider all the suffering I did previously, Windows XP is finally stable. I'll give it a thumbs up if you really, really, want to run Windows.

As for Mac versus Windows, I'll save that for another section of this board.

[istara]

Balthisar - thanks - that was really interesting and detailed. And very clear to understand, even for me as a non-techie.

[Diceman]

rookie523: By your numbers, the Windows computers are more stable. 3 out of 35 is 8.6%, whereas 40 out of 950 is only 4.2%

I have Windows XP, and it's nice and stable. It's from Dell. Both them and Gateway have good reputations in this regard.

Compaq, on the other hand, is the Dodge Neon of the computer industry

[Hauky]

FWIW, comparing Macs to Win9x and Macs to Win2K/XP are entirely different things. I've been running XP for about a year now, and I can think of exactly 1 time that it's crashed and I've had to reboot, and that was some unexplicable startup blue-screen problem. I've had apps crash more often, but some Task Manager fun has always been able to save my butt--even when I'm doing stupid stuff, like seeing how many processes can have realtime CPU priority simultaneously (the answer is one ).

[SuperNelson]

Originally posted by Hauky
FWIW, comparing Macs to Win9x and Macs to Win2K/XP are entirely different things. I've been running XP for about a year now, and I can think of exactly 1 time that it's crashed and I've had to reboot, and that was some unexplicable startup blue-screen problem. I've had apps crash more often, but some Task Manager fun has always been able to save my butt--even when I'm doing stupid stuff, like seeing how many processes can have realtime CPU priority simultaneously (the answer is one ).

The same applies to the Mac side. Comparing Windows to Mac OS 7-9 and Windows to Max OS X are also entirely different things. When I was running OS 8 and 9, system crashes were pretty common, on the order of a couple of times a week. Since I upgraded to OS X a little more than a year ago, I've had only one instance that came close to a system crash. During that time, I've powered down my iBook four times. Twice to change out hardware, and twice because I wasn't going to be around for a week or so, and it didn't make sense to leave it on. I reboot every couple of weeks or so if a software update asks me to.

For what it's worth, that one crash may or may not have been a crash. I unplugged a USB Zip drive while a file was still being written to it. The computer seemed to continue running normally, but none of the USB devices would respond. Unfortunately, that included the mouse and keyboard. I'll chalk it up as a crash of the "Cape does not allow user to fly" variety.

[ultrafilter]

OSX is probably very stable, as it's UNIX, which has had 30 years to evolve into a good operating system. wWin2k is Microsoft's best offering to date, IMO, and it's pretty stable. But keep in mind that direct comparisons between MS and UNIX aren't really fair, as UNIX is 15 years older than any version of Windows.

I suspect that a lot of the additional stability in earlier version of the Mac OS was due to Apple's strict control of what hardware went into their machines. If you use good hardware and are good about maintenance, win2K and winXP are pretty stable. But a lot of the OEM's (Dell, Compaq, HP, etc.) use cheap hardware, and that directly impacts the stability of the machine.

[amarinth]

Originally posted by Napier
How often do Mac computers crash? Are some Mac models more prone to crashing than others? When they crash, do they reboot faster? All this is realtive to the Windows (non-NT) world...

My experience and YMMV.

Usually, with slightly less frequency than PCs, but by no means "never." And the ones I've worked with rebooted more slowly than the comparable PCs, but not terrifically slower.

The exception there's my mother's Mac (G4) which seems to crash from my just looking at it. (She claims it's never gone down while she's working on it. I managed to kill it 3 times in 45 minutes from merely web surfing. The PC next to it was fine.) It takes an incredibly long time to reboot - and then, once it's done rebooting, it doesn't work at first (no indication of this state, no watch icon, it just isn't done rebooting for a while after it looks like it's done rebooting, and you have to wait for a while. How long is anybody's guess). But I think her machine is truly an evil exception.

