This is something that's been bothering me since I've installed Lion. My uptime with Apple's latest OS is really bad. Basically, I need to restart my machine every 2 or 3 days. Memory leaks, crashing apps, etc.
Interestingly enough, this is the first OS upgrade in awhile that I did without clean wiping my machine. I wonder if there's some lingering software that's causing issues? Other people I've talked to haven't had as many problems with Lion as I've been having.
Something that I think is an interesting comparison: I recently built a Windows 7 machine, and I can't believe how stable it's been. I used to make fun of Windows a lot. But I'm currently at 31 days of uptime and counting. I don't think I've ever personally seen that before! Incredible. (And all the while, I've been playing Skyrim and Battlefield 3. Crazy, right?!)
Anyone having similar issues with Lion? Were you able to resolve it?
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How come my uptime in OS X Lion is so bad?
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dave's pick
I can say that I had progressively worse uptimes with every version of OS X from 10.4 on. I did a clean install every time. I can't comment on Lion, since I got off the Apple train without ever doing that upgrade, but, from my experience of OS X over the years, I could easily believe that the uptime has gotten to be that bad. My wife once had 188 days of uptime in 10.4 on the PowerBook G4 I passed on to her years ago. I think the best I ever got an an Intel machine was something in the 40s under 10.4, and less than that on both 10.5 and 10.6.
As far as Windows 7 reliability, all our Windows machines here at work run 24/7 and generally make it from patch Tuesday to patch Tuesday with no reboots in between. I have to admit that I am stunned by this reality. Who would have ever imagined? :)
As far as Windows 7 reliability, all our Windows machines here at work run 24/7 and generally make it from patch Tuesday to patch Tuesday with no reboots in between. I have to admit that I am stunned by this reality. Who would have ever imagined? :)
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Hmmm...
I was having bad uptime with Lion till 10.7.2 arrived. The uptime now (1-2 weeks) is comparable to what I had with Snow Leopard, but nowhere close to what I used to get with Leopard (4-5 months!).
On 10.7(.0) and 10.7.1, I had to reboot every other day. Now, with 10.7.2, Once every other week is usually good enough.
I was having bad uptime with Lion till 10.7.2 arrived. The uptime now (1-2 weeks) is comparable to what I had with Snow Leopard, but nowhere close to what I used to get with Leopard (4-5 months!).
On 10.7(.0) and 10.7.1, I had to reboot every other day. Now, with 10.7.2, Once every other week is usually good enough.
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My experience with Lion is about the same as gRagib's....every other week or so. I have a 3-month old Macbook Pro 15 running v10.7.2.
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I have had my macbook pro for almost 1.5 years now and I installed lion the week it came out and I have only had to restart for periodic updates. I write html code in dreamweaver, edit video, work with photos in the adobe suite, and use the machine every day using chrome, word, powerpoint, and excel, mail, ical, tweetdeck, and I have not had any issues.
I also frequently use a windows 7 desktop that I've had for several years. the thing needs to be restarted every day. If I let the computer go to sleep there are all sorts of issues. I find myself doing a clean install on that computer every 6 months. I mainly use that computer for video games through steam and still experience all sorts of issues that I do not have on my MBP.
I feel like there could be software on your mac that is not lion compatible... I have found that one of the new firefox versions does not run all that stable on my mac (it kept crashing) so I switched to chrome and that solved most of my computer frustrations. This computer is my first mac, and it has held up pretty well for me. A comprable windows laptop would have burned out on me by now.
I also frequently use a windows 7 desktop that I've had for several years. the thing needs to be restarted every day. If I let the computer go to sleep there are all sorts of issues. I find myself doing a clean install on that computer every 6 months. I mainly use that computer for video games through steam and still experience all sorts of issues that I do not have on my MBP.
I feel like there could be software on your mac that is not lion compatible... I have found that one of the new firefox versions does not run all that stable on my mac (it kept crashing) so I switched to chrome and that solved most of my computer frustrations. This computer is my first mac, and it has held up pretty well for me. A comprable windows laptop would have burned out on me by now.
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I have a 2009 imac that i upgraded to lion in september. I havent seen any of the issues you have. I did upgrade to 8gb of ram before upgrading. I dont use my machine every day but it is always on with the following usually open: iphoto, itunes, safari and chrome, rdio app, carbonite, time machine and otrher random apps i cant remember. I did see more stability after the recent update.
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Core i5 here and I haven't noticed anything substantially different than the past couple of releases. The only time I restart is when an update requires it.
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Dave, did you ever end up clean installing? How did it go? I have a clean install of Lion and my uptime is in the multiple weeks. I'm curious whatever happened with this...
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