I had a similar flakey problem and ended up communicating with Mathematica Support who suggested the following:

1. With Mathematica open, select 'Preferences...' from the 'Edit' menu. Then select the 'Evaluation' tab in the window that pops up.  Try hitting the 'Reset to Defaults' button and see if the computation will work then. 

2. If the above does not resolve the issue, try resetting Mathematica to its default settings.  For instructions on doing so, please see     http://support.wolfram.com/kb/3274   The first item did nothing to help at the time BUT the second one not only fixed my problem then but recently also another instability problem with using the Graphics -> Drawing Tools. - That's 2 for 2 in correcting instability problems. Only problem is you have to erase your preferences file (save first !) and re-register your product -not a big problem and it is soooo nice to get rid of that instability or buggy behavior.

Perhaps this is a case of too many projects underway at once. I saw Wolfram people using 10.0.2 for their talks at the Wolfram Technology conference in October, so it is not 'vaporware', and there are real fixes to problems. I would have thought that 10.0.2 would have been out already.

Workbench 3 won't be out until 2015 (early), from what I have been told, but I have no information about a version 10 compliant CDF player. David Park, in his discussions on this thread, has convinced me to give workbench another shot, but I cannot share any of my version 10 work with non-Mathematica owners until there is a CDF player that they can use.

From the viewpoint of a user, I think it is time for a semi-major version -- say 10.1.0 -- that would consist of nothing but bug fixes and bringing CDF player, Workbench, etc. into sync with the main product.

I would include in this 'bug fix' release such things as the Cocoa front end for OS X that is way overdue. I am fully cognizant of the technical difficulties, but the Carbon APIs that are in the current front end have been deprecated for at least 5 years. I am sure that there are similar issues for Windows and Linux. This discussion started on the topic of stability, and from all anecdotal information, the OS X version is far more stable than Windows or Linux.

We have not had a '.1' release since version 5.1; they were fairly common before then. While naming versions is somewhat arbitrary, a 0.0.1 update indicates that there are minor changes, or stuff that did not make the cutoff. A '.1' release indicates, to me at least, that significant issues with the product have been rectified without making substantial changes in the program's 'footprint'.

I think that this is exactly what Mathematica needs.

Have not noticed stability problems in V10 on Yosemite and prior to that Mavericks but admittedly did not use it much due to the amount of bugs present and the lack of Player Pro. I am still on V9 95% of the time but want to shift 100% to V10 when these issues are fixed because I like some of the new features. It remains a source of frustration that bugs go unfixed for multiple versions. In the V10 installation I have tried (10.0.1) there are bugs reported in V7, V8 and V9 still present.

I have raised the issue of access to lower-level routines with Wolfram engineers at various times. With Xcode (and I am sure other IDEs), one always has access to the file headers to get detailed information about functionality, and I think that Mathematica or Wolfram Language needs the equivalent. The Wolfram engineers have access to them, because they use them in their own presentations and when answering technical questions. Given that the users of these primitives are likely to be well beyond the novice stage, the level of documentation can be minimal.

Perhaps there could be a developer program that would provide additional documentation and access. I remember that the Wolfram Technology conference started out as the Wolfram Developer's conference. The company was a lot smaller then -- and the Mathematica coder base was much smaller -- and the conference gave you access. I think that this idea can be built upon and formalized.

Even having all possible options show up in the code completion popups (e.g., options for "Appearance") would be useful. A preference could be set to indicate the level of detail the user wanted, so the list of choices would not overwhelm a neophyte.

I wonder what users think about having multiple Menus on multiple notebooks?

What I really like about the new-in-v.10 multiple windows interface is that it provides a workaround for the long-standing bug of empty list of opened Notebooks in the "Window" FrontEnd menu: now the individual Notebooks are also available from the Taskbar and I no longer have to rely on the FrontEnd menu.

Just presenting a "palette" of choices (such as PlotThemes) to users is not sufficient. It vastly underestimates the true power of Mathematica with its active calculation and dynamic controls.

