Software issue.

Does your Macbook have the GMA 950 graphics card? If so, that could be the problem. According to this website this is a known issue:
http://www.direct2drive.com/4/6677/product/Buy-SPORE-(MAC-VERSION)-Download

have you tried setting all the video options to minimum.

Luck
E

same problem:

Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x0000056c at address 0x005d9540. Do you wish to debug it?

I had been playing the game fine for the past day but I went to start it up about an hour ago and this happened. I noticed it once before when I had quit the game the first time I had played it and never saw it again.

I have the same problem during several instances of the game and I've submitted bug reports to both EA and TransGaming. You're likely seeing these crashes which are not bugs in Spore, but rather in Cider - the TransGaming "Win32" emulation engine EA hired to make the Mac-variant.

Right after the crash happens, check your Console ( /Applications/Utilities/Console.app ) logs for something similar to the logs I pasted below.

It seems like the crash is caused by over-releasing an object.

9/8/08 3:40:26 PM tgUpdate[21916] tgUpdate:INIT (0x0)
9/8/08 3:40:26 PM tgUpdate[21916] tgUpd:init
9/8/08 3:40:27 PM tgUpdate[21916] Error 70000001
9/8/08 3:40:27 PM tgUpdate[21916] tgUpdate:DEALLOC (0x0)
9/8/08 3:40:27 PM tgUpdate[21916] Launching "/Applications/SPORE/SPORE.app/Contents/MacOS/cider" -psn &
9/8/08 3:40:27 PM com.apple.launchd[136] ([0x0-0x4fd4fd].com.transgaming.spore[21916]) Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 21918 PPID 1 cider
9/8/08 3:40:27 PM com.apple.launchd[136] ([0x0-0x4fd4fd].com.transgaming.spore[21916]) > Exited: Killed

If you see something similar to the above, shoot an email over to support@cedega.com and customerservice@ea.com

Chances are they won't do anything about it for months, but who knows - maybe they actually care if people can play they game.

Foozlum: I have a newer (purchased in December 07, new) Apple MacBook and am getting this same "Exception Raised" error as well. Only my game has completely locked up. My son and I played the game for 2 days, no problem - and the game IS awesome. On day 3 the error showed up and now I cannot play at all. Tried reinstalling entire game and now Im getting the message on start up of the game and cant go any further. IM MAJORLY BUMMED. You mention something about a graphics card. How do I find out what card I have and if its the wrong one, how do I get the right one, and replace it? I have calls/emails into EAs tech support but if this graphics card is the solution, I want to do this asap. My son is freaking out that he cant play it! HELP!!!!

I've also encountered similar problems. The game worked completely fine for the first two days and on the third it suddenly encountered the same problems that have been posted here.

If anyone is curious I'm running an iMac with the nVidia 8800 in it some I'm not sure if it's entirely related to the which graphics card is being used.

Here's a copy from system.log if anyone wants to pour over it:

Sep 11 10:32:22 alex-radermachers-imac tgUpdate[350]: tgUpdate:INIT (0x0)
Sep 11 10:32:22 alex-radermachers-imac tgUpdate[350]: tgUpd:init
Sep 11 10:32:22 alex-radermachers-imac tgUpdate[350]: Error 70000001
Sep 11 10:32:22 alex-radermachers-imac tgUpdate[350]: tgUpdate:DEALLOC (0x0)
Sep 11 10:32:22 alex-radermachers-imac tgUpdate[350]: Launching "/Applications/SPORE2/SPORE.app/Contents/MacOS/cider" -psn &
Sep 11 10:32:22 alex-radermachers-imac com.apple.launchd[71] ([0x0-0x2c02c].com.transgaming.spore[350]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 352 PPID 1 cider
Sep 11 10:32:22 alex-radermachers-imac com.apple.launchd[71] ([0x0-0x2c02c].com.transgaming.spore[350]): Exited: Killed

