The art of failure

By

post-2761-image-358b1d718b02d35e544746da13a4a616-jpg

One common problem I’ve noticed is that recent switchers from Windows to OS X don’t expect to encounter problems. At all. In many cases, they’ve heard so much good stuff about OS X that they expect it to be good stuff all the way through.

I make a point, these days, of saying to potential switchers: “Macs can break, you know. They do break. They can drive you crazy.” And the potential switchers look at me like I’m mad and say: “So why switch then?” And I reply: “Because it will happen far less frequently than it does with Windows, and most of the time recovery will be quicker and easier.” Note that: most of the time.

Anyway, Asraf Sani has a disappointed tone in his voice when he writes about the artistically interesting graphics failure that hit his iMac running Leopard last Friday. The colourful light show made it unusable, but at least the screenshot controls were still working, enabling Asraf to grab a few snaps for his Flickr stream.

Should we celebrate graphic failures on our Macs? I think we should. Every cloud, silver lining, all that.

Picture used with Asraf’s permission

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.

8 responses to “The art of failure”

  1. Peruchito says:

    all real issues aside. i kinda liked the way it looked. i put it as my desktop….

  2. macabron says:

    At least for the average consumer I think what you say holds true. My brother got his first mac a year ago, the first white ibook, and after a month he was a convert, no more viruses, no more random slowdown, he still gets some issues, but they are far in between.

  3. piker62 says:

    I had that problem too… I was running a DVI to HDMI adapter to my TV. I took that plug out, rebooted and plugged it back in. Hasn’t come back since.

    Gorgeous error though. If it hadn’t kept happening while I was using the screen for something else, I would have kept it.

  4. Dean Putney says:

    Hawt. I had a bunch of photos on a hard disk that got corrupted. Those are equally interesting.