Things I Don't Like About My Mac
Published September 07, 2006
I've had an iMac G5 for just about a year now. I've been patient, and I gave it time. I considered extenuating circumstances as well. But after a year of experiencing the same problems, over and over again, something needed to be done. Having also experienced some of these problems on other Macs I've used, I can fairly safely say they're not limited to my iMac, and furthermore, they're the sort of problems that could be easily fixed by Apple engineers. I sat down to write this list in the hope they'll read it and act on it for the sake of future Apple users.
First, let me specify this: my computer is up to date with the latest patches and downloads from Apple. It has no viruses, it hasn't been hacked into by spammers, no hard drive sectors are corrupted, it's fairly new and fairly fast. It also has plenty of memory. Specs: iMac G5 2.0GHz/1GB RAM. In short, it's a good computer that should work just fine.
- iPhoto is slow, and crashes just about every time I download photos from my digital camera. No, it's not my camera, I connected three different models, from different manufactures, and it crashes regardless. The photos get downloaded, but somehow when it's time to close the connection between it and the camera, it freezes. I have to Force Quit it. Also, when I use it to browse my photos, it'll crash unexpectedly and close. It does this every once in a while. Shouldn't it be more stable than this?
- Burning DVDs and CDs is a real hassle. It's fairly easy to get the burn process going, but finishing it is another matter. That's because the software is unreliable — and I'm using the built-in software (Disk Utility, Finder). About five out of every ten CDs or DVDs I stick in there, my Mac spits out because of "communication errors" with the drive. This is a ridiculously large number of errors. Having burned CDs and DVDs on my PC, from the same brand, and even the same batch, and never having gotten disc errors, I can say that this is clearly a Mac problem. Furthermore, these are good CDs and DVDs (Memorex, TDK). They weren't made by some cheap, fly-by-night operation, so they're not to blame. You may think, big deal, DVDs and CDs are cheap, they're only 15-25 cents apiece. Maybe so, but the error rate is still unacceptable. And have you thought about DL discs? I recently bought some, and they came out to about five dollars per disc. I tried burning a big file onto a disc (about 6 GB), only to have my Mac spit it out, again because of a communication error. I'm not happy when my Mac wastes my money like this. How about when Blu-Ray or HD DVDs come out? They'll be $35-50 per disc. Would you be happy when your Mac spits one out during burning because of a communication error? That disc will be unusable, and you'll be left with a hole in your wallet.
- Reading and writing to CD-RW discs is problematic as well. Simply put, my Mac spits out certain CD-RW discs without even bothering to read them. Why? I don't know. When I stick them in my PC, they work fine. They're not scratched, they have files on them, they're usable. Or, it'll sometimes read them, but it won't let me erase them. I can erase them on my PC.
iDVD is a joke. It's not a real application. It's got to be the most un-intuitive piece of software ever created. I tried using it several times, I tried reading the help files, but no use. I just can't figure out how to use it. And I've been using other video editing software on both the PC and the Mac, as well as DVD-burning software. iDVD I just can't figure out. Plus, it has this ridiculous restriction on the size of the video files. If, by its own estimation, a video file's size exceeds its own burn limit on a DVD, no matter if its actual duration is less than what would normally fit on a DVD, it won't burn it. It'll say I need a DL DVD. That's silly! It should compress it to fit it onto a single layer DVD. I, for one, am not going to waste a DL DVD to burn half an hour of video. It just doesn't make sense to me. The video file size is smaller than 4 GB (actually, it's under 1 GB), the video duration is under 30 minutes, yet I can't burn it onto a standard DVD with iDVD because it's too big. Does this make sense to you?- I like iMovie, but the movie exports (to movie files) are slow. Plus, it could stand to be easier to use. My benchmark is EyeTV. It's incredibly easy to edit movies there. Wow, is it ever easy! That's how easy iMovie should be, especially considering that Apple is positioning itself as the leader in multimedia hardware and software.
- Mac OS X crashes. Yes, as unbelievable as that sounds, it does happen. And when it crashes, unexpected things occur. Like files on external drives get corrupted. Why, I don't know, but I wish it would stop. I lost plenty of precious files this way, and I don't like it. When Windows crashed, it may have warned me that files may be lost, but somehow the files were always fine.
