
OS X 10.9.3 Is Toxic - akerl_
http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-23/osx-10.9.3-is-toxic.html
======
bkurtz13
In an attempt to balance the discussion, I'm on 10.9.3 and I've had absolutely
zero issues so far.

~~~
rickyc091
MBPR 2014. Had a few issues (crashing, slow wake/boot, etc.) with 10.9 +
10.9.1, but most of these problems were resolved by 10.9.2. Haven't had a
crash with 10.9.3 as of yet.

What I also realized was constantly upgrading from one version to another kept
around some legacy files that messed up my OS a bit. A clean install might do
the trick for those having issues.

~~~
DominikR
That's the kind of advice that I constantly see in the Apple community boards
for all kinds of issues.

Why is such a solution even acceptable? I had no issues before 10.9.3, but if
I have to go through a clean install just to fix the issues, there's no way
that Apple is going to keep me as their customer.

~~~
ShaneOG
To be fair, "reinstall Windows" is oft-quoted as the best solution to a lot of
Windows problems too.

~~~
DominikR
That's true, but I paid ~3000 Euros for my Macbook (thats 4000 Dollars) and
that's exactly why this isn't acceptable to me.

~~~
stephen_g
That argument makes no sense. It's a fundamental fact that technology isn't
perfect and sometimes you need to fix things - regardless of the cost of the
device...

And you would rather that your $4000 machine kept crashing rather then
spending 30 minutes doing something that could fix it?

~~~
DominikR
The problem is that this involves more than 30 minutes of my time. Setting up
my development environment after the clean install will take half a day and
I'm sure that I will forget to configure something in the process which will
cost me even more time when I need the tool working.

I switched from Lenovo (which just worked without any problems) to Mac because
I thought it's the same quality (it'll just work) with the bonus of allowing
me to develop for iOS.

As it turns out, superficial things like the look and feel is better on the
Mac, but it's nowhere near in terms of stability. I used my Lenovo for 3 years
in work and at home as my only machine, whereas the Mac is in use for 1 day
per week and I've already had more crashes on the Mac than I ever had on my
old Lenovo.

I just don't have the time or the interest to babysit my laptop.

------
zokier
One kernel panic bug, and the system is "toxic" and "disease"? I'm not saying
that this issue is acceptable, but I don't think those adjectives are really
appropriate in describing it.

~~~
Codhisattva
What's the Internet for if not hyperbole and over generalization?

------
radicalbyte
I've been a Mac user for 6 months (MBP), I hardly tax the machine but it has
crashed a dozen times. Twice today, and five times this week in total.

Not since Windows 98 have I seen such an unstable OS. I've seen less BSOD in
the last 15 years than I've seen kernel panics in the last week.

~~~
guywithabike
In my experience, people who've had exorbitant numbers of kernel panics on
Macs have had tons of things installed that muck around with MacOS X
internals. VirtualBox, old SIMBL hacks, manual fan controls, etc. Those are
all notoriously unstable and can cause lots of kernel panics.

~~~
hollerith
>VirtualBox . . . notoriously unstable

Is there virtualization software that is not unstable on OS X?

~~~
plorkyeran
I've only had one kernel panic clearly linked to Parallels, but I still
haven't made it to a month of uptime after over two years of using OS X, so
it's quite possible that's it's causing non-obvious problems even with no VMs
running.

------
ambler0
Notably absent from the article, but spelled out in the comments, is that the
author doesn't have an AppleID because he doesn't want to agree to Apple's
terms, and therefore cannot acquire a kernel debug kit.

~~~
ansimionescu
You're misquoting the author. He said that he doesn't have the time now to
read through all the T&Cs.

~~~
nemof
this doesn't make it sound any better unfortunately. perhaps i might be
unpopular in saying this, but he should just click the fuck through. either
you want to spend your time getting stuff done, or spend your time
prevaricating about the bush.

~~~
brendangregg
Well, there's more to the story about the T&Cs, which I didn't get into
because I was trying to write about panics... So I did try to create an Apple
ID, which required I agree to "Apple Terms of Service", which links to
[http://www.apple.com/legal/](http://www.apple.com/legal/). Ok, WHERE are the
"Apple Terms of Service" on that page? Perhaps I'm being an idiot, but I don't
see anything with that title. I browsed around for a while before giving up
for now -- I've already lost time due to the panics, I'll get back to creating
an account some other day.

