Posts Tagged “glitch”

After a while, this happens again. I wish I could video-record the screen when it happens. The screen ‘went alive’ as I move my cursor around, a bit like the ‘Predator’ effect. This time, I was on iPhoto. Restart.

Please note - this was not frustrating.

[Previous post 09.09.08, The art of failure by Giles Turnbull]

Screenshots Mac OS X

This happens first time last Friday (after a couple of months on the new iMac OS X) but I didn’t get a chance to get any screenshots. So yesterday, I googled around looking to find some screenshots (viewing pleasure of our IT guy), only found lots of double-text screen glitch, nothing of these Disco-effect problems. The screen was not totally frozen, but moving the mouse would create ‘Predator’-type effect of colours all over the screen. I managed to shut the thing off by blindly moving the cursor to find the restart button of course with the help of an Apple fan sitting besides me. Any Mac problem of this magnitude would seem to be a big deal - that’s because Apple Mac never usually have problems comparing to Windows PCs.

I left this to our IT guys to sort out.. but the screenshots are exclusively for you as reference .. yes you guys Mac users.

Machine - Mac OS X 10.5.4. Application used when it occured - Vectorworks 12.5 (2D colourful drawings)

[Post note 15.09.08] My average-consumer thoughts

With reference to The art of failure by Giles Turnbull, my average-consumer thoughts would be ‘Yes, it’s a glitch, an issue need to be resolved, but it is very tiny relatively comparing to how stable an Apple iMac is. I joined an office back in 2005 which used iMac and was freaked out.. but soon I fell in love with.

I can hardly recalled how many times my office Mini Mac disappoint me from 2005-2008, I am confident to say that it never crashed (only Vectorworks once every 6 months), unlike a PC which needs to be cntrl+alt+dlt restarted once every two week, or reformated every year.

Having said all this, I am still a domestic PC owner, not committed to convert fully to a sleek iMac. Why? I think it’s the same reason many people out there still use PC even after constantly hearing about how stable a Mac is - is because they are so literate in a Windows PC ‘routine‘. A normal home PC would generally keep having issues that users ‘evolved’ in teaching themselves how to fix it. I bet 1 out of 10 Windows PC users knows how to reformat their machine, open up their PC for their own ’surgery’. The more snuffed a PC gets, the better the nerd looks. Take myself for an example, I can reformat a PC, I even assembled my own PC from parts - but after 3 years of using Mac in the office, I still don’t know the keyboard shortcut for restarting a Mac (cntrl-alt-delete equivalent).. obviously because they never hang. This is a very reliable system, but in some way, people (by people I mean stubborn PC users) prefers the safety thoughts like having the knowledge to perform maintenance routine to their problem-prone PCs - rather than buying a ’strange’ sleek almost-trouble free iMac… hmm.. my point is unfair and debatable of course, until I have my own home sweet 24″ iMac, it will always be a beautiful stranger to me.