Mac Edition: Getting to the point of unplayable.
I've been playing since beta and I agree with everything you said. I don't quite have the specs you do as I'm on a MBP but the constant crashes need to stop. Good thing I only got the 3 month membership. At this point I probably won't renew unless this stops.
The crashes have been reduced...slightly...in Issue 14 for some people, but this issue is proving to be more complicated than it looks. Plus, there are TWO parties working on it - the CoH team, plus Transgaming - which adds complication and delays with communicating and testing.
As far as I've heard, a fix *is* coming, it's just taking longer than anyone thought. I know that much because I've been on the front lines nagging about it more than anyone. 
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
Cuppa, I know that you are in fact on the front lines of this situation and I appreciate it. Truth is that there's just a high level of frustration over this issue. I really can't bring myself to renew again at this point, much as Firestorm said.
There is no other program that I use that causes me to have to hard boot -ever- and to me this is a severe issue that should never have made it to live. I honestly hope this gets stabalized as I really do love this game.
If you're having to do hard boots you may have an issue with bad RAM. Do you have 3rd party RAM installed?
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
The hard boots end up being caused by CoH sucking up massive resources, sufficiently so that you can't get the machine's attention long enough to force-quit.
If you're lucky enough to have a remote-access terminal window open into your machine, you can usually kill the process. Otherwise, hard-boot it is.
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If you're having to do hard boots you may have an issue with bad RAM. Do you have 3rd party RAM installed?
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Negative. All 4gigs were installed at the Genius bar the day I bought the machine. Again, only time I've ever had to hard boot is from CoH (And I do a lot of heavy rendering work from Vue and CD4 which eats resources so I know my machine should be able to handle one little game ;( )
Edit: Aww Amberyl. I used to live in Bethesda. Just seeing your location makes me miss home 
I have the exact same specs as the OP and have the exact same problems. Also macro'd /reloadgfx and use it constantly. Lately I've been playing (or trying to, anyway) mostly AE missions (my own and others), and it's completely frustrating to crash so much.
There seems to be a developing issue with the Mac Edition and the most recent iMacs. I'll test it as soon as I have access to an Apple Store to see how it behaves.
Meanwhile, if you're having frequent crashing issues on a recent iMac, send in a Support request so they can track the issue.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
I just tested a 24" iMac with 4 gigs of RAM and nvidia 9400 at the Apple Store. CoH loaded and worked fine. Not sure what the issue is with other iMacs, so if you're having trouble please send a support request.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
You have to play for a bit, and be somewhere populated -- if you're on a low-population server or in a low-population zone, you will have fewer issues, probably due to fewer costume loads.
Log into Freedom. Go to Atlas Park. Stand somewhere there are a ton of heroes. Try running or jumping towards the AE building. There's a very good chance you'll have a crash. If not, try going into an AE mission, running around a bit, and then zoning out. There's a good likelihood you'll get a crash within thirty seconds or so.
Upon further review it seems the issue is still related to the memory leak/texture issue already on the drawing board for patching. For some reason it's magnified on iMacs with 256 MB of video RAM.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
I'm having MAJOR issues with the Mac client on my MacBook Pro (Early '98 version, 4,1 - 2.5Ghz, 3G RAM) - I go a few times, I play for about 15 minutes, and then the game crashes. Sometimes I have the resource issue where I cannot close the CoH window unless I ssh in from another machine, or I have it running Windowed.
Its ridiculous how the Mac version is so buggy, I don;t have this issue on my PeeCee, and I didn't have this kind of issue running under Parallels.
I can try and do some lower level troubleshooting, but its hard o do with no real source to use when debugging - both windows and the cider code.
The best I can do is attach a system call tracer and *maybe* a memory trace to see if something isn;t getting cleaned up - but thats not really that helpful.
Paxil, does your Macbook Pro have 256 or 512 video RAM?
I just played through an entire Lars Hansen arc in Striga (part outdoor, part instanced, kill-all, one death leading to an SG base run) without using /reloadgfx even once. I didn't crash once during the entire mission run, or when I went back to the base and to Talos Island. I felt Talos was laggy, and it finally crashed as I entered Wentworths.
That was about an hour of relatively harsh gaming (lots of zoning, and I move through missions fast solo) without a crash, and I would have gone longer if I wasn't purposely avoiding using /reloadgfx.
This was on a late 2008 Macbook Pro (MacbookPro5,1) set to Higher Performance so it uses the 9600/512 video/vram instead of the 9400/256.
I'm starting to suspect in general though that the less VRAM + RAM you have, the more prone you will be to crashes.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
I downloaded the 14 day trial and everytime I try to start the game, a window appears and it looks like it's downloading a patch (but it is not) then it has me agree to the Terms and Condidtion (and I accept) then a "LOADING..." appears and the screen turns black. After that, it quits and I can't reopen the game. Does anyone have any idea what may be wrong?
My MacBook Pro runs City with minimal crashes. The biggest issues I have are with my crappy connection in general; internet standards are low in my city. At first I was running into a lot of issues, then a couple of patches hit, and then I usually only run into AE related connection issues at this point. I'm not sure what particular type of RAM is used, but everything is stock out of the box.
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Synergyblast: 50 Energy/Electric Blaster (Virtue)
Arbiter Bailey: 50 Bane (Virtue)
Mr. Bailey: 50 Merc/Dark MM (Virtue)
If you're unable to start the game, try clearing your system caches. It was discovered early on that if you 'abort' a crash debug, or otherwise kill the process before it's written the crash report, it corrupts a system cache in regards to the game and refuse to start CoH after that (EVEN after a reinstall).
However, clearing a system cache is easily done.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
I don't like to come here and complain. I've been a player who's been coming back for the better part of 5 years (Originally started in the first month). I talk this game up as some of the best times I've had in an MMO.
When I found out that there would be a Mac Edition I was excited, signed up for the beta, reactivated my account and re-ordered.
When the Mac Edition went live I found a lot of crashing. I read through the forums, macro'd /reloadgfx and have been very careful to remember to do it -every- time I zone. Still. I know that about once an hour I am going to get disconnected unexpectedly and inexplicably.
Well, I've reached my limit. I was just trying to log in now and while loading in, my whole system froze. Couldn't get out, had to hard boot. This happens frequently enough to get me to the point that I almost want to uninstall. These are my specs:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00
I've got the 8800 GT 512 graphics card system and when I play games in boot camp I don't have any problems so I know it isn't a hardware config issue on my end. (I had to remove bootcamp to utilize the windows disc on another system or i'd just play there).
But at this point, why should I even bother? When is this going to be addressed? Cleary CoX is being marketed heavily to Mac users and I know from looking around this particular forum that I'm not the only one who is having this issue. Why am I paying 15 dollars a month only to have to crash over and over again.
I honestly appreciate CoX reaching out to the Mac community. Especially given how much I've loved this game. But make no mistake, I only came back because the game is now on Macs. I know that in the grand scheme it's only one $15- sub, but I'm very disheartened, and this is the first time I can truly say that about this game.
I really hope this gets sorted soon.