Luckily, Leopard recovers well from a crash :-/

[Update: The problem was finally resolved with a logic board replacement. Apparently the on board graphics card just broke. Leopard's graphics is driver apparently less forgiving to a faulty card or maybe uses the card more intensively so that it is driven to crashes.]

Mac Os X stability used to be something to brag about.

Not anymore it seems :-(

My MacBook Pro would freeze sometimes when I was using Tiger. I thought that was because of the accumulated preferences, kernel extensions and other junk collected over years and kept through many OS updates.

Now with Leopard I was looking forward to a nice fresh *stable* system because I have started out with a clean install. In reality I now have a system that frequently just freezes. I have the feeling that it has something to do with the new core image technology and/or drivers for particular display cards.

Two arguments that support this feeling:

- Graphical artifacts appear on my screen(s), especially when using graphics intensive apps. See the example image below (ignore the photoshopping I did to smudge out my bookmarks).

- Other types of hardware apparently have similar problems. Case in point: firmware updates have been released for the new iMacs to fix freezing problems related to the ATI Radeon graphics card. My MacBook Pro also contains an ATI Radeon graphics card. (Just an older one.)

Another area of instability is sleep/wake behavior. This still doesn't work properly with Leopard. I have already taken a glowing hot MacBook Pro out of my bag after it apparently didn't go to sleep properly.

At least Mac Os X recovers properly after a crash.

[Update: The problem was finally resolved with a logic board replacement. Apparently the on board graphics card just broke. Leopard's graphics is driver apparently less forgiving to a faulty card or maybe uses the card more intensively so that it is driven to crashes. There are confirmed reports that many of the the Nvidia cards had these problems.]