Spinning beachball of death, for real
By Barb Dybwad 
posted Jan 7th 2008 7:02PM
posted Jan 7th 2008 7:02PM
[Via gadget lab & MAKE]
posted Jan 7th 2008 7:02PM
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But unlike the BSoD, the spinning beachball of death doesn't always mean a restart.
And NEVER means a fucked install.
I carry around a little hourglass to hand to Windows fanbois. "Look familiar?" roflcakes, etc.
PMSL @ Zak, you sir are a comic genious.
Obviously the two aren't even on the same level of abstraction, so the comparison is unfair to begin with.
Windows: Mac
BSoD : OS X Kernel Panic
Hourglass/Ring of Pain : Spinning Beachball of Death
That said, I appreciate your humor.
The marble of doom would compare more to the windows hourglass. For a mac, you'd compare a Blue Screen of Death to a Power Button Icon from Hell/Black Screen of Death, err, Kernel Panic.
BSoD to Marble of Doom = Apples to Oranges.
Just wanted to point out that BSoD doesnt really mean reinstall. Actually it rarely means a reinstall. If people knew what the errors meant then they could probably fix it. BSoD happens when the kernel or a driver running in kernel mode encounters an error that it cant recover from. And these errors are usually created from hardware going old and/or extreme viruses.
I got a good 45 seconds of laughter out of this one. BSOD count for this year 0. Spinning mac pointer, 1
Dan:
Haha I know, I hate that ignorance. That's why I said a spinning beach ball NEVER means a bad install, but a BSoD can.
Bladesling:
How many hourglass hangs have you gotten? I bet a lot more than spinning beach ball's I've gotten.
I call it "The Wizard Wheel" , I own a now antiquated Macintosh, and I see that too damn often.
let me be the first one to say: WTF?!?
This is truly the stuff of nightmares.
Ubuntu has neither a BSOD or a Beachball of dearh! Penguins for all!
but it does have kernal panics.
It's the grey screen of non-responsiveness.
it also has the horribly pixelated screen of bad graphics card driverness and the black screen of nothingness...
this post was worthless. give me my 2 mins back
You watched it for 2 minutes?
How does it end?
Only reason I watched about a minutes worth is because I'm eating. I'm calling this movie/post out as a ploy to look like an insult to Apple comps, but in reality it makes fun of Windows users if they had to try this for ammunition...
this video blows...
-Taylor
Anyone else seeing this?
http://xs223.xs.to/xs223/08022/uh.png
yes and it crashes firefox everytime!
Opera FTW!
That's what I'm getting in Opera, my main browser. I'll take your word for the Firefox crash—no point is beating a dead horse.
nope, i saw the video (sadly). I'm using firefox, and i've never seen anything like that before - do you have all the plugins you need?
-Taylor
Looks normal to me. I see the video.
I guess I get to say it.... IE7 ftw!
What's the source of the music?
What Music
Hey, Leopard has the BSOD - only Apple rather coyly calls it simply 'Blue Screen' and apparently does what it can to remove threads on it in their Forum...
Then, of course, there's the more 'insanely cool' Beach Ball of Death.
Heck, its been years since the OS was as stable as the hype. There's a reason they moved the power switch from the rear to the front of Macs...
What the hell is this crap doing on Engadget? this isn't funny, and it was actually pretty confusing...
That's Ryan way for getting back at Engadget readers for hitting on his girl...
Giving them freaking seizures...
I don't get it..?
Talk about desperate for ammunition... what the hell... the actual sequencer is rather cool but honestly... stop throwing flame bait up just for kicks Endgadget. With CES running THIS is what we get???
Surreal, but can it blend Doom?
Pathetic. Simply Pathetic. Not very funny either. They couldn't have been animated either? Seriously
after watching that video, i'm glad i'm not epileptic!
WTF? Firefox 3 Beta 2 crashes on this page with...you guessed it, a spinning beachball. Now it's the virtual world emulating meatspace.
WTF? Firefox 3 Beta 2 crashes on this page with...you guessed it, a spinning beachball. Now it's the virtual world emulating meatspace.
Beach ball of death like in the prisoner "I am not a number I'm a free man" whoever poseted this must have also been regularly gassed.
At least the beachball is pretty and not really a PITA when you can go into another program and wait for the other one to sort it out, rather than locking up the whole computer, Windows style.
hey barb - i sent this in via the tips this morning (wired later posted it up, check the via...) we did an interview with the artist today.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/01/make_interview_modding_co.html
Spin, you bastard, SPIN! Now with sound... :-)
http://spinningbeachballofdeath.com/
my school uses old macs, the ones that were still thick as hell but has OS X, and they can't do anything without freezing. open a browser page? that's a beachball. print something? that's a beachball. Turn it on? yep, that's a beach ball.
I'm a Mac user (who still loves his iBook) and finds this video hilarious!
Ironically, as I watched this video my friend IMs me saying "dammit, I have to restart. Fucking safari." That was worth a chuckle.
Oh, so you want us to link to this everytime someone mentions the BSOD as a comeback with the spinning beachball?? I wonder how much more $$$ you make from ads after that... Smart and easy way of getting some easy hits, but I won't fall for the trap. No, I'm jk, I will link off to you guys, you're one of my favorite blogs, why would I not let you expand.
Engadget's worst post of the year by far.
Glad it crashed then ;P
The next windows beta ? Wait im supposed to see that while apps load on my Mac ? Hmm I guess its to fast for me to notice it.
I watched this crapola attempt at video art - on a 9-year old G3 Powerbook running OS X.3. Maybe I was expecting humor, satire, or God forbid, some kind of statement of purpose. The spinning beach ball dispalyed on my old clunker laptop (sometimes 10 sec or so) is infinitely more entertaining than this tripe.