~~~
dsl
Under the heading "Internet Services"

~~~
brendangregg
Ok, but which one? All of them? ... The tickbox says I'm agreeing to the
"Apple Terms of Service" ... which means?

------
garyrob
Some people have felt that switching graphics modes is the source of Mavericks
crashes. I had five crashes in several days last week. I went to the Energy
Saver control panel, and turned off Automated Graphics Switching. Haven't had
a crash in a week. Could easily be coincidence, but I thought I'd mention it
here in case anyone else wants to try it. I'd be very interested in hearing
whether it helps.

By the way, what happens on my machine is that the UI completely freezes. I'm
not sure if that's what other commenters experience when they talk about
"crashing".

~~~
Rudism
I'm on 10.9.3 and do not see an "Automated Graphics Switching" option anywhere
on the Energy Saver control panel... has this been renamed or removed?

~~~
bri3d
Do you have a discrete GPU? Very few Mac portables have one anymore -
obviously, the option doesn't apply if you have only CPU-integrated graphics.

------
DominikR
I've experienced a lot of crashes since 10.9.3 on a late 2013 rMBP, mostly
when sleeping/waking the device. Also, my WiFi is randomly disconnecting all
the time since the update.

Before the update I never had any issues.

I love the hardware and the OS a lot, but I never had any crashes with my ugly
Lenovo, so I'm currently thinking about switching back to Lenovo

~~~
gav
> Also, my WiFi is randomly disconnecting all the time since the update.

I don't get the WiFi disconnects, but 10.9.3 has stopped being able to
automatically connect to WiFi.

Wake up Macbook from sleep and find WiFi disconnected. Click icon, see only a
couple of SSIDs, click the one I want, get the "unable to connect dialog".
Click icon again and wait for refresh; now see a much longer list of SSIDs.
Click the same one that it couldn't connect to before and it finally connects.

~~~
DominikR
That's exactly how my currently Macbook behaves. I could write a short script
to turn off/on the WiFi after login, but it's really annoying that you have to
do that for such an expensive device.

------
lvillani
I've had only one kernel panic so far on my late 2013 rMBP 13. At least that's
what I found in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports, and I've been through the
10.9.3 betas as well.

On the other hand I experienced random WiFi problems upon wakeup, had to do a
couple of hard-reboots, suffered the rainbow static problem and other
miscellaneous problems with external displays. Lately I've been experiencing
some weird issues with the sound system: I hear music in my headphones but
some notification sounds are sent to the speakers.

As a first-time Mac user (after a decade with Linux) I must say this is quite
a frustrating and "meh" experience.

Love the screen and the battery life though.

Glad to hear I'm not alone, my colleagues rolls eyes when I rant about the
problems I'm having.

Side Note: It seems to me that the most problematic models are Retina MacBook
Pros.

------
james33
I'm really surprised by all of the reports of crashing. I've had 3 different
Macs over the last 7 years and I've had just one crash in all that time. I use
my Mac anywhere from 8-16 hours per day and tax it pretty well. Before that I
couldn't stay away from the BSOD on Windows, one of the reasons I finally made
the switch.

~~~
james33
Why am I getting down-voted for this?

~~~
koshak
The only reason I ever get bsods since windows xp is hardware problems. hence
if you see bsod check out your box, do not blame windows. moreover, kernel
panics on linux boxes are also most of the times hardware bound or you've
broken something yourself.

------
adamfeldman
My external display just started going to rainbow static and back over and
over again. Didn't think to blame the update till now. Also just had my first
kernel panic in about a year.

~~~
ctide
I've seen that happen with Macbooks for years (the rainbow static), with both
my mid 2012 retina MBP and the pre-retina one it replaced. Happens
occasionally with my Dell monitor at home, and would happen with one of those
knockoff IPS' that I used at my previous job pretty frequently. Unplugging and
replugging the monitor will eventually fix it, but yeah, it's obnoxious.