I agree absolutely. The PlotThemes-style of development feels like step backward in the design of the system: it does not expand the possibilities but provides a limited number of hard-coded choices which are already simply outdated in their design (and always will for the obvious reasons!). It is not an expedient direction of development. What I expect in the future versions are new ways to construct graphics from other graphics. In particular I lack vector CropByMask command which would allow to crop a vector object by some vector mask defined, for example, as a Polygone (keeping everything in vectors of course!). I also lack the working FullGraphics function (which starting from version 6 simply does not work in the most of cases). I also feel that the Ticks functionality should be completely redesigned to allow much more flexibility: easy control on the distance from tick marks and the axes/frame, built-in functions for generating Ticks specification with at least that functionality which currently provides the CustomTicks` third-party package (what a shame that for such a basic task we still have to install third-party packages!).

There are several solution paths for making third party packages available to people who don't have them. If the package is free, say from a WRI archive, why can't they just download and install it? The only problem here is that most packages are written in a messy form and the user has to jump through a few hoops to use them - the main problem being just to load it. They should be able to just unzip it into their $UserBaseDirectory/Applications folder and then use it. I discuss how to set up packages in this manner in the following reply:

http://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/393033?ppauth=WS2vzf9p

It's just the standard WRI paradigm and works great.

The Presentations application has a CustomTicks (and also free standing scales). You can draw graphics and then transmit them to other people with Mathematica or Export them in various formats. The recipient does not need to have Presentations. (You can't do that with everything in Presentations.) Here is an example.

 << Presentations`

f1[x_] := x^2;
f2[x_] := x^3;
testPlot1 =
 Draw2D[
  {Draw[f1[x], {x, 0, 10}, PlotPoints -> 7],
   Blue, Draw[f2[x]/10, {x, 0, 10}, PlotPoints -> 7]},
  AspectRatio -> 1/GoldenRatio,
  Frame -> True,
  FrameTicks -> {Automatic, Automatic, Automatic,
    CustomTicks[#/10 &, {0, 1000, 200, 4}, 
     CTNumberFunction -> (Style[#, FontColor -> Blue] &)]},
  PlotLabel -> Row[{x^2, " and ", Style[x^3, FontColor -> Blue]}],
  Background -> Legacy@Linen,
  BaseStyle -> {FontSize -> 12},
  ImageSize -> 300]

Now we use another Presentations feature to hide extensive code within a notebook.

HiddenNotebookData[myCustomPlot, "Test of plot without package", testPlot1]

This generates the following initialization cell:

myCustomPlot=<<Test of plot without package>>;

It is this last statement that you include in the notebook. It contains the hidden plot data between the skeletons, but the above statement does not because I just copied the plain text form of the statement. Then quitting Mathematica and restarting without Presentations:

myCustomPlot

The actual code in the cell is:

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GrayLevel[0.], 
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GrayLevel[0.], 
AbsoluteThickness[0.125]}}, {85, "", {0.0075, 0}, {
GrayLevel[0.], 
AbsoluteThickness[0.125]}}, {90, "", {0.0075, 0}, {
GrayLevel[0.], 
AbsoluteThickness[0.125]}}, {95, "", {0.0075, 0}, {
GrayLevel[0.], 
AbsoluteThickness[0.125]}}}}, PlotLabel -> Row[{x^2, " and ", 
Style[x^3, FontColor -> RGBColor[0, 0, 1]]}], 
   Background -> RGBColor[0.980407, 0.941206, 0.902005], 
   BaseStyle -> {FontSize -> 12}, ImageSize -> 300, 
   PlotRange -> Automatic, PlotRangeClipping -> True];

It is also possible to provide free versions of packages that can be used to evaluate notebooks but are not very useful for writing notebooks. I provide such free versions of Presentations and ExtendUnits at my web site. They are condensed and do not contain any documentation or useful usage messages.

There is also an Applications folder in the free CDF player where readers could place such packages.

Again, I envision that the best form of applications would be like advanced textbooks but with much greater power and flexibility. They might make a great platform for joint research. Or for courseware. If they were priced in line with current textbooks or advanced technical books it would not be out of line for people who wanted to participate to buy and install them.

Again, I envision that the best form of applications would be like advanced textbooks but with much greater power and flexibility.

That sounds reasonable but I have not got the idea. Could you be more specific about how such an application may be organized and worked with?

It's a matter of how to organize your Mathematica work and how to get the optimum use of Mathematica. My guess is that the most common usage is just as a super graphical calculator where a result is obtained or a graphic produced and these are copied out to some other document. This is fine enough, but it's not so good at building a stable usable knowledge base. Six months from now will you be able to find the notebook that made that plot, or the routine for some calculation and remember how to use it? WRI has provided really great facilities for doing better. (But they could polish them up some and make them easier to use!)

