How Is Mac OSX Stability?
 

Well, I'm getting ready to re-image my Windows machine for the second time in two years :mad: and am about ready to throw in the towel and switch to a Mac. Sorry if this is a stupid question but could anyone here please compare and contrast the OSX and Windows platform in terms of stability? :confused: Do you run into a lot of application conflicts with OSX? Is it necessary to reinstall your OS and applications once every year as with Windows? I just don't think I can handle the aggravation of working with Windows anymore but I don't know that much about Macs.

Thanks for your feedback.

Let me put it this way...

"What?!? Reinstall OS and applications once a year? Who does that??"

Seriously, OS X is stable and has a nice wall between the OS and the apps, and between apps themselves. These are all side benefits from OS X being based on Unix, which has proven its stability over the last quarter century on heavy-load servers. I have a Windows XP machine too, and it's also stable, but OS X feels more stable.

My work PowerBook gets restarted every week or so just because I throw a lot at it, but I know it could go longer between restarts. Apps crash rarely, the OS crashes almost never. However...if you do see regular OS crashes, that is, the entire machine halts, it is likely that you have a hardware problem like bad RAM, not a software problem. On good hardware, this OS is practically bulletproof.

I also have an older Mac running an older version of OS X (10.2). I've literally restarted it TWICE in 2005. The first time it ran for 60 days, then I decided OK time to run some software updates. Since then it's been going for 15 days. (It's set to sleep after a while.)

I like that.

One of my users had an uptime of 155 days before I FORCED him to reboot.

Last friday I reinstall OS X on my MDD G4 for the first time since I got it 2 years ago. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to.

Oh, wanted to add that if you get a Mac you should keep Norton products off of it if you want it to be fun. Use the alternatives.

Also, another indicator of OS X stability is that there seem to be many users (me included) who make a habit of leaving apps open if we think we're going to need them again soon. I can easily have 10-15 apps open at a time during the course of a work day when importing and exporting between them. This is because we know that OS X isn't going to let the apps clobber each other. Of course, to facilitate app switching you should have enough ram, at least 768MB, preferably as much as you can afford.

I've had to reinstall my OS X machine about...geez, don't remember exactly, but at least three times in six months and I think more like five. A few were necessitated by a bug in the OS, and would not have been necessary if Apple had disclosed the fact that it was a known issue and I shouldn't keep trying to fix it.

In general OS X should be more stable than Windows, and most people report it is, but it's not perfect. More importantly though, it's a newer UI that makes use of all the computing power improvements that have happened in the five years that Windows has remained unchanged. I'm more productive with it, and I enjoy using it more.

Funny, I think it's more important to do that in Windows because it tends to fail to release memory or have issues if you open/close an app too much. OS X has never shown to have that issue. On the other hand, I find I have to close the browser every few days to clean out its memory, or it gets painfully slow. A minor issue, certainly.

I frequently have to reinstall Windows and it isn't fun (especially if you haven't imaged your drive and have to go through it all from scratch!). Windows running as a server should be rebooted once a week (NT4 or 2000) be it a file server or an Exchange server. I used to spend countless hours doing server health checks on these machines, and most of the problems were caused by them being up for too long without a reboot, they simply can not handle it. Mac (client or server) can go for far longer without even worrying about the need to reboot. I generally manage 50 or 60 days uptime before I rebootm but that's generally du to a software update requiring it, or because I'm still (18 months after personally switching away from Windows) trying to get out of the habit of needing to reboot! I still try and close apps as often as I can, which I know I don't need to, but 15 years of Microsofts' way of doing things gets ingrained into you! Make the switch to Mac, I doubt you'll regret it!

Only if it's been done wrong, or has faulty hardware, or some issue that is not expected. The servers I admin never need to be rebooted (other than for patches and maintenance). I've got some in the 6 month uptime range right now. It would be longer if it wasn't for security updates that required a reboot.

