Macbook pro 16 2019 freezes randomly and restarts

Second macbook pro 2019 16" with same issues. Freezing and restarting all the time. Unusable. I managed to capture the screen flickering issue others have been mentioning:

http://pd.omg.lol/aBE2Mj

It stops flickering when I move the mouse.

This is a joke.

Looks like Apple's "Not A Regression" policy on bugs has resulted in a climax of catalina crashes triggered by the introduction of Sidecar, resulting in an inability to sell a macbook that doesn't restart or batteries don't explode.

Piling bugs have actually created a background overhead and array of reasons for the OS to crash, usually surrounding new features like the T2 chip.

Unfortunately on a system such as the macbook pro 2019 16" and perhaps 13", an OS downgrade isn't possible. Since Sidecar was deemed more important than Stability and a lack of regressive bugs, the reaction is to for people to keep returning these things, even though it is not the hardware, it is catalina.

You can't really blame users for refunding either, they have a 14 day not satisfied return window, or a 30 day defective return window. Due to bugs in catalina, the defects become harder to spot, so users with truly defective units that decide to hold on to their macbook perceiving these crashes all to be catalina bugs, end up holding on to a defective unit.

Hopefully apple's hardware quality in these new macbooks is better than the software...still unable to do much on mine apart from use a tiny set of software, but my 2016 13" macbook pro with catalina is doing a whole heap of things and not crashing. The freeze and restart seems to follow a gpu switch.

I haven't experienced it again with graphics switching turned off. Turning it on again when I need the GPU for more intensive tasks, I run the risk of the macbook freezing and restarting.

I wonder if this is what the upcoming "Pro Mode" in Catalina 10.5.3 will be? Just simplifying the wording and process for macbook users with the tag 'use Pro Mode at your own risk', i.e 'we haven't fixed the problem'. So with 10.5.3 the freezing and restarting is now our fault for using "Pro Mode". Lol.

It's random but I seem to have suffered the freezing when macbook went to sleep under intense load, & plugged in to power.

So perhaps set power options to sleep after a minute, and leave some video rendering.

My experience has been to walk away from a video rendering, come back to a macbook I thought was sleeping, only to be logging in after a restart and everything is closed.

Changing from Space Grey to Silver won't be easy, since users are sent down the route of repairing a brand new product under a month from purchase. Essentially getting a refurb back without the discount. New colour means new machine.

Having displays/devices plugged in and a crash during sleep is a Catalina issue and can be replicated on other machines. That usually results in a "BAD MAGIC!" error.

The issue certain faulty macbook 2019 16" units have been having is a complete freeze & force restart in the middle of using it, with nothing plugged in, usually triggered by an app that switches from intel to amd gpu. I don't have anything plugged in to my macbook 90% of the time, not even anything connected wirelessly.

I have noticed the crash you speak of and can replicate it on other T2 based machines with Catalina, not just this model.

Ahh thank you for this information!!

I have the AMD 5500M 8GB also. On my 3rd but hadn't spoken to Apple for almost a month with the 3rd the same as the first two. Hours on the phone and 1.5 weeks between each replacement was not the experience I have paid for.

My solution was to just pay the excess for 'accidental damage' under my Applecare and swap the late 2019 build for the early 2020 build. That's not really fair though, as it does wipe out 1 of my 2 accidental replacements under Applecare for 3 years.

With this information, I think I will now call them up and hopefully get a late 2019 model as I purchased that doesn't restart. I have endless videos of freezes and crash logs. Until Apple take these actions, it's left a lot of us in a loop getting a bad batch. Hopefully this is the end of this nightmare and I can move all my heavier work to the one machine and sell the other two as originally intended. Costly experience.

Am about to call Apple today to initiate my 3rd return and then be on my 4th macbook pro 2019 16".

Funnily enough, right before I am about to call my macbook has crashed again, this time all I did was open Final Cut Pro X and it froze, I had to hold the power button to escape.

