macOS Stability Issues

Users debate the reliability of macOS, sharing anecdotes of bugs, crashes, update failures, and performance problems, often comparing it unfavorably to past versions or alternatives like Linux and Windows.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Hardware
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#7582
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Keywords

RAM IT OSX YMMV UX IMO CIH HN rachelbythebay.com OS windows macos mac os osx apple macs hardware laptops bugs

Sample Comments

Thermolabile Mar 4, 2019 View on HN

In past I thought that MacOS didn't have bugs, how I was wrong...

longtermd Apr 18, 2020 View on HN

I truly feel like Apple and MacOS has next to none of the problems mentioned here :)

seba_dos1 Jan 3, 2018 View on HN

With my girlfriend's Macbook, we can never be sure that if its lid is closed to sleep, it will wake up. With linuxes on my laptops, it always does.Of course it doesn't prove anything, but simply reminds that YMMV.Updates are always breaking something, to the point I had to convince her to update to (High) Sierra, so I could install new Xcode, because she didn't want to.Font rendering is ugly, too bold, I can't look at it. Touchpad is somewhat acceptable - I've u

PragmaticPulp Nov 8, 2021 View on HN

I’m generally happy with my Mac products, but I’ve also gone through long periods where my Mac would crash multiple times per week due to serious OS bugs.Most recently, the Thunderbolt 3 issues were responsible for countless hours of lost time rebooting my laptop last year, and I’m not alone: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/03/repro/<

rurp Apr 3, 2023 View on HN

I've had a similar experience, where supported OS updates rendered a macbook effectively unusable due to performance hits and bugs.It's one of several reasons that I stopped buying macs for my personal dev machine and switched to ubuntu. Linux certainly isn't perfect but updates have been more pleasant than on mac or windows.

xor_null Feb 23, 2017 View on HN

Its not just windows is getting better, but also macos getting worst every release

jedikv Feb 1, 2017 View on HN

Weirdly I've had one noteable crash (that wasn't me messing with hardware) on windows since probably 7. However on my rMBP I get semi-regular blackscreen/beachball lockups & reboots - granted it's anecdotal, but my OSX experience has generally been worse than my windows one. Terminal, Trackpad, Keyboard (pre-butterfly), paw & sketch are the only positives I get from my MBP.

krtkush Nov 23, 2025 View on HN

They need to fix Mac OS first. It’s one of the worst OS I have ever used - apps keep crashing, random UI/UX glitches and bad decisions overall.I’ll probably ditch Mac if this degradation continues.

0xff00ffee Mar 18, 2020 View on HN

Oh, ok, these are anecdotal bugs and not something systemic and real, like, say the redesign of the file system or memory managers or the driver system.I've had 3 macs over a decade and they've all been flawless. My 2013 MBP is still my trusty workhorse, my Mac Mini handles the living room.Only issue ever was Catalina when my chinese 32-bit Alfa drivers stopped working, but I had two OSes worth of warnings. And my new iPhone 7 sometimes cannot make calls because the phone app cra

microcolonel Aug 4, 2018 View on HN

I'm convinced that the only way you could think this is if your use case for the Mac is basically entirely browsing the web, and even for that the OS is typically broken in one or more unbelievable ways. I remember that for three point releases in a row (a couple years ago when I had to use macOS for iOS builds, which were at that point not reliable enough to automate), Exposé was severely broken in a different way for each consecutive release. Then there was that issue where you could log