MacBook Pro 16 2019 10.15.4 Kernel Panic / Reboot When Plugged In -- Help!

Everyone,

I share your frustrations, believe me. I also agree that communication could be vastly improved. Though, in the grand order of priorities in how and why these things happen in the first place I believe they have some far more critical work to do in the code/version management area of their software development lifecycle.

Over the past 3-4 years I’ve seen an increasing number of bugs get fixed in one release only to resurface in a subsequent release. And this happens across the spectrum of production and non-production software.

Even these Kernel panics had been affecting various machines (Made after 2015) since Catalina’s launch. It was then finally addressed in 10.15.3 and then broken again in 10.15.4. I can tell you this happens when you have multiple developers working on isolated components of the same software program (in this case MacOS). If a developer checks out code and makes modifications they are to resubmit the modified code and in that process to a check against the current source master and do what is called a code merge.

That process can be manual though it’s often heavily automated as it’s more accurate and less time consuming to do so.

My belief (and I cannot cite any references to confirm this) is that the process Or tools they are using for this are fundamentally flawed or outright broken. As they accelerate their software development I see more and more of these kinds of issues come and go. And frankly some of them should never ever have seen the light of day for a public release.

Case in point this KP affecting power management functions.

I rarely ever contact execs or engineers at companies I do business with outside of the usual course of business and even among my colleagues / friends I spare them the grief of diving into matters related to their employers / companies. This however was an issue that was widespread enough that I did cross over that boundary as I genuinely was uncertain if they were aware of the issue.

Over the course of that communication and few subsequent exchanges there was a good faith effort to collect information and then I was more confident they had the matter in the proper hands.

I can’t comment on unreleased software and I cannot make anyone any promises but I do want to throw in one bit of reassurance that the problem is being addressed and “I” anticipate it will be made available to the general masses sooner rather than later.

if I had to take a guess I’d say definitely before WWDC. Sorry I cannot be more specific. And please also keep in mind that some of the reported kernel panics in many threads on this particular topic can be caused by other things. And lastly enough kernel panics can result in data corruption which might require a full wipe and setup from scratch.

it’s a pain but it is computing. best of luck to everyone! (I’ll be monitoring the thread for updates.)

Appreciate all you have done to try and get to the bottom of this. I am not particularly technical - especially from a hardware POV - so when I got my new Mac (having spent a small fortune in uncertain times) you can imagine how alarming it was seeing a brand new machine repeatedly crash. I agree that it seems the perception and lived experience of Apple customers has become more like it was for many of us in the bad old MS windows PC days years ago when you more or less expected your machine to randomly fall over and struggled to make it work with peripherals. Certainly it means jumping out of the Apple ecosystem becomes less unthinkable when Apple's reputation for leading in high quality usable products and reliability is tarnished by fumbles like this.

Spoke to a friend last night. He has a standard config 2.3 MBP without any KP issues. As I have a customized one I was wondering that might be of influence. Anywone with KP issues here have a standard config?

Thanks and yes it is indeed so dismaying. I do believe Apple has lost its way in many respects. I still prefer MacOS and iOS to any alternatives and this continue to make them my primary computing platforms. Though the past two years I’ve been put in an awkward position more than once to seriously consider a jump back to (blasphemy) Windows.

I believe the most frustrating aspect of what is happening is that so much good can be riddled with just enough bad that it ruins the experience entirely.

A beautiful and powerful laptop that crashes when it goes to sleep??? I haven’t had to contend with such issues since dealing with managed corporate Windows Laptops in the early 2ks. And Macs has no such issues.

The tables have sadly turned. But hopefully this is just a speed bump along the road of progress. Honestly, the best we can do is to be vocal. Send feedback. Be loud about what we want and ultimately vote with our wallets by withholding on upgrades if absolutely necessary.

As an example I refused to upgrade to a new MacBook Pro from my last late 2014 fully maxed/custom Pro until they offered at least 32GB of ram. I needed that and held out as long as I could. Thankfully it paid off and now I have machines with 64GB. Haha. Granted they just need to ensure they don’t crash and I’ll be quite pleased.

Just to be clear. Is this a 16” or another build?

Also what version of the OS are they running and are they leaving the laptop plugged in with PowerNap enabled?

the default behavior for MacBooks in Catalina is to have PowerNap disabled while on battery power. So in a number of circumstances a person could go a day or so without seeing an incident depending on how they use their machine.

16" MBP 2,3ghz 16gb ram and the 1 TB HDD.

I asked him to leave his machine plugged in to the power supply overnight then to close his lid, all while "powernap on power supply" was enabled. This morning when he opened the lid he had no issues where I have had issues with my custom built machine and the same situation.