- Quicktime Pro is one slow piece of software. I tried using it to export movie files to different formats, but when it takes 24-36 hours to convert a two hour video file from DivX or AVI to H.264 or MPEG-4, it's a little too much time for my taste, and I daresay, for most people's tastes. Yes, I tried this numerous times, with different movie files, and conversion to different formats. Slow, slow, slow. Oh, and another thing. I buy Quicktime Pro for $30, and when I want to open .mpg files, I find out I need to purchase another $30 codec. I don't remember having to do this on my PC. As a matter of fact, .mpg files were playable (and still are) right within the standard Windows Media Player.
- Have you tried to use Mail to import your emails from Thunderbird? Have you noticed it just doesn't work, that it crashes every time? Yes, it's Apple's fault. Why? Because a single person was able to take care of this problem with a handy app, somewhat misnamed, but wonderfully effective. It's called Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, and it'll automatically import Thunderbird and Eudora emails into Mail.
- This is not entirely a Mac problem, Microsoft has plenty to do with it too, but PowerPoint freezes a lot, on many .ppt files.
- Video play in iTunes is jumpy at best. I mean, yuck, why enable video play directly in iTunes if it's going to be horrible? Doesn't matter which videos I play, whether they're from the iTunes store, or MPEG-4 files from video podcasts, videos take precious seconds to load, video play stutters, pauses in mid-play, skips over frames — in short, it's just not good enough. My iMac is no slouch. It should do just fine. And no, the solution isn't to buy a newer Mac, a "dual core". I'm not going to buy a new computer every year, although I'm sure Apple would like it if I did. Remember what Steve Jobs said not too long ago? That people need to buy a new iPod every year in order to keep up with the changes? (!)
- I have an external iSight, and it's unreliable. It stops working unpredictably, and I have to unplug/re-plug it into my iMac when it does that. I tried recording a video of myself on the iSight through Quicktime, and 20 seconds into it, the iSight froze. Tried it three more times, with the same result, then gave up. Seems to function okay with iChat AV, Skype and Yahoo Messenger though, but its microphone isn't any better than the internal iMac one. I still have voice echos when I use it. I should probably mention that this is a replacement iSight. The original one that I bought with my computer wasn't centered — in other words, I stood dead-center in front of the computer, the camera was pointed at me, yet on screen, I appeared on the left. I had a really "nice" time getting Apple Support to replace it.
- My Bluetooth mouse was/is a battery hog. You know how batteries in these Bluetooth mice last about a month. Apple estimates it at about that, anyway. Well, the Bluetooth mouse shipped with my iMac ate through its batteries in a week, and sometimes in just a few days. It took over six months to get Apple Support to believe me and ship me out a new one. The new one seems to take about two or three weeks to go through its batteries, but I'm not going to waste my time calling Apple again. Yes, I have the Three-Year Apple Care Plan, but I guess Apple just wants me to pay for it and not use it, because they balk at replacing defective parts every time I call.
- The Shared folder — you know, the one where you're supposed to be able to "share" files among the users on a computer — just doesn't work as it's supposed to. You see, it keeps the user permissions on the file when you move stuff into it, so when my wife wants to re-name or move or delete a file I've shared with her, even though she should be perfectly able to do this, she can't, because that file belongs to me. She has to authenticate herself, as an Admin (if she weren't an Admin, she couldn't do anything at all), and only then can she do something with that file. And she has to authenticate for each file she wants to work with. This is an absolute hassle, and it's not the way a Shared folder should work. Apple, this is one time when you need to copy Microsoft. The Shared Documents folder on PCs works great, and just as expected. When you move a file into it, it inherits the permissions on the Shared folder, which means all users can work with that file and do whatever they need to do with it. This is logical. Apple's way isn't, and needs to change.
- Hey, did you notice there's no easy way to have common iPhoto and iTunes libraries for the accounts on one computer? You just can't do it with a few clicks of the mouse. You have to hack things. Seems to me that a husband and wife who have two accounts on the same computer ought to be able to share their photos and music libraries, and have single copies of each, not duplicates. There's no "official solution" for this on the Mac. You have to find your own, which is what we did. We went into the prefs for iTunes for each account, and pointed it to a common location in the Shared folder. Of course, we had to call Apple Support to get the privileges reset, because there was no way to figure out what in the world the user groups were, but that's another story. With iPhoto, it was harder. There's no way to change the library location, iPhoto won't let you. But you can hack it by using shortcuts in the expected location in each user account that point to a common location. We chose the Shared folder again, and again we had to reset privileges. But this should be easier, much easier! With a few clicks of the mouse, we should be able to say what libraries we want to share among user accounts, get them re-located on the fly, and also specify which user accounts have permissions to what.
