MacBook Pro keeps freezing after Big Sur Update

I found something that might be the caused...

So happen i have two unit of Macpro 13", one unit is from manufactured in 2019 with touch bar on keyboard and another was manufactured 2020. Both were installed with Big Sur OS and the 2019 unit has never freeze with whatever applications running. On the other hand the 2020 unit keep freezing if i do open Safari or Chorme Browser. Well, what i want to mentioned here is, the 2019 CPU processor was made of Apple M1 chip whre 2020 was Intel CPU. I do not know if this is the main caused but that is my finding....

Please provide your view...

Eugene

Hi Eugene, I am confused - your M1 chipped MacbookPro is the 2019 macbook? The M1 chip is only in much later Macbooks from November 2020. Which of your 2 MBPs is the one that freezes?

I am not sure if this helps diagnose where the freezing fault comes from. There are 2 distinct problems - stalls during OS Big Sur install issues - which afflict both intel and M1 chipped computers, AND separately, freezing of computers after successfully being upgraded to Big Sur and that had previously worked well with earlier OS. I think we should concentrate on the second issue - not install issues. I don't think the freezing during operation is a problem for M1 chipped computers.

Confirmed. The "freezing of computers after successfully being upgraded to Big Sur and that had previously worked well with earlier OS" is my issue and why I am here. Still a problem. Everything will trigger it. Safari, Mail, Terminal, Slack, Firefox, just running Apple things (note, terminal, mail, safari), nothing matters. It just wants to hang. Before Big Sur, no issues like this. @apple if a fresh install is required stop dancing around the topic and say so. Or, pretend to care enough to provide some guidance to find the root cause.

My M1 chipped Mac Mini freezes. It's a bit better with the latest upgrade but not back to where we were before Big Sur.

My Macbook (not M1) also freezes on a daily basis and that's only used now for an hour checking the mail in the morning. The other thing to note is the Macbook consumes battery power like it's going out of fashion, typically 25-30% battery of total power in 30min session.

I haven't a clue how to fix it but have a similar problem. My iMac freezes every time I attempt to drag and drop files. Its driving me mad, taking 10x as long to sort image files. Is the answer a PC after 25 years with mac

I'm seeing poor performance on everything Apple right now. AppleTV, iPhone, Macbook, and iMac - all of them experience delays doing basic things like scrolling and switching apps, etc. This is maddening because it causes delays with anything I do. Sometimes I'm just in Terminal and the computer hangs. I told my team today I need to switch to PC because it's really causing my production to suffer.

This seems to go on and on. More and more people are getting upset but I've yet to see a word of acknowledgment from Apple. There is a new Big Sur update in the pipeline but no mention of the issues as far as I see. iMad !!

I was able to resolve this issue by following the process to reset NVRAM and PRAM.

Instructions can be found here https://macresearch.org/mac-os-big-sur-freezing-fix/#:~:text=Big%20Sur%20Freezing%20Solution&text=A%20possible%20fix%20is%20to,might%20be%20causing%20system%20issues.

I don't know why Apple is not working hard to ensure their users are informed and don't burn hours of work and personal time banging their heads on something that should be a non issue. Can you please take better care of your users?

Please come back and upvote if you found this helpful.

Hi Spinalman, thanks so much for posting this. The steps I took before actually did not resolve the issue, and my MBP would work fine for a 5-10 minutes, and then lag heavily and crashed at one point. The usb-c dock I'm using powers my Mac. Resetting the SMC as you noted above, which has bearing on the power module, actually did resolve the issue.

What tipped me off on the dock is testing each peripheral and then realizing it was the dock itself, but only when running power through it.

Works with no issues now.

Hi Imirosav Your description sounds like an isolated power issue and not the BigSur issue with multiple symptoms. Plus most of us are not on USB-C power. I don't think it can be attributed this BigSur performas differently to previous OS.

Overheating is a key symptom for me. Just sitting here with my laptop running a second Apple screen (as I have for 9 years without fans running) and my mac is up to 60deg. A few non-intensive apps running (and Chrome). I remove the second monitor, wind the fan to Max and the temp has gone back to 43% in 3 minutes.

Same problem...computer is useless with Big Sur...late 2015 iMac with 32GB RAM. It is truly unbelievable how incompetent Apple is. It is no better than Microsoft and never has been. Hands down, I will never purchase another Apple product in my entire life.

I have the same problem with my 2017 MacBook Pro touch bar model; updated to Big Sur and started experiencing the frozen screen and mouse issue. Erasing and reinstalling the OS did not work (I tried at least 5 times), waste of time. Got "Genius Bar" appointment, the representative initially said its trackpad issue and used some diagnostic tool. Everything green, no issues found. They agreed to reinstall Big Sur and check one more time, it didn't help. The representative said its a kernel panic, need to replace the logic board.

As a last option, I asked them to install High Sierra on my machine and it worked without any issues.

It is very disappointing that Apple was not able to provide any solution for this problem and "Genius" team tried to replace the logic board for the software problem. They were not confident on their suggestions, first said trackpad issue and later switched to Logic board issue. I didn't see any genuine interest in them to fix this issue. Unbelievable and unexpected from Apple.

Genius Bar team suggested to replace the logic board to use Big Sur. However I tested with Catalina and it works absolutely fine. The frozen screen issue is only with Big Sur.

The genius bar team responded saying the Big Sur might be using a hardware component not used by any other OS earlier and that could be broken in my Mac :) but their diagnostic tool reports green on every test.

I would stay on Catalina until a new OS is released from Apple, not going to Big Sur .

What I do find strange in the console log above is the references to iOS14.4 and iPhone8,1 This is my Macbook and and I don't have an iPhone 8 (I have ios14.4 on a iPhone 6s). Why is this appearing in my Mac crash logs?

"build" : "iPhone OS 14.4 (18D52)",

"product" : "iPhone8,1",

I have a mid-2013 MacBook Air which I have updated to Big Sur (now 11.4) and which has been exhibiting many of the problems that have been described here. However, I have made an observation that no-one here has mentioned so far and I would be interested in whether it might apply to others. The freezing of the screen appears to be related to a decrease in available RAM. It seems that freezing is due to apps waiting for memory to become available in which to complete their tasks. When I have used the Activity Monitor to see which apps are taking up the most memory I have noticed that as Apple News runs it takes up more and more memory. At times it has consumed more than 2GB of the 4GB available on my machine. This did not happen under Catalina. I use Apple News frequently throughout the day. If I close down Apple News completely the freezing seems to stop. Unfortunately when the freezing occurs I am unable to launch the Activity Monitor and check the amount of memory used then by Apple News. My observations of the amount of memory being consumed by Apple News have been made before the freezing has begun to occur.

To me this problem seems to be due to a memory management problem. I looked for some way to report the problem to Apple but couldn't find any. I then spoke to staff at the local Apple Store but they didn't seem to understand what I was describing and took the view that I made some mistake in configuring Big Sur. I would be interested in hearing how many other users of Big Sur are using Apple News and whether they are also finding that it keeps consuming memory.