The Beach Ball. The Wheel of Death. It has many names, but the dreaded spinning rainbow wheel, or the "spinning wait cursor", will only appear when a
Mac freezes. While Macs are renowned for their reliability, even great machines sometimes get overrun by an errant application. However, when users take advantage of available tools, the freezing will only be temporary, and the Macintosh experience will resume.
Macs usually freeze when an application goes awry. Some applications are simply resource-intensive, and will cause a computer to slow down. Other applications may have a bug, which causes them to consume too many resources. Sometimes, too many applications are running at once, or too many applications are trying to use the same disk. Or, the computer may not have enough memory to support the needs of the user.
When an application runs away with itself, the program must be closed. Users may try several different methods for closing errant applications, depending upon computer responsiveness. For slow Macs, either Activity Monitor or Force Quit will take care of closing programs. However, if the machine has stopped responding at all, powering down may be necessary.
Activity Monitor will work for semi-responsive machines, as long as menus will still pop up. Activity Monitor is found by clicking "Applications", the "Utilities", and the "Activity Monitor". The window of the Activity Monitor shows how much memory and processor capacity each open program is using. To close the errant application, use the mouse to highlight the application's name, and then click on "Quit Process".
Under the Apple menu, users will see the Force Quit function. On the other hand, if users cannot get to the Apple menu, they may push Command-Alt-Escape. The Force Quit window will show the main applications, but the window will not show how much capacity the programs are using. The words "not responding" are usually shown next to the errant application. To end the application, users simply highlight the program name and click "Force Quit".
When machines are completely non-responsive, users have no choice but to power down. Powering down is a solution of last resort, because, if the disk is being heavily used, then data may only be partially-written to the disk. Users should not pull out the power cord; instead, they should hold down the "Power" button for a few seconds. When the computer has been shut down for a few seconds, users may push "Power" again, to restart it.
Most freezes have nothing to do with resources. However, if shutting down applications and doing less multi-tasking does make the machine run noticeably faster, then an upgrade may be necessary. Generally the problem is with the application, as long as the computer has a dual-core processor, and more than one gigabyte of memory.
While Macs are incredible machines, even they have problems from time to time. By utilizing Activity Monitor or Force Quit, users will be able to close applications that are using too many disk and processor resources. However, if the Mac freezes to the point that it is non-responsive, then the only option may be to power down and restart.