Macbook pro 16 2019 freezes randomly and restarts

I had 43 crash-free days but now it is crashing each night between 9 and 10. No software or OS updates were installed, just the same 10.15.4 with the supplement installed last month. Happens when, mousing over a webpage in Safari. Different panic message than before. Fortunately, that's all I use this $3000+ paperweight for as I have gone to the dark side and bought a HP workstation and new monitors for actual work. Fool me once was the 15" with the defective screen and twice-replaced keyboard, fool me twice was this 16" sorry excuse for a laptop. I should have just asked for a refund in November when the first one I received (after pre-ordering) wouldn't even load the OS. MacBook used to be a premium product, now it's for suckers, and Apple Care? ...an expensive, bad joke.

Crashes happend to me even if I work 100% time with Adobe Indesign which use only dedicated graphics,

gfxcardstatus doesnt help

My MBP16 is now in the service for 2 times (logic board replcmnt), but no hope for results

apple service assistent told me that final (notBeta) 10.15.5 should come in June and solves exactly this issue,

...but no real hope, this could happend to win Vista, not the macbook,..

[Edited by Moderator]

@JoKrone, I completely feel your pain and empathize with being a 1985 Mac pioneering owner myself....I probably have bought over 100 machines for home and work from Apple and never have I experienced such horrible issues with so little being acknowledged by Apple either here or in a formal recall. People going through 3 logic boards and countless hours on tech support is not why we purchase such expensive machines - it is just not what we have paid for - and Apple needs to do the right thing by either offering us refunds and/or extensions to warranties AFTER they solve it. 10.15.5 beta 5 has been a disaster for me - and I may not get through this note before a freeze/crash/woosh of air/reboot cycle starts yet again. I run a biomedical research group of 25 people I just do not have time to spend right now on days after days of reinstalling system software, reloading and relogging into every 3rd party app, restoring settings for mail at my institution, and so on, and so on... again we do not pay $3-4K+ for a laptop labeled "Pro" to be treated like amateurs - especially when we are longtime customers like us.

After reading many of the posts in this thread, it does seem to be pointing to software issues. If hardware was to blame, you'd think everyone would be experiencing the same types of issues, along with the same types of fixes/workarounds. Instead, many are reporting all sorts of combinations that have different results.

I also have a case open with Apple for the "PowerPlay Failed Resume" panic... I was told this is software related and to hold off until after the next update (which would be 10.15.5). Keeping my fingers crossed, for sure.

Funny it gives me the exact opposite impression.

I'm sure it's exacerbated by software issues as well, but random, intermittent issues seems like a hallmark of hardware issues to me (or / to be generous, something low level like a driver or kernel level bug)

WAG but IMO this is probably several distinct issues both hardware and software, and one at least in my case is that thermally there just isn't enough heat dissipation capacity in the enclosure for the CPU and GPU because I very regularly find myself with a stupidly hot MacBook Pro with loud fans even when there is apparently only a single core at 100% (whether that's due to a Safari bug that randomly pegs one CPU core even without any windows open, or running Altium in Parallels, or pushing the GPU or USB-C bus with 1-2 external LG monitors, or‥)

ryanfromjst wrote:

After reading many of the posts in this thread, it does seem to be pointing to software issues.

I agree that most of these issues appear to be software issues, e.g. mine don't happen when running Windows.

My concern is: do all 16 MBPs suffer from these reboots? If not, then it seems like there is a hardware issue with a subset of the machines. It's not clear whether the supposed fix in 10.15.5 will introduce software that hides underperforming/faulty hardware, or whether there's an edge case that we happen to be hitting that other 16" MBP owners aren't hitting. I think it's damaged hardware because my issues (reboot loop) persist after a clean install (format) of 10.15.4 and SMC reset. If it were a software issue I imagine a lot more brand new 16" MBPs would start crashing.

IMO it would be good to benchmark TB3 performance on all 4 ports on 10.15.4 vs 10.15.5 (power input, power output, SSD read/write, network IO); unfortunately I don't have the tooling to do anything besides power. If Apple is indeed applying a band-aid on machines with faulty hardware then I imagine performance would drop.

mine boots fine in safe mode no issues log file says power play failed to initialise .

mid it runs in safe mode must be software !

Sorry but that doesn't follow at all.