------
dman
Experience a lot of crashes on my Macbook pro retina which is the latest
model. Screen gets artifacts everytime the gpu swtiches from nvidia to iris
pro or back. Coupled with the crashes that I now see on my Ipad air, I cant
help get the feeling that things are starting to bitrot at Apple.

~~~
bluthru
Anything with an A7 is a bit more understandable due to moving to 64 bit. 7.1
is already significantly better than 7.0 for 64 bit stability.

~~~
dman
Safari crashes on a fairly frquent basis (> 10 times a day) even with the
latest updates.

~~~
bluthru
That's crazy. Is there a certain site that causes it more than others?

------
thinkcomp
I've been dealing with Apple for months trying to get them to fix Mail in OS X
Mavericks 10.9.2, which crashes on me about every 30 minutes, or sometimes
more frequently. Their answer, which they refuse to put in writing, is that
engineering is "aware of the problem."

Also, Mavericks broke Samba support completely. Apparently 10.9.3 doesn't fix
it.

[http://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/mavericks-
broke-s...](http://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/mavericks-broke-smb/)

I agree with the comments about this being the least stable Mac OS ever. I'd
put it up there with Windows ME. Multiple times per day I have to interrupt
what I'm doing to deal with Apple-related bugs.

~~~
stephen_g
Strange, I use Samba every day at work, have had absolutely zero issues with
it - this is across all versions of Mavericks, and previous versions of Mac
OS...

------
sk_
Just checked my logs... not a single panic since 10.9.3

------
sxates
Interesting to hear people are having such problems. I'm on 10.9.3 and haven't
had any crashes. Sometimes my cursor disappears for a few seconds or on top of
certain windows, but nothing major.

------
julian_t
I'm _seriously_ unimpressed with 10.9 in general.

I bought a new MBP a few weeks back, and the hardware is awesome... the retina
screen, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD make it a joy to use.

But...

* I enabled Bluetooth, plugged in my Magic Mouse, and the next time it woke from sleep wireless connectivity had disappeared and has only come back sporadically since

* the machine occasionally 'loses' USB drives, complaining that I didn't eject them properly when they're still connected

* plugging in my Nexus phone via USB, or an HDMI cable, sometimes causes the keyboard to freeze, needing a hard reboot.

Rebooting twice within an hour isn't welcome when you're giving a lecture and
have already met the student who loudly proclaims that Apple hardware is
overpriced crap.

I do wonder whether Apple actually _test_ new releases of their OS, or just
leave it to us to do it for them.

And don't get me started about the usefulness of the "Genuis" Bar at my local
Apple store...

I am wondering whether a downgrade to Mountain Lion may fix a few problems.

~~~
cr3ative
This honestly sounds like hardware failure. Bluetooth is very stable for me
with a Magic Mouse.

Your USB and HDMI issues seem related. I'd wager a power issue.

Make the problem reproducible and they'll swap it over at the Genius Bar, who
are extremely helpful if you're polite to them.

------
bshimmin
Random useless data point - my colleague on 10.9.3 plugged in a projector
yesterday and had a kernel panic shortly thereafter.

------
godDLL
I've had many, many crashes on 10.9.1-2 with my Mini.

Started when I connected my 22'' Dell over DP instead of HDMI with Apple-
supplied DVI adapter, and added a second display – an Apple Cinema 20''
flipped to the side, to use it in vertical orientation.

I didn't wait for 10.9.3 to put that away. I just couldn't stand the way it
would blank out the screens with a random color somewhere off my desktop; and
hang – several times a day at times. Might have something to do with how crap
our power line is (I've seen ceiling lights changing intensity throughout the
day when this was happening).

Would be fun to check now with 10.9.3, my past experience tells me that the
most whined about builds of OS X have worked out to be the most stable for me
personally.

------
keerthiko
Most people here seem to refer to (r)MBPs only. I have a 2013 Fall MBA (a
replacement I got for the failing SSD 2012 MBA) and the frequency of hardlock
failures has been going up (currently once a day).

It also tends to happen a lot during web browsing more than anything else, I
don't have any VMs, any external monitors, or any fucking-with-kernel things.

Ironically, it's been only 2 years since I started using OSX from Windows and
Linux, and basically the amount my computers crashed hasn't changed a bit. I
wondered why Apply fanboys kept raving about how crash-free their life was,
since I wasn't seeing it.

I guess this is just what happens when an OS evolves to become an open enough
platform for a lot of software to run on it, it just gets less stable.

------
mmastrac
Has anyone else had trouble with external thunderbolt<->dual dvi adapters in
the 10.9.x series? I have a Mac at home that crashes the windowserver every
time my external Monoprice IPS monitor is plugged in. It doesn't happen on a
newer Retina mac at all.