[Napier]

Great stuff, folks.
FWIW I'll add my own experience, and my reason for originally posting.
The most stable machine I have worked with is a DOS computer running software I wrote - it automates a test system with about a dozen users, and (other than the time I programmed a 16-bit integer to count something that could happen hundreds of thousands of times) it has never crashed in several years.
Second best is my cell phone. It crashed and I had to remove the battery twice to get it to come back. Well, now, that doesn't really count...
So, second best is my work desktop computer running Windows NT. If I click on the indent function in Microsoft Word, it freezes so completely that not even the mouse cursor will move, and the three finger salute does nothing. And twice now it has turned the monitor off (?!) when I tried to edit a text file. The monitor clicks and everything. But other than that it has not crashed in 3 years.
Third best would be the several Sun Sparcstations I had, running both BSD and SVR4. They'd crash maybe once a month or so.
Various computers running Windows 9x would rank a good deal worse. At the bottom of the list is the wretched Windows 98 box I am using now. It crashes about once per hour of use. If I leave the Zip drive plugged into the USB port and try to turn it on, it often won't recognize the keyboard or the mouse or the off/boot button, and I actually have to pull the power plug. In fact, it crashed when I submitted this OP and I didn't know if SDMB actually received it. I am considering getting rid of the machine - not just trading it away or something, actually taking it to the dump myself so I can hurl it to the bottom of the big metal crusher canyon and asking them to cycle it.
Now I am trying to find out if I can get Quicken for Linux....

[AHunter3]

I could probably break an anvil; I could definitely wreck a tank. Operating systems have no chance whatsoever.

I'm pretty happy with the Macs I've used over the years, but no, it is not true that they do not crash. I have crashed every Macintosh operating system from System 3 to MacOS X. I've also crashed NT and XP while using other folks' PCs.

You get more stability out of any OS by learning what programs behave nicely, and ditching the ones that don't in favor of their competitors; by doing maintenance chores on your volume structures; by doing housekeeping on your settings and preferences; weeding out your extensions and other optional routines and tweaks and background processes and whatnot; and by avoiding substandard hardware.

[DougC]

...I have Windows XP, and it's nice and stable. It's from Dell. Both them and Gateway have good reputations in this regard....

- - - Uh, , , , -it depends. Name-brand computers tend to use proprietary motherboards (and often cases). You shouldn't have any problems if you add RAM, HD's or CD/ATAPI variant drives to these computers, but if you start adding or changing internal slot components, you often will. They build the mobo substandard to save money and/or tie it to their OS install CD's but they only test it well with the OEM components. 'Tis why nerds build their own PC's from name-brand retail parts.....
~

[Mr2001]

The last Mac I owned was a Performa 630 running System 7.x, and it crashed just from thinking unhappy thoughts. On the other hand, the only crashes I've had in Windows XP were caused by hardware/driver conflicts.

[Alereon]

Realistically, the biggest advantage in Apple's court, as far as stability, is their ability to have absolute control over the hardware that the computer contains. Since Apple computers cost far more than the competition, it stands to reason that they can afford to use higher quality components. With PCs, you can spend the money and get a rock stable system, or spend less money and get a system using substandard components. Windows developed its reputation for frequent crashing primarily due to being commonly installed on substandard hardware, not any intrinsic failings of the OS.

[istara]

Really, the OP is a bit like asking "Do Ford cars drive fast?" ie - yes, but it depends which model.

As many people have pointed out, the critical question is "Do *certain* Mac computers really never crash?"

Because from my experience across all platforms, in crashability comparisons, OSX and OS9 and below are as different as OSX and Windows ME, or OS9 and Windows 2000.

OSX rarely to never crashes.
OS9 and below can crash frequently.

[Aslan of Narnia]

At me school, my Mac computer crashed 1-3 times a day, if not more.

[Boo Boo Foo]

I design web-based database systems for a living.

One of my clients uses 2 IBM Netfinity monsters each running 2 CPU's and a truckload of RAM and RAID Array disk systems. They're mission critical to the company and they are online on the web 24 x 7.

