Hey guys. I too, have been having this problem.
-THE ISSUE-
-The issue has been intermittent since purchase, and completely spontaneous which led me to hold off on even notifying them of the issue. (Hoping a quick update would address this issue by now, which none have)
-Can happen once in a week or even a month. Very infrequent.
-Not attributed to any sort of activity on the computer (nothing tied to load, can happen when nothings running and idle on desktop etc.)
-I found out that it can be reproducible, almost every time, it will crash when initiating shut down or restart!!!!
I’m sure none of us shut down our M1’s..
This was found when I was shutting down/restarting to install some special apps after reinstalling.
Initiate shutdown and spastically move your cursor, you will soon see the cursor freeze as the computer is getting ready to shut down. This is the point where it will take a few seconds then crash. (save all your work before obviously because it won’t load previous state due to crashing)
-APPLE STORE-
So ultimately I have been troubleshooting this for a while. After full reinstalls twice, verifying and troubleshooting disks, clearing NVRAM and SMC, and updating to latest OS X, I deduced this to be a hardware issue. I finally called Apple who made me do it all again while on call with them. Ultimately they deduced the same.
They told me to bring it back for an exchange. I asked for a plain refund. On the phone they said sure and stated they would refund me no questions asked....when I got to the store they would not refund me as I’m 3-4 months into ownership, despite the phone rep saying I would have no issues.
After requesting a manager and having a long discussion over the history of the issue and how sporadic it is, still they would not allow me to do anything other than an exchange.
They said the history of the issue doesn’t matter if it wasn’t documented. It would’ve been best for me to at least call in for them to document the issue within the first time of it happening, for me that was within weeks of ownership. This I can admit was my mistake as I only brought this up last week. To have logged history of the issue over time wouldn’t have brought me such hassle.
(Of course this is contingent on if this happens to you early enough in the first place, and you catch it, since it’s so spontaneous)
Funny enough I was told to buy a new replacement laptop on Apple’s website at the store on their own kiosk because they had none in stock at the store. This online purchase would act as the exchange before they would refund me the one I’m returning.....I told them how can I do that if my Apple Card is maxed out. The manager came back and quickly took over from the regular sales person and refunded me completely for my broken M1, and said have a good day.
I walked out right after that and didn’t purchase the replacement in front of them. I think the regular sales guy was going to come back and make me buy the replacement? Idk. Not sure if they let it go finally, and said screw it we’ll just refund him, or because it was so busy, they forgot that I hadn’t purchased the replacement yet. I’m not sure whether they will order me on their own merit the replacement that I specified (a base M1 Air). Receiving only a refund receipt at that moment leads me to believe they did not/can not just charge me and order the replacement.
I think I’m in the clear.
Anyway, I got my refund and will probably buy the next rendition of the M1. The laptop felt way too much of a beta for my uses.
