Re: And why should that surprise us?
@big_D
In fairness, in my experience, crashes on Macs (and Linux) tend to be caused by faulty memory (which is cold comfort on many modern Macs where the memory is permanently soldered to the main board). Losing work is harder though and for two main reasons - firstly, Time Machine, which works for all software of course but only if the user remembers to plug in their backup drive or connect to a network which has a Time Capsule of some kind on it.
Secondly, software which uses Apple’s APIs (NSDocument in particular), is very well protected against crashes. You can try it for yourself if you’re feeling brave and you have a desktop Mac to hand. Create a document in something like TextEdit, Pages or Numbers (to choose software that every Mac user will have) and bang out some text. Then yank the power. Don’t shut down. Just pull the power. Then turn the computer on - and, after a spot of grumbling, everything will open up again and your cursor will be flashing away at the point it was when you terminated your machine so ruthlessly. You might not have every last character - but it’ll be damned close.
Sadly that last trick doesn’t work in Microsoft Office, which is probably the most popular work suite on the Mac - particularly in a business environment, since Microsoft eschews Apple’s APIs in favour of its own.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