- What sorts of user groups are there in Mac OS X? You have to be a UNIX geek to figure them out. When we needed to adjust privileges on folders and files (see bullet point above) we were at a loss. What in the world is "wheel", and so on and so forth? Why not something intuitive, like "Administrators" and "Users"? Windows has Apple beat on this one.
- Why is FTP mode set to Passive by default? And why can't it be changed from within FTP program settings (you know, apps like Fetch or Cyberduck)? Because it can't. You have to go into Terminal to change it, and you have to know what to type in there. This was confirmed with Apple Support, who also couldn't help me and had to transfer me to Advanced Support so I could find out what to do in Terminal.
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- Things I Don't Like About My Mac
- Published: September 07, 2006
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Computers, Sci/Tech: Personal Tech, Sci/Tech: Software
- Writer: Raoul Pop
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Comments on this articleComments
iPhoto sucks rotten eggs when you put a substantial number (thousands) of photos in it. I finally gave up and switched to iView Media Pro, which costs money. I never had stability problems with it, but it was really, really, really slow. I have a G4 iMac, but still.
The CD/DVD stuff sounds really weird to me. I've burnt many, many CDs and DVDs, and never had a problem. Not once. I did have the SuperDrive replaced after a year or two for some other problem I can't remember, so I may be running with a different kind of drive than you are.
The iDVD restrictions are for legal reasons, obviously. Or perhaps not so obviously. The point is that Apple can't themselves release a piece of software that makes DVD piracy too easy. If you need to burn (legally-acquired) video longer than their low limits, try VisualHub. Er, also not free.
The common iPhoto/iTunes libraries is an interesting conundrum. I would venture that *MOST* users do *NOT* want a common iPhoto library. I personally am quite happy to have my own separate iPhoto library, while my wife has her own, and my kids have their own. That's perfect, and I don't want them mixed, but I can see (barely) why people might. iTunes is another interesting one. In the past I have wanted an easy way for my wife to have access to my library, and we've simply shared across accounts. Pretty quick, and she doesn't need to burn or anything.
Since then, we've changed it again. I set my wife's iTunes to not make copies of files on import, and I've just added the artists and albums she wants to listen to to her library, which is a small subset of my extensive library. Seemed pretty easy to me, and she can have separate song ratings and play counts now.
Still, I can *DEFINITELY* see the value of a more directly shared iTunes library, assuming one could work out various permission-related things and decide about play counts and ratings. Which isn't obvious, I think.
All the crashing you've encountered, though, I'd say is a problem. It simply hasn't happened to me on my G4 iMac. Not at all. I'd take it to be looked at, personally.
I don't know if you're interested in solutions but it sounds like you have a USB connection issue with your camera. If you've been using the same connection, use a different one. If you use a hub, stop using it. USB can be very idiosyncratic on both Macs and PCs. It appears to have something to do with how power is drawn from the port to run some devices but that might only be an issue on notebooks. All I know is that I have had issues with ports being put to sleep while devices are connected and they don't wake up unless you unplug and replug. In the case of notebooks, the ports are unusable unless you restart.
As for your CD/DVD issues, the age and speed media is burned at has a huge effect on how things work (again, on both PCs and Macs). However, it really does sound like you've got some sort of internal problem with your hardware. A disc burned on a PC may not work on another PC. I have to pretty much play musical drives with my discs until I find the one that works.
Generally speaking though, I don't have the sorts of issues you appear to have. The first thing I'd do in your shoes is remove any added memory and see if the situation improves. Bad added memory is the most common cause of system-wide difficulties. The second thing is erase and reinstall the whole kit and kaboodle. The third is have it looked at by a service person. Good luck.
typical windows user in denial. best to come out of the closet with your love for windoze instead of trying to make the apple platform look bad which is hopeless.
"Burning DVDs and CDs is a real hassle."
Been a MAC user for years, currently oldish G4 Powerbook. Had similar issues with inferior discs, but mostly because my superdrive is an older one that can only read 2X speed discs. There are software updates to the disk utility, but don't help. Just stuck with it, so an affordable fix would be nice since this was an issue that arose shortly after my computer shipped.
"Mac OS X crashes. Yes, as unbelievable as that sounds, it does happen."