This is one of the more common freezes, when you have to force restart yourself you usually don't get a crash log after, which means there is no way to prove this to Apple Support. Lucky I have heaps of recordings of it:

http://pd.omg.lol/s1ADyD

Well this is it, I've sent back my 3rd macbook pro 2019 16" with AMD 5500M on 10.15.3 and am awaiting my fourth. I requested a different sized nvme drive this time though, I'll have to pay slightly more on top but it ensures I'm getting a brand new machine, not a refurb. So will take a little longer for return.

Anyway as advised by Apple Support, I backed up my machine. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a 1:1 bootable backup that will work on other mac devices (20min, 300gb). At this point I don't trust Apple software. I made a Time Machine backup that took 5 hours for the same 300gb backup! External usb-c SSD.

Testing the Time Machine backup from my 2019 macbook on my 2016 macbook, it doesn't work 😂

Lucky after what I would call client abuse from lack of Quality & Testing I had the foresight to use a different backup software.

Here is an article on the Time Machine 10.15.3 bug, which is quite important information considering a lot of people in this thread are backing up on 10.15.3 and won't know until they get their replacement that the backup was a dud:

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/02/12/time-machine-in-catalina-10-15-3-has-serious-bugs/

At this stage, this is a complete joke and a great example of why companies try to keep product failure rates under 1%...if it goes to 2% or above, suddenly all the people with bad luck (like in this forum) get all the issues.

Got my 4th replacement this Friday 28/02. Opted for a logic board replacement for faster fix and to avoid supply shortage.

Been setting it up all weekend ready for work on Monday, but no! Check this out! This is a joke!

Macbook Pro 2019 16" number 4, screen won't stop flickering:

http://pd.omg.lol/gatahF

Doing a full refund this week instead and going for the new Surface Laptop. Wtf Apple.

Well returning my 4th faulty macbook pro 2019 16" in a row isn't going as well. I have to yet again prove for a forth time that it's faulty by taking it to the authorized apple repair centre that's an hour drive from my place. So 2 hours there and back. 8 hours driving between 4 faulty macbooks, at least 6 hours on the phone using my Apple Care.

I said this time I want a fully replaced unit, since in reality there isn't a single household appliance I have where the company wouldn't outright replace a faulty unit out the box, instead of endlessly repairing the faulty unit and putting their customer through ****.

Of course if I don't get a fully replaced unit I will have to contact the ACCC as this is beyond a joke now. Spending $7000 in 2020 for a company to then tell me I have to prove that they have supplied me with 4 duds in a row and the amount of time and energy it's wasted. Considering $500 of that grand total goes towards the right to be told I'm wrong (apple care+) and should accept this is totally crazy. To further add to that torture, every call is the same. 1st level tech is completely on your side and willing to help, 2nd level tech hits you with legals and processes and you're wrong sir.

Apple supplies a faulty macbook, Apple replaces faulty macbook. That simple. Much like they do with their iOS department. Faulty iPhone? Replacement. Faulty iPad? Replacement. Faulty MacBook? Yeah nah drive interstate to prove it.

No way is it filevault, since I never have mine turned on for extra performance from the nvme (faster edits on a machine that works anyway).

I have yet another new bug on this 4th macbook now, apart from the freezing.

When I open it from being shut, I'm greeted with 'bluetooth keyboard disconnected', the keyboard wouldn't work, trackpad wouldn't work, wifi wouldn't work...only way to escape was a force shutdown. $7000.

29th November purchase, 4th logicboard already. Endless bugs leading to force shutdown to escape. Basically I'm imagining this to be the next decade with this machine.

Internal keyboard disconnected on wake:

http://pd.omg.lol/As31VT

Still waiting for my proper replacement. Received 29/11/19 and just a nightmare since. A shame the experience isn't like with my iPhone X...faulty touch screen out the box, replaced in store the next day. Tested and verified.

A shame that the same testing facilities aren't readily available for macs and macbooks that cost 3-100 times the price of iOS devices, macs even produce the content for the iOS department yet when there's an issue it's my fault and I have to test it for a month before being asked to take it somewhere really far away to test.

I don't even have it anymore so when I get the same reject or a new replacement back I'll give 10.14 "beta" a try.

Hours spent with Apple support who appear to be unknowledgable with their own platform let alone computers as a whole is why this and many other mac related problems are triaging in to a mass event that will spell the end of this company.

