System crashes: poll results and the bottom line
System crashes: poll results and the bottom line
The final poll results of a total of 7057 votes were: Never, 1378 (20%); Once or twice, 2560 (36%); Three to six, 1735 (25%); Seven to twelve, 697 (10%); and More than twelve, 687 (10%).
The QuickTopic comments revealed several points to consider beyond the raw poll results. While crashes remain a common event (80% of all users reported at least one in their last 40 hours of Mac use), most users described their recent, long term Mac usage as extremely stable. Most crashes were due to a specific change that could ultimately be fixed or worked around. The biggest surprise was the large number of users who said that Microsoft Internet Explorer (occasionally along with Outlook Express) was the prime suspect causing their Macs to crash.
Respondents to our poll did not have to specify which operating system they used, but the QuickTopic comments mentioned everything from System 7 to Mac OS X. Only a few users were at either extreme, with most using either Mac OS 8.6 or Mac OS 9.0.4. Mac OS 8.6’s stability received very high praise by quite a few of the respondents. However, nothing came close to Mac OS X’s record. Several users shared uptime output such as this: “…up 99 days, 22:12, 3 users, load averages: 1.06, 1.03, 1.11.” When it comes to stability, Mac OS X, even in its current beta form, is several orders of magnitude superior to the current Mac OS.
Several trends emerged from the majority of users who are using Mac OS 9.0.4 or 9.1. Nearly three quarters described crashes as rare to virtually nonexistent. The stable systems often shared a number of traits. Most appeared to have far more than the minimum amount of RAM installed. Also, the installed applications were given more than their minimum requested RAM. Several users recommended rebooting occasionally, perhaps as often as once a day, in order to avoid crashes.
Trends existed in the unlucky minority that experienced numerous crashes as well. The Macintoshes tended to have less RAM, a high number of USB devices, a large mix of external hardware (which usually necessitates a bunch of different drivers), CD-R/RW burners, older hardware and software, certain games, and sometimes-adventurous users who admitted to pushing their systems to the limit.
As any statistician will gently point out, correlation does not by itself prove causation. However, it often provides a starting point for further investigation. About twenty percent of the respondents singled out Internet Explorer 5 as the main cause of system crashes. (The next most common culprit was Netscape Navigator, suggesting perhaps the problem is general to the web.) We suspect there are a combination of issues, including poorly designed sites that Explorer fails to handle gracefully, problems with MRJ (we have noted that many sites with Java applets tend to cause a significant Mac OS stall, which could be interpreted as a crash), out of date plug-ins, insufficient memory, and bugs in the Mac OS. However, the large number of users who are encountering problems indicate this area needs additional stability improvements.
For the vast majority of users, the Mac OS has evolved into a stable platform where crashes are the exception, not the rule. For users who are encountering frequent crashes, we recommend posting a detailed description to the appropriate MacFixIt Forum in an attempt to troubleshoot the cause. In the past, frequent hard-to-solve crashes seemed to be the cost of doing business on the Mac. Our survey indicates that is much less the case now - at least for most users.