Wow is all I can say to that. I have 10.3.9 and, for fear of the Jinx, will only go knock on this nice, pine chair.
Regarding your other issues with some of the native software apps, like iTunes and iPhoto: not sure what the expectations should be for software that came "free" on your computer. Yes it's money to upgrade. I'm too cheap to plop down the $ for iLife 'O6 but then I rely on industry standard, professional apps like Photoshop CS.
Many of your other comments are interesting, I just don't care or know enough to have issues with passive FTP or user groups.
Best of luck.
I forget how affluent Americans are. What a great computer -- one that should work. After all, I manage here in the jungle with my trusty iBook G3 900mhz on 10.3.9.
I had good luck with Apple support forums and knowledge base when I was trying to figure out the most basic things with this first computer without English-speakers nor Apple-users to help.
Toast works. You shouldn't have such problems burning. FfmpegX converts video files wonderfully and Gumby 50c helps with some others.
If Phillip Winn says "take it in", do. He knows whereof he speaks.
If you still don't like it, send it down to me. I'll even pay the duty on it.
LOL ( thats laugh out loud to the Windoze users ) ....this is a blatant Windoze user "in denial" as ScottS put it, and as far as I can read into it, its a BS article that some pathetic Windoze lover has put up in an attempt to spread FUD. If it is indeed happening to you, all those problems, then you must have killed a small child to deserve all the bad karma coming to you.....or you run (and love) Winblows. Either or. Both apply. Capiche?
I gotta say im having many similar problems.
Before you all flame me im no ms shrill, just feel ive been conned by all the hype.
Macs do crash it happens, maybe me i dont know but its very frustrating.
ps i got an intel version.
We use iDVD to Author wedding disks, and yes, it has it's problems- but it's a free program... I don't see free DVD authoring software on PC's... Also, there's this NEW thing called pirating where you can solve all your problems by getting free software like Final Cut Studio, Flash 8, Photoshop CS3, After Effects, and even Toast. Also; you aren't going to get viruses because you're ON A MAC.And before you all rail me for being a pirate; know that I have bought EVERY piece of useful software after pirating it; simply because I find thirty day trials constricting.
Your article on what you don't like about your mac reflects some of the problems I was having. I took it back to the store and they found a "defective logic board" and replaced it. That solved most of my problems except for power point freezing up the computer about a third of the time I use pps
Dan
i have so many of the same problems as you do. i have a MacBook. bought it because i was going off to college and figured haveing a computer that wouldnt get a virus was a good idea, and plus how many people say this is a good computer. this this sucks. it spits out almost every dvd and cd i put in it, even store bought movies. programs just close for no reason, AIM, Firefox, iPhoto to name a few. It has comepletly frozen on me by doing the most simplest tasks, playing music on iTunes and ejecting a disk. the only good thing about this piece of crap is that it comes with a camera and a remote, thats it.
I think Macs are the wost thing that mankind has invented in the past years. If I were to swear I would say the F word 9999999999 about Macs
I've used Macs for 20 years. Few Mac owners ever find themselves spending several hours on a simple file conversion, or have their Mac reject half the blank CDs/DVDs as flawed. Either your machine is trashed somehow, or you've got some seriously wicked electromagnetic mojo going on. If my computer was that hopeless, I'd complain, too.
iDVD runs along side with iMovie. If you want to burn DVDs, your supposed to run your movie through iMovie and then burn it with iDVD. As for your disk errors, it may be your CD?DVD drive. Bring it in to the Apple Genius bar and ask them whats going on.
Mmm, interesting! I got to this forum because I'm researching the problem that many Mac users are currently experiencing with communications errors when trying to write DVD's.
If you Google 'burning disc failed communications error apple' you will see it's true. Different versions of Mac OS, different Macs, different drives, both built-in & external, and I haven't yet seen anyone with a reliable fix.
The problem seems to be spreading. I hope all you guys that aren't having problems with your Macs yet have got your fingers crossed!
I was going to switch from windows to mac but made a detour through ubuntu and man, I'm in love! Ubuntu is great. Within a couple weeks i had almost everything converted to ubuntu apps. It works. It doesn't blowup. I don't even know what happens when ubuntu blows up: no BSOD. Six months and still happy.
Now I'm bringing up kubuntu and knoppix on my old laptops, and it brings them back to life. restores their power and makes them useful and fast again.
Best thing is I can put the old WinXP or Win2K legacy system on a secluded partition on each machine just in case I ever need it again. In the process I mount a new 80gb travelstar ($50 on ebay) and use Acronis to copy the old system.