I did a little snooping around online and tried out a few different things. When running the title from cider executable file inside the spore package it dumps a lot of output to the terminal. Here's the part right before I run into problems:

err:task:GetThreadQueue16 Breaking 16 bit for tid 2
err:module:BUILTIN_LoadModule loaded .so but dll joystick.drv still not found
err:module:BUILTIN_LoadModule loaded .so but dll joystick.drv still not found
err:module:BUILTIN_LoadModule loaded .so but dll joystick.drv still not found
err:module:BUILTIN_LoadModule loaded .so but dll joystick.drv still not found
err:module:BUILTIN32_dlopen failed to load .so lib for builtin nvapi.dll: dlopen(/Applications/SPORE/SPORE.app/Contents/Frameworks/libnvapi.dylib, 2): image not found
err:module:BUILTIN32_dlopen failed to load .so lib for builtin nvapi.dll: dlopen(/Applications/SPORE/SPORE.app/Contents/Frameworks/libnvapi.dylib, 2): image not found
err:dbghelp:SymGetModuleBase no process with the handle 0xffffffff has been initialized
err:dbghelp:SymGetModuleBase no process with the handle 0xffffffff has been initialized
err:virtual:VirtualQuery No view found for 0x0!
err:module:BUILTIN32_dlopen failed to load .so lib for builtin dasmx86dll.dll: dlopen(/Applications/SPORE/SPORE.app/Contents/Frameworks/libdasmx86dll.dylib, 2): image not found
wine: Unhandled exception, starting debugger...

As far as I can tell it's looking for some .dylib files that aren't there for whatever reason. Even after reinstalling the game they don't show up. I'm not entirely sure why these missing files are causing a problem all of a sudden, but I'll keep lurking around the EA forums to see if anyone comes up with a workable solution.

I've been playing the game for 3 days now without a hitch. Then I was going from the Civilization phase to the Space phase I was getting the following Exception.

Exception raised
Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x00000150 at address 0x005e8462.
Do you wish to debug it?

I emailed EA customer service, just waiting for a response. If it comes.

Message was edited by: Desert Tree Media

Don't be surprised if it takes a long time to hear back from them. I'm going on 3 days and the only thing that I've heard from the is "that they've had a lot of email support inquiries" and that it will be a few days before I hear anything else.

I am having the same problem. Spore played fine for about 3 days, then when I got to the civilization stage it started crashing. Now I can only play for about a minute before it crashes every time with an unhandled exception. I put support queries in to EA and the folks responsible for cider and no response so far. Can't say I am surprised as I have heard that EA support in particular is non-existent.

Spore is fun to play if you can get it to run. Would definitely recommend that anyone interested in the game wait until this issue is resolved before you buy. As it stands now I have spent $50 on a piece of code that only crashes.

PS - playing on a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 24" iMac with 4 GB RAM (ie it's not a minimum requirements issue)

Same as all of you... Spore worked during one week, and since i tried to go to space, it crash every time. I manage to use the creator but impossible to play...

I have this :

"/Applications/SPORE/SPORE.app/Contents/MacOS/cider" -psn &
Sep 16 13:25:53 com.apple.launchd[69] ([0x0-0x17017].com.transgaming.spore[119]): Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 121 PPID 1 cider
Sep 16 13:25:53 com.apple.launchd[69] ([0x0-0x17017].com.transgaming.spore[119]): Exited: Killed
Sep 16 13:25:54 [0x0-0x17017].com.transgaming.spore[0]: For language 'fr' several language ids were found:
Sep 16 13:25:54 [0x0-0x17017].com.transgaming.spore[0]: fr_FR - 040C; fr_BE - 080C; fr_CA - 0C0C; fr_CH - 100C; fr_LU - 140C;
Sep 16 13:25:54 Brice [0x0-0x17017].com.transgaming.spore[0]: Instead of using first in the list, suggest to define
Sep 16 13:25:54 Brice [0x0-0x17017].com.transgaming.spore[0]: your LANG environment variable like this: LANG=fr_FR
Sep 16 13:27:20 [0x0-0x17017].com.transgaming.spore[0]: wine: Unhandled exception, starting debugger...
Sep 16 13:27:28 [0x0-0x17017].com.transgaming.spore[0]: err:SDL:SDL_DoQuit(): destroying mutex
Sep 16 13:27:34r tgUpdate[133]: tgUpdate:INIT (0x0)
Sep 16 13:27:34 tgUpdate[133]: tgUpd:init
Sep 16 13:27:35 tgUpdate[133]: Error 70000001
Sep 16 13:27:35 tgUpdate[133]: tgUpdate:DEALLOC (0x0)

First who have news, telle the others...

I may have resolved this issue. I noted that some users have suggested that this is a problem with wine not having permission to access something in particular. So I tried using disk utility to fix permissions on my startup disk. After I did this Spore worked fine.

Having said that. After I played for a day, the program crashed again the next day. It was not the same unhandled exception, but I will report back if it keeps happening.

We (TransGaming) and EA are indeed listening and looking into these issues. The console log messages are not related to the problem.

Try starting with a new star/planet to see whether the issue still occurs. If not, it may be related to that particular saved game.

-Gav