Hi Lynne, Depending on what application he used to play music (we'll assume iTunes,) some processes in OS X sometimes run very resource-hungry tasks. One resource to watch out for in particular is mdworker. What this stands for is Metadata Server worker and it ensures that your files are Indexed using Spotlight, and is the core technology behind the search engine. It generates its index using metadata making it possible to find files instantaneously using Spotlight. It's very much known to take up a lot of CPU, so this is probably what happened. It tends to really start working when you, for instance, plug in an external hard drive. Keep in mind that it tries to index all of the new files that it discovers, so depending on the new files found it may take longer than you expect. Also depending on the workload it will work harder, but the high CPU usage is totally normal. Other processes may increase your CPU usage, like Voiceover, but if VoiceOver does this often you need to do some tro ubleshooting. VoiceOVer is designed to hardly eat up any resources. You can review the CPU usage of your processes through /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app or by using Terminal commands.
A kernel panic is something entirely different and actually causes your Mac to freeze, and even third party programs can cause this, although kernel panics should be extremely rare. it is an internal fatal error for which your operating system cannot recover, and is often related to hardware problems though some software particularly in the operating system itself may trigger the behaviour. It's a safety mechanism which aims to prevent data corruption and the risk of data breaches, and attempts to facilitate a diagnosis of the error. For those familiar with Windows, this is what most users even consumers call the "blue screen," or "Bug check." Regards, Nicolai On Jul 4, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith <ly...@mac-access.net> wrote: > Hello Josh and Sarah > > There are occasions where you can run into what I believe is a "Panic" at a > very low level. These "Panics" or "Kernel Panics" can cause symptoms such as > the fan speed increasing or hard drive access becoming sluggish. > > In a lot of cases, you can help your Mac recover from these "Panics" by > simply shutting it down and then restarting. I'm lead to believe that some or > all of these "Panics" are logged and can be sent to Apple as a report. Of > course, somebody may know better than I; in fact they probably do. But having > read a lot of stuff on Apple's technical pages I think this is the kind of > situation you're running into. > > Lynne > > On 4 Jul 2012, at 02:18, josh gregory <joshkar...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Is it anything to seriously worry about? Like will anything happen to > my mac from it? > > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> > > To reply to this post, please address your message to > mac-access@mac-access.net > > You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at > either the list's own dedicated web archive: > <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> > or at the public Mail Archive: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. > Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> > > The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and > worm-free! > > Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting > the list website at: > <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/> <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