In case I ever have problems I have the RescueCD and the GrubCD ready to go, and also systems on USB sticks.
Best thing is you can try ubuntu out without actually installing it by using the "liveCD" which runs it from the CD just using RAM for temporary memory (so it's gone when you reload).
Try it, you'll like it. The ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" is widely available as a straight download and also a torrent. And you'll LOVE the multitude of programs available for EVERYTHING, like the "deluge" torrent processor. And the "ffmpeg" transoder makes quick work of FLV to AVI conversions as well as many others: fast and accurate.
It's got a consensus type GUI for everything, and when you need it you've got the trad command-line terminal, beloved of unix folk (don't laugh, it is very flexible).
What version of iLife are you using, and did you buy the Apple Care. Your iMac should not crash like that.
iPhoto doesn't work well with lots of photos.
I myself hate using the built in CD/DVD burning software, but I do use it, and do not throw bad discs with it. I use Toast, but that costs money.
I would suggest hitting the Mac OS X Hints forums for a centralized iTunes/iPhoto library, or any other issues you have. That is a great resource both the forums and the tips repository.
iPhoto definitely doesn't handle large photo libraries well. When Steve Jobs demoed the latest version, he referred to "really large" libraries as containing 5000 photos. Ha! There are 30,000 photos in just my "Canon" library, where the images range from 3-5MB each (not counting the RAW image, which I don't think iPhoto handles at all). I left iPhoto behind long ago.
Raoul, I'll just reiterate my initial advice of a year ago, and hope that you did take it in to be looked at, because what you're describing is not at all normal.
I mention this in the hope that other people reading the comments will also take their computer in if they're having *anything* even remotely like this happen to them. It's just not right, or normal, or common.
I finally took it in for repairs, and it turned out to be the logic board and the Bluetooth module. They were replaced, and now it remains to be seen if the iMac will be more stable over time.
I was pretty unhappy with the whole repair experience though. They kept it at the store for 10 days, and that was a big problem for us, since it was our main computer. I expected better from Apple. If someone's interested, I wrote about the repair on my blog.
Many thanks to those who pointed out the logic board and Bluetooth module as likely culprits. You were right!
I just lost ALL my pictures.
I photo does SUCK it is slow and crashes all the time. I selected delete original files when it was done downloading then it CRASHED and so now all my pictures are GONE. does anyone know if there is anyway to get them back
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I do not believe your complaints are typical of mac users or common among any Macintosh computers:
I have a PowerMac g4 1 ghz and iBook Dual USB G3 500 mhz.
- iPhoto runs instantaenously on my G4 and with reasonable speed on the old G3. Connections by USB to my Sony are fast, flawless and I've never had a crash of iPhoto. It is in my opinion an excellent consumer photo app; I've used the OS X bundled version, as well as iPhoto 4, 5, and now 6. All have performed superbly. There isn't anything like in the Windows universe. I can't imagine what's going on with your Mac, but it is the opposite of my experience.
-- I burn music CDs (r and rw) in iTunes. In over 100 burns of various playlists, both downloaded and MP3 rips of my own CDs, I've never had a bad disk (I upgraded my drive to a Pioneer DVR-111D SuperDrive). Like most Mac users, I use Toast Titanium to burn DVDs and data CDs, again without any problems. I've had 3 bad DVDs in 200+ burns using relatively inexpensive Ridata disks.
-- iMovie, iDVD, quicktime and EyeTV. I agree that EyeTV is a great piece of software for what it does (and i'm surprised you don't use Toast, given its tight integration with EyeTV), but to compare it to iMoive and iDVD is foolish. EyeTV is not a movie editor. It allows you to remove commericals. That's it. iMovie and iDVD are designed to create video presentations with a vareity of effects from the ground up. They are consumer apps and not particularly powerful, but they have little in common with EyeTV. As for re-encoding video, that is going to be a long and processor-intensive process no matter what software you are using. Which is why a lot of us like the hardware encoding feature of the EyeTV and similar devices. If your going to re-encode movie lengthy high-quality video, what do you expect?
-- I've never noticed jumpy video in iTunes. Seems pretty smooth to me.
-- Can't speak to your other points, most of which seem rather nitpicky to me. Perhaps you just got a lemon. Have you considered taking it to an Apple Store Genius Bar and having them see if there's a hardware problem?