OS X Stability Issues? Two Crashes And Counting...Slowly

A s any regular reader of The Mac Observer knows, I was like a little kid in the weeks before Christmas waiting for the release of OS X Beta. I was excited about the prospects of a system makeover, and I was also longing for "something better" out of necessity; OS 9 was crashing on me at least once a day, and sometimes several times a day. So, while I was excited, I was also foolishly viewing a beta version of an OS as a potential savior.

Hallelujah!

Since Beta has arrived, a week or so after it was announced, I have indeed been using it as my main OS. I have had to boot into OS 9 twice since then, once to print and once to install software. Otherwise, it is OS X using Cocoa or Carbonized apps for all my basic needs. I use the OS X version of IE, Appleis Mail application, Epicwareis Fire for instant messaging, and a few other Carbonized gadgets I have found here and there. I actually feel compelled to shut the system down overnight every few days, but not for any technical reason. And, you know what? Here is a comprehensive list of the "crashes" I have experienced:

    IE - Three crashes
  • Mail - Two crashes
  • Fire (IM client) - Two crashes
  • Classic - One crash
  • System Wide (hard) Crashes - Two

Thatis it. That is all of them. Not leaving anything out. And the beautiful part of the app crashes is that all I need to do is fire the application back up again, and everything is working peachy keen. Is this perfect? Well, no. However, it is far better than I was doing under OS 9 (in which IE 5 was quitting on me a couple times per session), and pretty darn good for a "beta" piece of software.

Regardless of your opinion about Aqua, and missing or present features, there is little argument that OS X provides a remarkably stable computing environment today, with the future looking ever brighter.