It's called an "application" and the place to put them is in your $UserBaseDirectory/Applications' folder. On another reply on this page I have a link to a detailed discussion on how to set up an application. Some might think this is only a place for WRI to put applications - but no, these are your folders and you can put anything there you want.

An application may contain a folder structure and may or may not contain packages and documentation. It will be organized around some particular topic or purpose. Some typical applications might be:

1. Some topic of individual study
2. A course a student is taking
3. Courseware for a course a professor is teaching
4. A research project and possibly papers spun off from the project
5. A book

Almost any serious project would generate routines adapted to it. Some of them might just be convenience routines that adapt or assemble Mathematica routines to the specific topic. Most applications probably would eventually contain packages. It is easy to write package files and, if you set them up correctly, easy to load and use them from anywhere. I usually develop a routine while working on some topic in a notebook. I put it in a Routines Section (Package purgatory) and include a usage message, SyntaxInformation, and other definitions that might go with it. Then once a routine gets some testing and usage you might move it to Package heaven.

Eventually you might add WRI style documentation - but you don't need it at first. Here it would be nice if WRI had a freely available application just devoted to writing their standard documentation. It wouldn't need the full features of Workbench. It could be simplified and once you learn the ropes it's quite easy to add documentation pages. They can be quite useful.

You can also quite easily add palettes and style sheets and an init.m file, even if you don't add formal documentation.

Most importantly, an application would contain various collections of notebooks. Maybe polished literate notebooks that could be turned into sections or chapters of a book. Maybe a folder of homework assignments. Maybe just your personal tutorials on various subtopics. Maybe a group of development and testing notebooks.

The important thing here is that you're building up a knowledge and skills base. It can have long term usefulness to yourself and maybe become something seriously useful to other people. When that point comes you can just zip it up (perhaps removing some private folders) and send it to another person. They just do one unzip into their own $UserBaseDirectory/Applications folder and they're in business. The other person could even add his own package or style sheet or palette for special work he might do as a spin off. This is a very flexible structure and one that can be ideal for collaboration.

If you are writing a book you can adapt it to a Mathematica application. The printed version of the book might be shorter and more elegant. It would not have to be filled with very many examples and might not contain any Mathematica code. Long examples can be especially poor if they include large structures that may fill an entire page. An accompanying application could contain much longer literate tutorial notebooks with the active capability of doing calculations. Long examples are much better handled.

By writing literate notebooks, a student could build up his own body of work on a subject. A set of such notebooks would be a much better display of her capability than grades in a course. Everyone should build up and preserve their work in this way. Otherwise why do it? Your work is worth preserving.

That's the basic idea of getting more from Mathematica. We also have to remember that Mathematica is a relatively new medium for doing and communicating technical work. We have only scratched the surface on how to employ this medium. Just copying or making simple adaptations of 19th and 20th century paradigms is far too limiting. It's a new field where many people can and will make new innovations. Great masterworks are yet to be written.

David, I read your wish and while I was redoing my keyboard shortcut code I added a "Command Option M" keyboard shortcut ("Cmd Alt M" on Windows, "Mod1 Mod2 M" on Linux) here. It is a bit slow (on MacOSX, faster on Windows), but it works. I am sure the good folks at Wolfram will implement something like this for some future release. It is not that hard to do.

I've had this problem too. If it's caused by Undo (I've thought of this also), it would help if there were a command to clear the Undo cache, that could be used occasionally during a process (such as, in my case, a long sequence of non-local image transformations) you're afraid might cause a crash.

(Note that occasionally saving the notebook doesn't help much, because it's often during a save that the crash occurs.)

John,

The spell check crash in Mathematica 10.0.1 has been reported to support@wolfram.com (and it has been fixed in the upcoming Mathematica 10.0.2 release).

Actually the note was meant for John McGee ;-) . And, yes, the crash reports are kind of like looking at the insides of sausage and trying to figure out what animals contributed....

It has been stable for me as well (OSX).

But, if you are able to create any reproducible crashes I hope that you reported them as bugs to WRI.

I am using Windows 7 Enterprise, Service Pack 1. I am looking forward to 10.0.2. I have heard that it will be released soon as well.