That's definitely not what that phrasing means, and I find it hard to believe that it would have been accidentally overlooked in a PR piece like this. To me that means the likely explanations are that either it actually caused Macs to crash (which I seem to recall from experience it could, at least occasionally), or that Jobs is purposefully trying to shift OS instability blame to an application, which I think is possible. Or some combination thereof.
I believe that also applies to most UNIXes and UNIX-likes.
<rambling>
I really like that terminology though, it makes quite a bit of sense. When you witness a crash(you are not part of the crash, you were simply witnessing/interacting with the thing that crashed. You are not necessarily harmed), it is not like the whole world is falling apart. There was a crash, it is horrible and now you have to save what you can. This applies both digitally and in real life. Think crashing a drone or watching a plane crash. You rush to the scene and call for help, but you are not harmed.
Now when the OS fails, it stops everything and can potentially result in significantly more data loss than a standard application crash. Much like when a person is in an accident involving a vehicle. It is no longer just a crash, it is now a panic. When you end up in an accident you don't think "oh ya that crash" you think panic, not the word, the feeling.
</rambling>
Sorry for the rambling on, it kinda just happened. But ya that terminology is great.
If that's so, then the way it was worded seems needlessly unclear. It specifically says it caused Macs to crash. The normal terminology (and proper English) would be to say "cause Mac applications to crash" when referring to the applications and not the OS or hardware. It's like someone saying "Windows crash" is supposed to refer to Windows applications because people say blue screen instead of crash usually. Even if you accept the terminology, it's applied to the wrong subject.
As I said, I can't imagine that distinction having escaped notice in a PR piece such as this.
You need to let this go. You're trying to argue something that everyone understood well at the time. Thousands of news stories followed up on every detail in that letter and it was very clear what Apple meant.
Yes, but he didn't say panic, he said crash. Crash is often used to refer to both application crashes, and os crashes, which are also often called kernel panics. Saying something causes "Macs to crash" when you mean applications running on a Mac, as people are suggesting, is very unclear.
I agree, the wording isn't great. Kernel panic is a specific thing, yes, but there are other system-wide crashes that are much more common on Macs than kernel panics.
"Sleep Wake Failure" comes to mind. When the 2016 MBP was new I'd get one literally every night that I left my computer asleep. It's now much less frequent (a couple a month, still more than it should be), but more often than panics (haven't had one yet).
To clarify, because I think people may be misinterpreting what I meant by that. I wasn't implying a definitive intent to the statement, but stating that the suggested interpretation is not what that statement means in English, as the the subject is a "Mac", which could logically be construed as the OS, the hardware, or both, but not an application running on a Mac. So either it means something other than the suggestions put forth (that he's referring to application crashes), or it's a misstatement, on purpose or not.