Imagine spending $100,000 for this experience:

https://www.techradar.com/au/news/apple-probably-doesnt-know-how-to-fix-your-broken-mac-pro

I'm not at all surprised then to have spent $7000 to have my experience. Denied my faulty computer through ineffective & uneducated guessing that led to blaming the user while I was walking phone support through how to use macOS outside of 'format and bang it with a hammer'.

Computer constantly freezing with 4 board replacements from same batch exhibiting a major fault and now finally a full board/body/battery replacement from 2020 batch (which will take 1 week for return of mine and 3 weeks to get replacement, and fair since battery is extremely damaged from Nov 2019 - Mar 2020 without being able to do a full cycle without freezing)

Buying faults from the factory then being forced to deal with staff that don't know how to use a computer isn't new to me. I have a 2015 27" iMac that has had severe screen ghosting 6 months after purchase, told by phone support to take it in to closest store, where I'm asking what screen ghosting is, showing them what it is, but being denied any recourse of action on the fault. Same for my 2016 macbook pro that was recalled by Apple due to faulty battery supplied from factory, again with same store denying any knowledge and battery then expanding a week later as Apple said it would (around 2 year mark).

Funnily enough Apple owe me $25 for purposefully slowing down my iPhone 6S with an update then speeding it up again with another update, battery health 87% total capacity on this very date. At this rate those trillion dollars are going to be funneled back in to court cases and one has to ask, how stupid is this situation?

Just sell stuff that works, and if it doesn't, rectify the situation immediately as was my experience with a faulty iPhone X out the box (instant replacement next day in store).

So I got my proper replacement (not a repair this time) about 2 weeks ago now. I didn't want to say much just in case this one still freezes & restarts. Everything that was freezing the previous ones isn't freezing this one, I have been using it heavily. Not even any bad magic crashes (or whatever crash log replaced that in 10.15.4).

The macbook arrived with 10.15.3 pre-installed, 10.15.4 was released while it was shipping over to me. The build date is March 2020.

With 10.15.3 pre-installed, it froze and restarted with no 3rd party software. Did initial setup, logged in and it froze while downloading files. I then saw 10.15.4 had been released and updated through system prefences, over the top of 10.15.3. It froze and restarted in sleep, right after system update, nothing installed.

I thought stuff it, I'll try a clean install, nothing was on there anyway. After the clean install it hasn't frozen for 2 weeks, with about 200 apps installed for work and doing a lot of heavy tasks on it. Peripherals plugged in, external monitors. No crash, all good.

For the clean install (and I think this is important), I used Internet Recovery (hold command + R on boot). Before that though, I reset the NVRAM & SMC, then once those were done I entered Internet Recovery. In Internet Recovery, before installing 10.15.4 I went in to Disk Utility and deleted both APFS containers (right click on drive and choose to delete each container) for the main internal drive, then erased the disk after deleting containers. Apple support never tell you to erase the APFS containers. The T2 encrypts the APFS containers and I think this is where the issue stems from. After deleting the containers & erasing, I installed 10.15.4. Since doing that, the macbook hasn't crashed once, no issues whatsoever for a solid 2 weeks with a lot of use every day. I didn't restore any backups whatsoever, I spent a few days downloading apps fresh from the web & copied data in user folders manually over from backup drive.

Who actually knows if it's fixed since apple won't admit a thing in regards to this situation, not even make note of it in update changelogs. Take this advice with a grain of salt, don't hold me responsible for erasing your system and the problem is still there...this is just my experience.

Either way this is what I expected "off the shelf" and I've lost a lot of time and even some clients to this situation. 5 months and I finally seem to have a mbp 2019 16" that works. 10.15.1 -> 10.15.3 appear to be dudds with this machine but 10.15.4 is working for me, after a totally clean install.

I hope this helps, I was going to wait a month before reporting but it pains me to see so many still affected by this. Unsure why it doesn't pain apple engineers the same way. My original mbp 2019 16" and logicboard replacements had November 2019 build dates, this latest one is a March 2020 build date, so this might not work on 'older' builds.