~~~
sgeisenh
At least you know the adapter is working if it crashes your computer. I am
lucky to get the adapter to work properly and when it does, plugging in my
Shimian crashes my MBP.

------
sbuk
For what it's worth, my late 2011 MBA hasn't crashed once since I installed
Mavericks. This article, though interesting, well research and well written is
anecdata. Interesting anecdata, but anecdata non-the-less.

------
notacoward
I'm seeing a lot of good reports for people with MBAs, and a lot of bad
reports for people with MBPs. I think I can tell which ones the Apple devs use
themselves.

------
lolo_
I've had issues with freezes for a while pre 10.9.3 too. These obviously don't
generate panic files so are more of a pain to try to debug.

Also I recently installed refind
([http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/](http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/)) to
dual-boot linux and have experienced a lot of issues as a result of that
(separate to the aforementioned freezing issues.)

At least this guy has actual kernel panics :)

------
trounce
My late 2013 MBP 15 (16GB 1TB 2.6) randomly freezes 2-3 times per week,
sometimes more. It seems to happen more frequently when under CPU load, but
not exclusively. The mouse freezes, the fan slowly spins down, and it requires
a hard reset.

I have two 1920x1080 external monitors (hdmi and thunderbolt) which seems to
be a commonly reported configuration with crashes.

It came with Mavericks and has done this ever since I got it, under all
versions of Mavericks

------
Mister_Snuggles
No kernel panics here, but I get weird behaviour with external displays.

Sometimes when I hook up my external displays, some of the icons on one of the
menu bars will disappear. It's very strange. I can fix it by going into the
display settings and changing which one is primary.

I've got a recent rMBP with 2 x 1920x1200 monitors attached, one via a MiniDP
-> DVI adapter, the other via as MiniDP -> Dual Link DVI adapter.

------
taylodl
If we're going to collect anecdotes then I'll note my 2013 MBP has been
running continually for over a year without a panic. I have a 2006 MB and 2008
MB (both still running) each having panicked 2-3 times over their lifetime.
I'm a developer, my son is a musician and my wife is a graphics design artist
so there's been lots of software thrown at these machines.

~~~
unfunco
And here's mine: My first Mac was the G3, I'm now on a 2013 11" Macbook Air
(10.9.2) and I have never experienced a kernel panic ever, I couldn't tell you
what a kernel panic looks like. The only time I ever have an issue is if I try
waking my computer immediately after entering sleep when attached to an
external display – it doesn't happen and inevitably requires a restart.

    
    
        Current uptime: 23:05  up 3 days,  8:36, 2 users, load averages: 1.67 1.56 1.67
    

I have never experienced unreliability, and it's a pleasure to use and carry.
I tried Ubuntu on a HP Laptop I had around, and I didn't like it one bit, it
felt slow and the UI felt clunky. Even when using SSH to access the machine it
took around 5-6 seconds for the bash prompt to appear, compared to an almost
instantaneous Debian prompt.

------
tmikaeld
I got a couple of kernel panics on upgrading to 10.9.3 but then Nvidia
released new drivers for it and i haven't had a single kernel panic since
switching to them.

Although - one port on the graphicscard won't wake up if a connected screen
goes to sleep. Nvidia had that problem on the first released 10.9.2 driver,
but fixed it about a day later.

Could you try checking if the Nvidia supplied drivers helps?

------
cstross
I've had no kernel panics on 10.9.3 ... but this Haswell rMBP 13" periodically
froze after password entry when screen locked. And froze so badly that
switching user was no way out: I had to hard-reboot. Since disabling the
screen lock on inactivity it's been okay, but that's not a terribly secure or
reassuring solution.

------
benguild
The only weird problems I’ve had on 10.9 at all have been with the
WindowServer locking up when coming back from sleep or lock. This is on a late
2013 MacBook Pro.

After a ton of messing around and talking to Apple Support, we found that
trashing the WindowServer plists that are stored in multiple locations seemed
to sort it out… so far

------
stephen_g
Weird. Fr me, I can't remember my MacBook Pro hasn't having a kernel panic in
the last six months, and at one was one of the only ones I've ever had. I
recall that it was something to do with a VirtualBox kernel module or
something, so I upgraded VirtualBox and have had no problems since.

------
tammer
My 2008 Mac Pro has been rock stable since 10.9.2 (before that, just the
'mail, are you drunk?' issues).

Sounds a lot like the problem is graphics switching - everyone with issues
here has two graphics adapters.

------
general_failure
MBP 15 inch (mid 2012) gets ultra hot. I have never seen a laptop become this
hot. It also has various problems getting back from sleep and low battery. So
very annoying.

Sadly, I am sort of forced to use it everyday.