I've run two Macs on OS X for an average of 3 years each and have never once had to reinstall the OS (I've only installed each new OS when it came out [Jaguar and Panther]). They both receive consistent and steady usage (the word 'heavy' is relative, I know) with a wide range of applications. I have quite a number of unix applications installed, some through Fink and some directly, including (for the last year) a distributed computing process running on each. I also tinker quite a bit. All that having been said, the typical time between restarts is 3 weeks, usually for an update of some kind. I've only had one kernel panic (apparently deleting swap files is not a good thing :o ) in all that time

The OS is different from the apps:

a) The OS tends to be either rock-stable — where you've got no hardware issues and aren't currently tweaking or modifying some highly volatile setting — or fragile, when the above-mentioned conditions are not met. Restoring from a known backup or doing an archive-and-install will generally fix it in the latter case. If your model of Mac is actually supposed to run the OS, you're using it in stock condition, you've got good RAM and none of your peripheral devices is buggy, you may wear out hard disks before you muck up the OS enough to need a reinstall.

b) Reinstall applications? Heck, I've got applications on my PowerBook that were originally installed on an SE, dozens that were originally installed on a 7100, and hundreds that were installed to other drives or volumes of this computer. We almost never have to reinstall application software. If it isn't already where you want it, you drag it from where it is to where you want it (including from another computer) and it nearly always "just works". In fact, I'm trying to recall if I've ever, in my history of computer-ownership, had to reinsert an installation CD or diskette due to having hosed the application.

::thinks long and hard::

Twice, ever, not counting times I've deleted applications and then rethought and decided I wanted them after all.

SuperPaint got a corrupted setting on my 7100 and would not let me switch color palettes back in around 1996 or 97; and the Tango development environment for FileMaker 4, circa 1999, did likewise and would not let me web-serve my "taf" files back around 1999 or 2000.

You're lucky then, when I was and IT Technician for the MoD, their servers (Even the newer 2000 ones) required regular reboots, maybe this was due to the high loads they were constantly under or due to other issues.

LOL...you should represent your screen name and buy a Mac already!! ;)

I'd bet $$$ that if you were to buy a new PC today and a new G5 you'd be reimaging the PC first. You'll never get a definitive answer, many people here only come because they are indeed having problems. Just look around the Systems forum and see the problem going on.

I manage a small advertising office and have made it a year without imaging the PCs OR Macs. Although I do spend much more time supporting the PCs, due to spyware, virii, etc.

But what about the underlying OS architecture?
 

I appreciate everyone's comments so far but what I haven't seen addressed is _why_ , in terms of the underlying architecture, OSX is more stable than Windows.

I'm not an OS guy but my sense is that there are still some Windows application DLLs (even with XP) that want to use DLLs from other applications if they detect that the other DLL is present and is newer. I get the sense that OSX "compartmentalizes" applications so that they can't come into conflict with other applications.

Also, is there something about the use of a registry in Windows that causes extra problems?

Finally you have the hardware/software issue. With Mac designing the basic hardware and the OS, there's less chance for device driver conflicts, etc. With Windows having to be compatible with many, many different hardware components from other companies, I would think there would be a much greater potential for problems.

Can anyone speak to these issues?

Thanks.

Looks like you did a pretty good job of touching some of the major points (weaknesses in Windows, compared to strengths in MacOS)
Good Job!
Apple has had experience with Plug-n-Play (successfully most of the time) for a lot longer than Windows, and it shows. No need to find your Win Install CD simply because you have some new hardware or a new peripheral added to your system.

The stability comes also from the maturity of the Unix always running underneath OS X, providing advanced memory use and a solid base for any app you want to throw at the system.

My nickel's worth: back in the mid 90's, Microsoft made an architectural decision in the design of Windows NT 4.0 to move some of the UI subsystems (like some of the GDI graphics subsystem) into the kernelspace in order to get better performance. The engineering tradeoff is that it elevates the security privileges of those subsystems to that of the kernel.

Which is a fine plan if the subsystems are and remain bug-free. In real life it doesn't work that way. ;)

Mac OS X has a comparatively small kernel, so there's a somewhat more manageable number of bugs to be found at the lower level of the dungeon. Even so, much of the mayhem you might see on a Mac results from buggy kernel extensions, since in order to do certain things (like talk to the hardware) things need to operate at that level.