Both machines were purchased in September of 2000 and they use Windows 2000 Advanced Server. They don't have to do anything other than run SQL Server thru the webserver interfaces. They talk to each other via ethernet but other than that, every possible measure has been taken to make them invisible to hackers etc.

Is Win2K stable? Both machines have been running now, WITHOUT one single reboot since January of 2001. In that time, they've serviced 347 GIGABYTES of user requested data via the web. They both hover around 5 - 10% CPU. I check them daily.

I can't get over how rock solid those two machines are - in the context of their designated roles.

I'm sure, however, if I was to try using those machines to run a fiersome audio program like Pro Tools for example with incredibly complex audio interfaces etc etc, then I could get 'em to hang probably.

But in the context of being world class database webservers, they're awesome. 13 months without a reboot - 24 x 7 x 365. That's pretty impressive.

I've spent quite some time learning about all the subtle tricks you can use to "fine tune" Windows 2000. I'm assuming those tricks would extend to Windows XP too.

One thing I've learnt is this - if your computer is tuned to provide a service which you aren't using - then disable it. Also, avoid loading "resident background" programs like AOL Instant Messenger as an example. They all chew up 3-5% CPU even if you're not using them. It all adds up and makes your CPU run far more inefficiently.

[Keymain]

OS9 isn't that stable. I'd put it on a par w/Windows 98 as far as stability goes.
OSX is extremely stable. I've had one crash (kernel panic), and it was in 10.1, not the newer 10.2. Very occasionally an app w/crash or lock up, but that's about it. I run several apps at once, including Logic (audio software) and Photoshop, and almost never have a problem.

[Geek Mecha]

In my experience, the majority of Mac crashes can be blamed on frequent and indiscriminate installation of third-party software. Iffy shareware titles, web browsers, and IM clients, can bring the entire system down with them when they crash. User error is another cause. I've seen machines that were administered by people who weren't familiar with Macs and personally did things or let other users do all kinds of stupid things, such as moving around or deleting software components they didn't understand, and installing and running programs while ignoring the system's specs and the software's system requirements.

In my experience, if your machine and OS are current, if you are a savvy user, and if you are discriminate with what you install on your machine, your Mac should rarely crash.

My own Mac has not crashed since I installed OS X in August. It's always on, and it's in use for at least 6 hours each day. Back when I used OS 9, I used it even more (for graphics, website work, games, word processing, and web browsing), and still, crashes didn't happen more than twice per month.

[micco]

Originally posted by istara
OSX rarely to never crashes.
OS9 and below can crash frequently.

Convenient... but Mac didn't gain its reputation for being stable in the few months since the release of OSX. Mac-advocates have been telling me for 10 years how their machines were so much better than Wintel. It wasn't demonstrably true then, and it's not now. In my experience, if either side says their gear is better, it's usually zealotry or a hidden agenda (e.g. they're a salesman), not fact based on benchmarks. I'm not saying OSX isn't stable; I'm saying that it is no more stable than Win2K on similar hardware running similar apps (and yes, I will install third-party hardware and software because I need the computer to actually do something).

[quar]

A couple of corrections here....

Originally posted by Balthisar
In any case, it was a 32-bit Windows with support for the old 16-bit programs, more customizable, but still cooperative with globablly-shared, non-protected memory.

This isn't entirely correct. Windows 95 did support premptive multitasking. Actually it used a combination of both. Legacy 3.1 applications were cooperatively multitasked, while Win32 applications were premptively multitaksed.

Cite: https://secure.netarchitect.com/wpw95wnt.html

XP is the merging of the consumer cooperative multi-tasking lines with the NT protected memory preemptive multitasking OS.

XP is simply the next evolution of Windows 2000 which was the next evolution of Windows NT 4.0.


Quar

[Balthisar]

Originally posted by quar
A couple of corrections here....

