If Zoom is crashing your Mac

As noted earlier, I have gotten confirmation from Apple that a fix is in the works and they have confirmed that this is a bug in all variant builds of 10.14.6 that was missed affecting all 15" 2018 and 2019 MacBook Pros. From my friend at Apple Enterprise:

> They (Apple) are aware of it and are working on a fix.

Can confirm. This has good visibility internally, FYI. Can't give schedule on fix, sorry. And yes - only affects 2018+ MBP 15" when doing internal video camera. Temp workaround is to plug in an external USB camera to bypass the internal camera.

I have the same problem with Mojave 10.14.6 (18G95)

Model Name: MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier: MacBookPro15,1

  Processor Name: Intel Core i9

  Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 8

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 16 MB

  Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

  Memory: 16 GB

Every time I use the camera (with facetime or messenger web) the laptop freezes and I have to hard reset it. I factory reset it a couple of time and it's always the same problem. And yes the fan starts spinning fast!

Same here. I thought it was b/c I migrated. And the migration actually went perfect , until crashes on Skype and Google meeting.

Then wasted a whole day with clean install. First time I use Skype - crash,

Yes the reason that Catalina fixes it @Dave is because it is upgrading the BridgeOS version which is the reason for the kernel panic... Mr. Macintosh wrote up a great article about it today. https://mrmacintosh.com/10-14-6-update-causes-kernel-panic-when-using-facetime-camera/

Thanks for posting the link @amartin253

Yes, I wrote up an article last night that goes over the issue and lists the current status along with all workarounds that have been found.

This article is perfect if you need to give a an overview to support if someone is asking for more details.

https://mrmacintosh.com/10-14-6-update-causes-kernel-panic-when-using-facetime-camera/

I will update the article until a fix is released.

This only affects newer MacBook Pro’s with the T2 chip. The best fix without actually installing Catalina is to follow the steps to install the beta on a flash drive or external hard drive. During the install process updated firmware is installed that fixes the issue.

Was not able to force quit open apps when the computer froze or do anything to recover ... except to push and hold the power switch to shut the machine off. (Didn't try pulling out the cord because the battery was full).

macOS Mojave Version 10.14.6

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2 GB

Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 4

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 6 MB

Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled

Memory: 16 GB

Boot ROM Version: 194.0.0.0.0

SMC Version (system): 2.30f2

APFS Volume:

Available: 48.83 GB (48,830,033,920 bytes)

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,345,825,280 bytes)

Mount Point: /Volumes/APFS Volume

File System: APFS

Writable: Yes

Ignore Ownership: No

BSD Name: disk1s5

Physical Drive:

Device Name: APPLE SSD SM1024G

Media Name: AppleAPFSMedia

Medium Type: SSD

Protocol: PCI

Internal: Yes

Partition Map Type: Unknown

S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified

Not really a work around because you are actually installing updated firmware. Apple just hasn’t made it available outside of Catalina. You don’t have to install the beta or even run it just install it to the external reboot and away you go. Or split out a small partition on your boot drive. Took me about 5minutes to fix.

I have be programming apps as a developer for Apple for 30+ years.

As they add complexity to their ecosystem they are release more-and-more half-baked stuff.

In the hurry to release their new stuff fast to the public their quality control is breaking .

This round of software releases for iOS and macOS and iPadOS and TVOS (Xcode 11) is very flaky.

Its a blemish on their company in my opinion.

They should be more careful.

There is serious competition lately.

@smlawsky@mac.com:

You are not experiencing the problem this whole thread is about, nothing here will help you. This a problem limited to 2018 and 2019 15" MacBook Pros which have the NEW T2 chip which no older models had, not even 2017.

Also, the symptom of this problem is not freezing up, this problem with the T2 chip makes the laptop spontaneously go black and then restart. The workaround mentioned here about Catalina will not help you. I have the same model MBP as you, and I have about 25 of them in the fleet I manage, no freezing issues. Do an in-place macOS reinstall if you haven't.

Everything else you write about Apple getting sloppy is correct, no argument there, but it's not germane to to this topic.

Cheers--

This situation happened to me also.

Go through @edgonz305 's repair experience, similarly, my company's hardware support also said which belongs to "third party" issue.

But based on so many reporters encountered the same issue under different scenarios, I DO believe that there has much possibility to system issue.

In another post, you can see the detail analysis and report. Hope apple technical support can take high focus on it.

The issue also confused me a long time, even crashed within 1 min and 19 seconds video which not allow to happen, especially in apple product.

I've spent a million bucks in machinery and 35 years of programming and promotional to build of a medical app during the last 35 years. Becoming increasingly upset with Apple repeatedly breaking the operating system and apps going forward, and corrupting all developer's work just to sell more business models and aspects of their gadgets. Recent put our app on Android as a result of stuff like I just experienced with 10.14.6. An evangelist NO more.

One of the new UI things I noticed Apple doing with 10.14.6 is using it to pop-up dialogs in my face telling me that places I have looked at in Safari will take their Apple Pay and new Credit Card. Totally obnoxious and egregious violation of my computing on Mac in my opinion!

Look, I get that you are upset your Mac is crashing, but if you are a dev, you should also be familiar with Crash logs in Console to get to the bottom of why your Mac is behaving poorly or you can do what was suggested to you earlier which was to restore the OS (Though, as an Apple Certified Mac Tech, I'd suggest digging into the crash logs thoroughly). I'm not defending Apple’s poor QA as of late, but this thread is CLEARLY NOT related to your issue (since you have a mid 2015 MacBook Pro) so please do not hijack it just to complain about Apple’s negligence. I’ve already repeatedly stated that I’ve been told by trusted sources within Apple Enterprise support that a supplemental update is in the works and they are well aware of the issue that is SPECIFICALLY affecting T2 chip 15” MacBook Pro laptops (2018/2019). The kernel panic is a handshake issue between the CPU handler within the macOS system and the BridgeOS (which is the firmware OS embedded in the T2 chip). I can’t go into more than that but the reason that the Catalina update is fixing the issue is because it is upgrading the BridgeOS firmware version from 220.270.99.0.0 (iBridge: 16.16.6571.0.0,0) to 1037.0.73.0.0 (iBridge: 17.16.10553.5.3,0) which has some updated bits in it that fix the issue. Apple is just working out the best way to deploy that BridgeOS update to 10.14.6 users independently.

As mentioned before, you don't have to actually upgrade to Catalina to get the BridgeOS update but rather, install Catalina onto a bootable USB drive and run it in option boot on a T2 chip enabled Mac and the BridgeOS will automatically install the firmware update to run Catalina. Then reboot back to your primary startup disk which is still running Mojave.