So the Mac is more stable (by my reckoning) because the number of places for things to go seriously wrong is kept smaller, by design. This has some disadvantages in terms of performance, since layering subsystems and passing messages up and down the chain takes a hit. That's the tradeoff that Apple made.


By the way, in the hundred or two machines I support during the course of a year (roughly 50/50 Mac/Windows) I might have to do maybe one or two system reinstalls, and that's usually only if there's no time to do a better job. The "reinstall from an image every six months" plan mostly went away with DOS-based Windows (through ME), thank goodness.

That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it. :D

The "why" is going to be a long and meandering answering, with lots of opinion and conjecture tossed in. You ready for a long night?

Here are my thoughts on it.

For one, there are no viruses and spyware. So toss out one source of problems right there.

Secondly, OS X is more secure, simple as that. In fact, I think if you take it out of the box and don't touch it, it will be secure. Windows generally needs some tending to, although SP2 does do a better job in that direction. You also have to add protection against nasties that you don't need on X. For example, a program/web site simply can't modify system files or the "registry" (note on that later) without you entering an admin password. On Windows if I can run a program on your machine, I own it.

There is no registry. There are simple config files. Lots of them. But they are far less fragile than a registry database, and generally simpler. Where the manual removal of a program in Windows involves searching for obscure keys, and non-English data items, along with a dead chicken and some garlic, the same function is X is "delete the file."

The in-place system restore for X is MUCH more reliable and easier than in Windows. So while I had to reinstall the OS a few times, some of those involved very little pain. Same with the system migration if you buy a new Mac.

Apps aren't a set of obscure files installed all over the drive, and referenced in the registry. An app is a file, that's all. Move it, delete it, whatever. It just works. Very few things need an installer. If the preferences file (what would be the registry entry in Windows) is missing, it makes it on the fly. Try that with most Windows programs.

You hit on the hardware. Bad (cheap, non-conforming, or defective) hardware accounts for most Windows issues (or maybe tied with spyware/viruses). Since Apple makes it all, support at the driver level is easy.

I'm a Windows and Cisco network guy by trade. I use Macs. I recommend Macs for many people. They're not perfect, but for most people they're a better computer.

I've found both XP and OS X to be very stable, although I don't do very much complicated work on XP. My primary comparison is between OS X and previous Mac OS versions, which crashed pretty often, imo, and didn't really manage memory very well. Given that context, I'm still amazed by the stability of OS X, and figure I've saved countless hours for not having to reboot.

My primary system (my PowerBook) was restarted once in calendar year 2004. It is still running the original installation of 10.2 that I installed on it back on September 18, 2002.

Best uptime: 231 days. Current uptime: 62 days.

Applications conflicting with each other? No.

I tend to use Cocoa apps, and these tend to help each other more than anything. And even my Carbon apps behave nicely.

Here are the dates of the last crashes of my primary applications on my PowerBook (based on crash logs):

• Adobe Acrobat 5.0 -2003-10-03
• Adobe GoLive 6.0 -2005-02-03
• Adobe ImageReady 7.0 -never
• Adobe LiveMotion 2.0 -2004-03-14
• Adobe Photoshop 7.0 -2003-08-26
• AppleWorks 6 -2003-03-06
• Create -2004-07-18
• Curator -2003-05-15
• MacJournal -never
• Mail -2004-07-16
• Nisus Thesaurus -never
• OmniDictionary -never
• OmniWeb -no log (earlier this week)
• PhotoToWeb -never
• PixelNhance -never
• Preview -2005-02-26
• PStill -2004-05-12
• RBrowser -2005-03-18
• Safari -2004-04-01 (I hardly use it)
• TextEdit -2004-08-16
• TIFFany3 Professional -never
• TimeEqualsMoney -2003-02-19
• ToyViewer -2005-02-09
• Watson -never

Hopefully that gives you some idea of what type of stability (both with the operating system and my applications) I've experienced.

