My First Leopard Kernel Panic
I knew that it would be inevitable…eventually my new Mac would crash. No computer is perfect. Hardware and software problems can and will occur. So why would a Mac be any different?
I bought my Mac Mini about 4-5 months ago. Last November, I upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard the very day it came out. Since that time, I’ve had a few programs crash and quit here and there. Hasn’t happened on a frequent basis. Nothing I would call major by any stretch of the imagination. Programs crash now and then. That’s just a fact of life. And when it happens, I can usually just relaunch the program and be on my merry way. I save and I save often when working on important files. So to have a program crash really doesn’t hurt my feelings.
So, this morning, I was working on a few things. I had a few programs open: Mail, Safari, GSync, Aptana, Adium, and iTunes. Not much. Then I started to launch Firefox to do a quick webpage test. Bam! The screen when opaque with a small box like the one listed here telling me that I need to restart my computer. So I shutdown and restarted my computer.
Upon logging back in, I was presented with a simple window telling me that my computer had crashed unexpectedly and asked if I’d like to send a log to Apple. Viewing the log gives you a few simple options to view the log information itself, basic system info, and a place to add some comments on what you were doing at the time the crash happened so you can send this information to Apple. This is very similar to what happens on a Windows XP/Vista system when it crashes. Only difference is that a Windows system itself goes directly to a very unfriendly blue screen when it crashes (the dreaded Blue Screen of Death!) and doesn’t tell the end user anything useful about what just happened or what to do when it happens. BSOD’s are generally confusing to an end user and pretty much freaks out anyone who doesn’t know shit about computers. Apple at least gives an indication to the user on what they need to do. The ability to send the logs to the OS maker is pretty much the same between the two OS’s, but I do feel that Apple’s is more straight-forward and a bit less confusing since it keeps everything in just one windows and a few tabs.
This is the first and only time I’ve had a kernel panic. The fact that it didn’t happen in the 4 months I’ve been using Leopard is impressive. This is just testament that a Mac does indeed crash a lot less often than a Windows machine. Before I got my Mac, I pretty much used Windows XP exclusively. My experience has been that programs on XP as well as XP itself crash more often than they do on a Mac. Plus, I find I can recover from a crash much more effectively on my Mac.
As weird as this may seem, the experience of having a kernel panic on a Mac was somehow comforting. I didn’t get the feeling that the end of the world was happening. Nor did I think something drastically wrong was with my computer to make me think I had to call Apple on it. Now, if this becomes a highly repetitive thing, I can see that. But, for now, I have the comfort knowing that I can go back to doing my thing and not worry about it so much. Somehow I feel this is exactly what goes on in the mind of the average Mac user. And, in my opinion, that’s a very good thing. An informed computer user is an educated computer.
Tags: leopard