~~~
sgeisenh
I have a late 2013 15 inch MBP that regularly reaches 100 degrees C when
running Adobe Flash. The only other time the machine has exceeded 70 is when I
tried running Steam games at 2880x1800.

The hardware simply shouldn't get that hot, no matter how poorly optimized the
software might be.

------
dydx
I've had terrible issues with my rMBP 13" (freezing, kernel panics) until, 1
year after I bought this machine, the SSD finally went out. Got it replaced
and no issues so far.

------
xer0x
Older OSX updates have done the same thing to my similarly older Macs. I wish
Apple would be more diligent with their testing - especially when it comes to
video.

------
mcmillion
10.9.3 has been nothing but absolutely stable for me, and I do a ton of
development tools installed and do loads of tweaking and customization.

------
salgernon
i'm sure that the stock Apple support answer would be to backup, reformat and
restore.

This would probably have fixed his problem since the backtrace he finally
Obtained fingered the file system, which is probably corrupt. (not that this
excuses the panic!)

This is further evidenced by his "helpdesk" being unable to repair his
computer by physically swapping drives.

~~~
brendangregg
Yes, this is a good theory, and consistent with the decoded stack trace we
have. Although, consider that three other coworkers are suffering the same
panics after upgrading to 10.9.3. Have we all got the same corruption? I
suppose that could be possible, if the corruption was caused by the same bug.

------
mundanevoice
I have the OS X 10.9.3 on a Macbook Pro , Mid 2009 and there is absolutely no
problem with it. Is it on newer macs?

------
nppc
not just 10.9.3, entire 10.9.x is the crappiest OSX of all times ! So many
stability issues.

------
protomyth
Well, the 10.9.x Finder is super buggy since the start, perhaps 10.9.3 just
made it worse.

------
rb2k_
No problems over here at all.

------
weitzj
We are having problems, when using multiple displays connected to the iMac.

------
ChikkaChiChi
Disabling hibernate and fighting with power napping has solved most of my
crashing problems. I think 10.9 is a mess when it comes to trying to save me
power.

I also still disable noatime, journaling, swap space, and sudden motion
sensors on any computer with an SSD; even if its unnecessary.

~~~
astrange
If you disabled journaling and swap on your machine, you're quite far on the
way to data loss.

------
illumen
Lots of crashes here too. In the graphics driver.

------
37prime
“It happens to me therefore it is toxic!!!!!!"

~~~
pling
Anything that fucks up your workflow is toxic ( _very bad, unpleasant, or
harmful_ ).

------
dippyskoodlez
I use both thunderbolt and my HDMI out on my rMBP daily.

This guy is a bafoon complaining about being unable to fix a problem by not
accepting T&C, but he's using OS X?

I'm not denying his problem, but he is certainly cause for it being a lot
worse for him than it really is.

------
dsabanin
Aren't bugs in pre-release software expected? He makes it sound like there are
tons of issues, when it looks like this is just same one bug related to
external display handling.

~~~
chc
This isn't prerelease software. This is the current version of the OS that
Apple will prompt you to upgrade to automatically.