OK I'm not expert so someone may have to set me right, but what I heard is that since the registry is one big database, all that has to happen is for that database to get a leeetle corrupted and suddenly everybody that hooks into the database (i.e. all your apps) are exposed to a problem. OS X config files are decentralized so there is less chance of one problem spreading like cancer.

My second registry experience is only of limited use because it is anecdotal. I have occasionally noticed Windows support/developer types talking of the registry like it was a crazy relative. You say "Windows registry," they groan, or roll their eyes, or reflexively turn their heads away in disgust.

That would be true, if general registry corruption was a normal occurence. I've never run into a corrupt registry. Key problems, sure, but not a generally corrupt registry database. It's just kind of cryptic to work with, and VERY annoying to search through and modify.

So then are registry "problems" mostly from the developer point of view, and it doesn't really cause operational problems?

Having had to go through this procedure recently on my own system, I'd say it can cause operational problems. :eek:

I just haven't seen a corrupt registry like Craig has, but I've seen damaged/improper key entries in the registry, which do cause problems. The problems are specific to the damaged entry (a specific app, or a specific Windows function).

No question, configuration files are safer and easier to manage.

I have seen one kernel panic since the Public Beta came out, a result of trying to install some long-forgotten version of Norton Futilities. I've never resinstalled the OS, except when upgrading to a new version.

I think the fact that this discussion has naturally shifted from a question about OS X stability into Windows Registry issues should tell you a lot. Where there's smoke, there's fire. When there are no significant issues, the discussion moves on.

I've reinstalled my OS twice so far (in about a year and a half). Once right after I got the laptop (I like to always have a clean install with the options I want), and again when I completely messed up my user settings by playing around too much with NetInfo. I'd say, unless you enable root and are too curious about your system (e.g. deleting system files, removing swap page files, modifying core system settings in NetInfo Manager, running the command `sudo rm -rf /`, etc) you shouldn't have a problem...and even if you do the above, you'll only have a problem occasionally ;)

Most accurate BOINC calculations
 

Speaking of the OS X stability, there is something I found interesting. I use a software called BOINC, basically it is a distributed computer processing platform. I run services for "Predictor@home" On their website ( http://predictor1.scripps.edu/ ) they report the reliability of the calculations of various operating systems: Windows Linux and Darwin (Darwin includes the Mac OS). Right now (as of today) Darwin has a computational pass rate of 95.9, windows has a pass rate of 91.0 and Linux has a pass rate of 92.4. That is over the hundreds of millions of calculations (if not billions) that they have the computer perform, and then check against what the results are known to be. Overall I'm very pleased with Mac OS X's stability. There are two applications that have caused my computer to completely halt (I have an iBook G4). They are Celestia (in one of their versions they had some trouble with one of their graphics engines, causing certain GPU's to freak out) and Virtual PC running Windows ME... sigh. It is amazing to me that windows stability issues are so extreme that they can affect me, all the way over here in the Mac world. ;) No, it's okay, I'm not one of those people that hate Microsoft to such an extreme that they find every chance and excuse to ridicule them. I have found, though... and I know that a lot of you are going to hate me for this... that my old iBook G3 is more stable than my new iBook G4. The first day I got my G4 I put Celestia on it and found that problem. What a way to get introduced to a brand new computer! I put one of my favorite apps, Celestia, on it and it freezes! Oh well, I'm over it now. And the newest version of Celestia doesn't even cause the problem any more. I have noticed, though, that with every new release of the Mac OS, it just gets stabler and stabler.

Juz10mac

My subjective feeling is that Apple keeps a much tighter rein over what apps can and cant do to the system either when installing or when running. Whereas (less so with XP, but still...) look at the average constant user of Windows, and my god it usually looks like a dog's breakfast of startup items for a thousand useless things, apps installing themselves all over the place, mods, hacks, tweaks, enhancers, workarounds... eesh, it makes my skin crawl...OK control-freak nature showing. And most of those things have installed themselves as part of a 'suite' of tools without the average user knowing why they need "crap.app startup optimizer" sitting in their system tray.
I used to be a Windows stalwart, happily tweaking, rebuilding and reinstalling everyday. But then I discovered OSX and have found the beauty of actually using my computer to get things done! Join us, join us!