You'd expect / see the same if there was some hardware isn't getting exercised in safe mode, or if there is a thermal issue that only crops up when power output goes up to a certain level (and even if yours did happen to just have a software issue, that wouldn't imply that there aren't some significant fraction of machines that also have a hardware issue)

Yes, I'm betting on low-level kernel driver issue... I know what you mean, though, about the randomness of it all. It'll be interesting to see how things progress...

Funny you mention heat dissipation... I just switched to a mid-2018 (I think, it's a 15" Touch Bar) for work and have noticed it's running hotter than my older one, and my personal 16". The one I use for work is doing the same thing as the model it replaced, but it definitely runs warmer.

Unfortunately you have it backwards. If it’s software, then everyone will have the problem. If it’s hardware, then only a subset will have it.

People who have gotten faulty hardware who have gotten full replacements no longer have the problem. I am one of these people. I have have no panics (Powerplay failed xxx) and I have the same software as you.

This highly points towards hardware. Apple knows this is a serious problem and if it was software only, a fix would have been issued in March. Apple is actually attempting a work around in software for those that have the anomaly.

Will they have a work around? I don’t know. I hope that for those of you who have this issue that a software work around is indeed possible. But it’s still a work around (if it’s fixable that way at all).

Your best course of action is to get it replaced. If you have AppleCare, you certainly bought the right to have it fixed and not wait for a work around. Your warranty should do that as well. Read your AppleCare contract for details as I believe you have rights with this.

good luck.

I am not angry and so on. But, if it doesn't get fixed in the next MacOS update, everyone should simply make a thread with his issue. Maybe they will pay attention to that. I tried to reach out to the bloggers about this issue, to make people acknowledged, but he told that's an interesting issue and he has never heard of it. When I sent him this thread he simply ignored.

So, let's make threads on the forum and whatever, return it or require a replacement instantly. I think there should be Apple workers on these forums. Someone should do something.

Sorry, jackhans... Missed this one.

Yes, for my last "PowerPlay Failed Resume" panic, the error code is the same:

Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity             PID    TTL
2020-05-20 04:26:13.309515-0400 0xd6       Default     0x0                  0      0    kernel: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: -20

m0unt41nman wrote:

[...]

People who have gotten faulty hardware who have gotten full replacements no longer have the problem. I am one of these people. I have have no panics (Powerplay failed xxx) and I have the same software as you.

[...]

Your best course of action is to get it replaced. [...]

Agree with everything this bit in particular is very helpful.

Any idea if it's possible to request a replacement rather than repair? It rubs me the wrong way to get a "repair" on a brand new machine, e.g. 3 days of use in my case. I.e. if the device that was sold to me was sold in a "needs repair" state, I feel like I should get a brand new device since I didn't agree to buy a "needs repair" device.

Has anyone had any luck with getting a replacement without wasting time with logic board "repairs"?

Your best course of action is to get it replaced. If you have AppleCare, you certainly bought the right to have it fixed and not wait for a work around. Your warranty should do that as well. Read your AppleCare contract for details as I believe you have rights with this.

Agreed though what kills me here is that this is my primary computer and as much as reboots suck, not having any computer at all for a week and even then only getting to have the logic board(s) replaced after I go through a long battle with Apple support sucks.

That's why I lived with my previous MacBook Pro's keyboard whiich would double up all of my iis for somethiing liike a year before fiinally gettiing iit «fiixed» (with a replacement that still had issues).

Not having to deal with that was no small part of my impetus for spending a lot and getting this loaded 16" MacBook Pro, and now facing something worse and it doesn't help that I have no confidence that it'll help even if I go through the fight with Support and all of the QA mechanacians to get the replacement approved and take a week off and have the logic board replaced

I'm so beyond frustrated and disappointed with Apple at this point.

Me. Read this thread in its entirety and the mentioned thread at MacRumors for what needs to be done. The TOS for the Apple forums for me explaining how to do this is apparently not allowed unfortunately.

I'm with you. The 15' keyboard was a nightmare (as was the screen on one of my replacements) but at least it didn't panic randomly. I should have retained it and continued to use it with my external magic keyboard. What concerns me about sending it back is that a number of folks here have done that, only to receive another defective unit, so it's a crapshoot that may get a good result or may lead to a time-consuming software rebuild only to fail again. Pitiful.