...XP is simply the next evolution of Windows 2000 which was the next evolution of Windows NT 4.0.

Yeah, "merging" wasn't exactly the choice word in the technical sense at all. From the consumer standpoint, we can say "merging" though, since it's where both previously-separate product lines come together.

Micco, I could counter that there are no data to back up that it's zealotry! Mostly though, I don't imagine there's any real hard and true data that can exist -- it's all anecdotal. Sure there are the posers that are Mac zealots that don't have the experience to back up their non-crash claims. Then there are those have use both systems and given a fair analysis of their own as well as stated anecdotal evidence. Really, it comes down to what you run. In general and in my own experience, the old Mac OS was more stable than the old Windows, and I constantly pushed them both to the limits. Anecdotally, my two Macs have crashed less than my XP machine, but because of my small data size, I can't claim that one's better than the other -- they both are impressive, though!

[AHunter3]

I won't claim that MacOS 9 is inherently more stable than MacOS X or Windows XP, but if you're willing to spend the time to tweak and weed and otherwise find the hardware/software match that works for you, you can end up with a very very stable MacOS 9 system. (This was even more so for MacOS 8.6, btw).

As I said before, I can crash any OS. But I can work all day long in 9, day after day, with FileMaker updating records to accomodate a new calc field I just entered, in the background; iCab serving me SDMB pages, Eudora fetching my mail, a second copy of FileMaker open to let me respond to bug reports and change requests while the first copy is tied up doing the update; SoundApp playing MP3s; file copies and deletes taking place as I weed out my downloads folder; BBEdit up to do find and replace-all string modifications as I write scripts; Photoshop up to create or modify button icons for the database; Virtual PC up and running a copy of NT Server running FileMaker so I can see layouts from the PC perspective and address script calls that are OS-specific and so forth.

Since a system crash would take out the file containing the calc field I'm updating, and we'd have to restore from yesterday's backup, this is a lot of additional processing to have around. But I do it all the time.

Important disclaimers: My computer is a laptop. It gets shut down every evening when I go home and gets a fresh boot every morning when I start work. My stability is good for hours at a time. I don't shoot for days or weeks. I take my browser to SDMB but not to any old random site, as sites do exist which are capable of hosing the OS as a consequence of taking down the browser (RealPlayer media and bad Java being possible culprits there).

Generally speaking, for the tasks I use my computer for and the fashion in which I use it, MacOS 9 is more stable than XP or MacOS X (also more so than 95/98/ME). With any of the others, while the OS itself may remain unaffected, are more prone than 9 to having specific apps crash or become unresponsive requiring a force-quit.

[occ]

I've got a short, beautiful phrase for those who would claim that Macs never crash (note odd capitalization):

"sorry, a system error occurred. <Restart>"

And who could forget that cute little bomb icon?

[merge]

Originally posted by micco
Convenient... but Mac didn't gain its reputation for being stable in the few months since the release of OSX. Mac-advocates have been telling me for 10 years how their machines were so much better than Wintel. It wasn't demonstrably true then, and it's not now. In my experience, if either side says their gear is better, it's usually zealotry or a hidden agenda (e.g. they're a salesman), not fact based on benchmarks. I'm not saying OSX isn't stable; I'm saying that it is no more stable than Win2K on similar hardware running similar apps (and yes, I will install third-party hardware and software because I need the computer to actually do something).

Apples, and oranges... yadda yadda yadda...

Mac OS 8.6 was probably the most stable operating system apple had before OSX... and when compared to home based OS's at the time... 95, 98... it was probably more stable.

When OS 9 came out, there were a few bugs, that all seemed to be fixed with 9.2.2

I would equate OS 9.. to Windows ME... and since both have upgraded the OS significantly...

Win2k is not exactly a user friendly home based OS...
People who use 2k do not usually have to worry about crashing, because they will take the time to maintain the PC.
and when it does crash, they will know why, and how to fix any problems...

OSX seems to be a step above XP as far as stability IMHO... I use both...

