My Mac Often Crashes – What Can I Do to Prevent This?
Alas, most of you have probably seen some of the alerts in Figure 1. For a Parallels® Desktop user, a crash can be caused by a bug in macOS, in Windows, or in Parallels Desktop itself. Despite the valiant and unending efforts of the engineers at Apple, Microsoft, and Parallels, bugs still appear. Here are some actions that you can take to lessen the frequency of these crashes.
Patch Often
Microsoft, Apple, and Parallels all release updates fairly often. These updates sometimes contain new features, but they always contain fixes to known issues. You can prevent some crashes by installing these updates. You do this with the dialogs shown in Figure 2. I recommend that you add a repeating reminder in your online calendar to check on the availability of new updates.
Ask the Community
While these companies all provide tech support, you can often get a more timely answer to an issue by asking the user community, using the links below:
Don’t Invite Trouble
Does your Mac Dock look like this, with dozens of apps running:
or this, with dozens of open windows:
Or like both of these: lots of apps running and lots of docs open? If so, you are probably asking for trouble.
Yes, I know that in theory, as a modern operating system, the macOS should be able to handle these situations. But in practice this is probably not a good idea.
I once had a conversation with a Mac user who, as a matter of immense pride, would say “I never quit an app. The Mac should be able to handle this. OS updates and the occasional crash will quit my running apps.” Don’t be like this person.
I hope these suggestions will reduce the number of times that you experience a crash. Let us know your experience and tips in the Forums or on Facebook and Twitter channels.