Granted after turning off powernap on mine, both on battery and power supply the issue has been gone. but nevertheless I find it extremely rediculous that you buy an almost €5000 machine that out of box has these issues.

Off topic I also every ones in while notice a sharp shift in screen color. This is related to the auto adjust of the screen intensity. both on the 16" and the 13"

16" MBP 2,3ghz 16gb ram and the 1 TB HDD.

Same specs for mine MBP:

10.15.4 - crashing

10.15.3 - not crashing

I reverted back to 10.15.3. to specially check that it not crashing my MBP, because first thing I did when received MBP - install latest update...

Me too! I got a maxed out spec machine and did the upgrade and have the KP issue when nap enabled. I too also get the sharp shift in screen colour every now and again. Agree to have these niggles having paid so much is super annoying.

MvanTTheThird,

Thanks for providing your friend's system specs. So.... I honestly can't be sure of what is going on. I too have two identical systems (completely maxed out 16"s) and the behavior has been unique on both. One with problems and the other without (until I completely wiped it). Could be corrupted system files during the build process. Might be that the source (master copy) of the MacOS install that certain fabricators are using (specifically on those custom built machines) have those corrupt bits and are thus causing issues for us and not for those with standard builds.

If I had more machines to test with I could run through more scenarios but alas I do not and won't purchase another $7K machine to do what I believe should be Apple engineering's work on this matter.

I am going to stay on this thread and others and continue to gather information. I'm due to follow up on my open cases and will point back to this discussion on those calls. This lack of stability on so many machines with so many varied configurations is way beyond acceptable.

I have the same issue with 2014 MacBook Air 11 since upgrading to 10.15.4. I thought something got messed up during the upgrade so I did a fresh install of the OS. No dice. Same issue. My laptop is usually plugged in and lid closed connected to an Apple Thunderbolt Display. PowerNap is off.

I have the same issue on my 16" MBP. I just disabled power nap so I'm hoping that'll do the trick. I've already had to get my Mac repaired because it would reboot from a GPU panic when it wakes from sleep, and Apple ended up replacing the logic board and almost all of the internals. It seemed to solve the issue, but I'm really hoping my Mac hasn't broken down twice in less than a year. That doesn't bode well for the longevity of the product once the warranty expires.

This is beyond shocking that apple has not resolved this issue on what should be their very best laptop....I am astounded that the update is taking so long to come out and we are suffering day in and day out ,sometimes over 10 times in one day .

I will try to disable the power nap and give feedback in a few days time.I hope a class-action is on the cards for us affected buyers.

This is the next staingate it seems!

What a Shame......

I have this happening to me, too. The beginning part of the message looks like this:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff800be16487): 
"AppleIntelFramebuffer::setPowerState(0xffffff81bb0e1000 : 0xffffff7f8f3a8d88, 1 -> 0) 
timed out after 45917 ms"@/AppleInternal/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/
xnu/xnu-6153.101.6/iokit/Kernel/IOServicePM.cpp:5296

I walk away with computer totally fine, but come back to a computer that's turned off. Pressing a key restarts the computer, then it shows this message "Your computer was restarted because of a problem."

Every. Single. Time.

Has anyone found a solution to this other than keeping the monitor turned on at all time? My MBP also has the fan on really strong whenever I start Premier or After Effect. Just starting. Not even doing anything in the app, and my MBP starts running the fans in full speed.

Here is my MBP hardware: MBP 16-inch, 2019. 2.3 GHz 8-Core i9. 16GB 2667 MHz DDR4. AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4GB. Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB. Boot ROM Version: 1037.100.362.0.0 (iBridge: 17.16.14281.0.0,0)

Catalina 10.15.4

Thanks!

I am definitely experiencing the same issue, after a call with support almost a week ago, the support technician told me that this shouldn’t be happening, and suggested that this may be an issue with the hardware. Given that my MacBook Pro 16” is relatively new, it is still covered under a specific warranty, and I can take it in to get serviced.

However, after reading the error log, I am convinced that this is NOT a hardware issue, as for one, I haven’t experienced any of these issues before the macOS Catalina 10.15.4 Update.

For now, I suggest a band-aid fix of simply disabling the ability for your computer to sleep, seeing that the computer going to sleep is what triggers the issue to begin with.

So far, I’ve had no issues, but I do hope that the engineering teams at Apple catch wind of this and fix this soon.

I ask myself why they do never mention this problem officially and why Apple does not care about customers having this very serious problem? I experience kernel crashes on a regular basis with a new MBP 16'.

I am so disappointed about the software quality of Apple since I never had such a serious issue with a Windows 10-based device. Considering the premium prices that customer do pay for Apple Notebooks I really expected much much more than being left alone with an unusable device.