[Chronos]

On my new OSX Mac which I got last semester, I have had one "big crash", where it became totally unresponsive to keyboard, mouse, and network (yes, I did try SSHing in from another computer to kill the offending process). But it's only happened once, which is less than on any Microsoft machine I've ever used (including Windows 2000). I only reboot when a software update requires it, which is once a month or less. And I have admittedly had individual programs crash, but except for the one case mentioned above, they've never hurt the rest of the system at all.

[DemonSpawn52]

We have brand new Macs in my school, with the ultra thin 600 dollar monitors, the silver cube computers where you put your finger over the sensor on the top to turn it on, and, I think, Mac Os 9.

And they crash all the time. In class, every fifteen minutes or so, you'll hear someone roar or curse because their computer locked up in AppleWorks and they lost all their work. It's only a matter of time before I pick up that oh-so purty but completely useless piece of garbage computer and hurl it against the wall. Give me a PC any day.

[sixseven]

My IMac jams up sometimes. The messages read "A System Bomb occurred." It's hard to say how often. I notice the jamming most when I'm doing something important on it.

[micco]

Originally posted by merge
Apples, and oranges... yadda yadda yadda...

Ridiculing my statement doesn't make it false, and since I wasn't making a comparison, your "apples and oranges" is non sequitur. I was making a comment about the marketing spin used in this kind of argument.

This spin is pervasive in the industry. It involves trivializing problems in the current version until there is a replacement and then touting the new version as great because if fixes all those crippling bugs. Often, a company won't even publically acknowledge a problem until they can say their shiny new version fixes it. Microsoft is guilty of some egregious instances of this, but the Mac users saying "of course OS9 crashed a lot, but OSX is perfectly stable" is no different. They've been saying that about every new version, and it has more to do with faith than fact.

Note: I am not making a judgement about Macs vs. Windows. I've already made my statement on that, and it's anecdotal so it's basically worth the pixels it's made of (like most of the other stories posted here). My comment to which you responded was solely addressed at istara 's comment about OS9 vs. OSX, and I was not comparing the two but pointing out the fact that the same thing was said about OS9 vs. OS8 and so on back to the beginning. It's a dodge used to justify subjective preference.

[Mr. Slant]

Originally posted by Balthisar

<SNIP>
Microsoft added lots of user interface elements to the NT kernel! Now remember that the kernel is what supports everything else, and a bug in the kernel will kill the entire system. Kernels are "meant" to be small and generic, and for this they gain stability via experience. Throw a whole, complex, complicated user interface into the kernel, though, and what happens if there's a small bug? Whooosh to the whole system. I don't know if this is still the case with XP -- anyone know for sure?

XP still has the graphics and part of the user interface in the kernel. Ever since Microsoft put the graphics driver in kernel mode in NT 4.0, (it was in the userland in 3.51 and before) it has stayed there.

[FranticMad]

OT, but I've wrote a large networked DOS system running for 11 years. I've had 4 service calls in that time, none requiring software changes. None of the problems were crashes, and none were due to DOS.

When was the last time you had a system running for 11 years with no OS crashes?

::sighing, remembering the days when you could understand what your machine was doing::

[Seven]

The ONLY OS I had that never crashed was BeOS 4.5.2 running on a x86 platform.

Ok,. I take that back. It locked on me once but that was only because I overclocked the AMD 350 to about 500Mhz. Windows wouldn't even think of booting so I fired up the BeOS drive and gave it a shot. It ran for about 2 minutes and locked when I opened SETI.

Other then that the entire system never locked. Once in a blue moon a service would choke (like networking) but you could restart that on it's own without rebooting the entire system.

I ran a BeOs fileserver for about 8 months straight and only rebooted it when I moved the machine or when our power went out (I lived in a coastal area with a bad power company).

All the other systems I've used (mac, windows and linux) have locked in one way or another which needed the entire system restarted to get the computer running again.