We need to separate stability and the issue of reinstallation/corruption, I think.

Windows 2000/XP and OS X are pretty equal in terms of stability -- the actual frequency of crashes that bring down the whole system, or require you to power off in order to get control of the system back. Most people have no issue with either, and can have uptimes of months and years (the limiting factor being application installs/uninstalls, which relate to DLL and registry issues that build up on Windows systems).

In terms of the OS needing to be reinstalled periodically, there is a huge difference between Windows and OS X. That is one of the main reasons I switched over a year ago.

If you don't ever install or uninstall software on a windows system, of course it will run fine for an indefinite period of time -- but that doesn't describe many desktop users.

The Windows Registry is a horrible idea made worse by the fact that it not only mixes together critical hardware-specific information with application-specific configurations, it is a binary file that is easily corruptable and provides a central point of failure, while having no ability to maintain itself. Add to that the everpresent DLL hell, which guarantees that over time a system will gain more and more potentially incompatible bits of code that can never be safely removed.

(Some people have complained that OS X does have a "registry", the NetInfo database, which is a binary file that contains some configuration information. Even if your NetInfo database were borked, you could boot into single user mode, delete it, and have a functional system when you reboot. Try booting a Win2k/XP system to a recovery console, deleting the registry file and restarting the system.)

The cherry on top of all the Windows issues is the complete intermingling of application configurations and the particular OS install, which means that a reinstallation of the OS REQUIRES a comeplete reinstallation from scratch of most application software. Sometime you can copy over preference files from old applications, but frequently not, and they are rarely comprehensive.

Contrast this to OS X, which maintains its configurations in controlled, segregated and protected plain-text files. There is no configuration file on the entire system (that I'm aware of) that has a user preference and a hardware configuration in the same place.

The hardware is handled by the system, and attempts to modify the configuration will require you to pass security checks. Even if you screw up a modification, chances are the system will detect the error on the next boot and be able to recover that single file with a sane default or auto-configuration. The realm of things that can truly stop the system from booting at all is pretty narrow, as explained by Craig above, since the Kernel and Kernel extensions are much more narrowly tailored.

Even when you DO reinstall OS X, you can literally drag all your applications to the new system and start using them right away. If you drag the Preferences from your old user Library, 99% of the user-specific configuration will be maintained. If you copy the Application Support directories from your old install, that will often keep the old caches and other configurations a specific app might have. None of this depends on what hardware is used, what user is setup, or what OS version is being discussed. It Just Works.

As an example, I got Tiger early, so I backed everything up, and did a clean install (which I always do for OS Installs -- old windows habit that I might break someday!). I just copied over the applications, utilities, preferences and application support directories from the backup for the stuff I wanted on the new system. All the programs still worked just as I had them set up previously, all i did from scratch was set up the OS-specific preferences and configuration (for obvious reasons).

Once I was up and running, I realized that my printer wasn't fully supported (missing utility features under Tiger, topic for another thread). Unfortunately, printing graphics is part of my job so I had to go back to Panther. I made a new backup, put in the Panther install CD, did a format and install, and then copied over the applications, utilities, preferences and application support directories from the new (Tiger) backup. Everything works perfectly, and it took a total of about an hour.

Resinstalling a Win2k or XP system is something that would usually take a day or two and a lot of digging and copying of random files to try and keep configurations, but inevitably you'd wind up having to start from scratch with half your software.

That was a good, substantive post, nmerriam. Thanks.

Yes, great post. Something I'll use when asked about key differences in the systems.

I just installed Tiger clean, and moved in my prefs and other files one by one as needed. This helped me learn a lot about how all these things work and where they are. It is something that would have been completely impossible with Windows, since the registry cannot be safely/effectively copied. It is fascinating to run an app and see it in default configuration, close it, copy one file, open the app and it's just as you last used it on another OS.