Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I have a new mid-2012 MB Air that works perfectly, but for no reason will just go black. In the middle of working on that machine, it goes to sleep with a black screen. It can be awakened normally, and things work for a while. I thought that it would be something with the power management, on battery or not, or hot corners. I changed all of those things, but the problem persists. Any ideas out there?
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Mid-2012
I have a MacBook Air mid-2012 (MacBookAir5,2), and I am suffering from the same problem.
It happens both when the Mac is connected to the power adapter and when it is not.
I have all the newest updates released by Apple.
Do you still have this issue? Did you ever find a permanent fix? Mine did it for the first time last night and then again just a few minutes ago. Quite annoying if it continues...
Having the same problem here with my Mid-2012 MacBook Air. All the latest update installed.
Very intermittant. Seems to happen when it's been in sleep. I open up, login, start working, then after a few seconds screen goes blank and keyboard backlight goes off. After a couple of seconds I can press the power on and it appears to return from sleep again.
My latest update ...
I finally found the time to get into the Apple store for one of their geniuses to look at it. Anticipating this visit, I did the latest updates to the OS, and the issue persisted. Because this problem is intermittent, the best that the geniuses could do is run hardware diagnostics, which turned up no known problems, and reinstall the OS. I plan to pick up the MBA and reload via a Time Machine backup. Time will tell if this problem was fixed by an OS reinstall. If after a few weeks the problem seems to be resolved, I will close out this item as fixed.
Well, it didn't take long for the MBA to go to sleep while actively working on it. The geniuses reinstalled OS 10.8 (an upgrade from our 10.7) to see if there was some S/W issue. Apparently not. Next step is to go back again. More later.
Your poor machine is narcoleptic! Maybe it deserves a decal or name indicating its affliction.
"Sleepy"
Perfect! Here's a jpeg for your machine.
I have the same issue. I have been the Genius Bar for four times already, they first reinstall the OS, but the same prob still happens. then they changed the upper case, keyboard, display and the logicboard. Unfortunately, the old issue still exists. Finally, they replaced my MBA with a new one, but after a day, i got the same problem again. It's driving me crazy.
I think JohnfromIpswich had it right - I also have been experiencing this problem a couple of times over the last week or so, and think it is being caused when I put my MacBook Air on top of my laptop bag, which does contain small hidden magnets to hold the flap closed ofmy messenger bag.
Thanks John - excellent pick-up.
Might be the case (no pun intended) for a few of you, but my machine has never seen a bag or a stray magnet that wreaks havoc. It is back to the geniuses for me.
Update from the 2nd Genius Bar visit ...
We had an event right there while typing, but not while the genius was watching. He did look at the console log, and no sleep events were logged. We started to think that this behavior was possible the display blanking, rather than sleep (difficult to distinguish on a MBA).
Anyway, we decided to take a different approach to rule out hardware or not. The OS was reloaded, and we started to use only Apple-provided software (no Time Machine restoration, as done each previous attempt). After about 10 days, there were no interruptions. That should rule out the hardware suspicion (good enough for me, anyway).
Now I am reloading applications one at a time to see what effects there are if any. So far, things are going well with no display or sleep behaviors. Will continue and provide further status updates.
Where I am headed is to understand whether some strange compatibility thing is being imported with my Time Machine restorations. I now suspect that some quirky thing is being reinstalled and causing this behavior. Time will tell. For the others who contributed to this thread, do you all have older stuff being reinstalled via Time Machine? Our data goes back to an iMac running OS 10.6. The mid-2012 MBA and MBP have some significant hardware architecture updates.
Well, after about three weeks of no sudden sleep issues, I will assume that this problem is now resolved. The corrective action was to do a fresh OS load then take the time to do a fresh installations of all applications onto that computer. I used my Time Machine backup for pulling in only the data files to restore the computer to its former glory. I suppose that this experience is another example of why I used to recommend that people do a fresh load on new computers, but lately, the reloading from Time Machine has worked pretty well for me ... pretty well until this machine threw in a few quirks.
Now for the root cause analysis. Working backwards from a successful corrective action, I can deduce that there is some underlying difference in some earlier versions of software that had artifacts carried over by using the Time Machine installation. These incompatibilities caused the screen blanking, and without them, this machine is working as expected.
Lesson learned? Time Machine does a very good job of having a ready archive of previous file versions available for reloading onto the main drive. While doing a fresh load on the same computer or a computer with the same architecture, it probably works well. When reinstalling onto a new computer with significant architectural changes, it is probably best to take the time to reload all of your applications manually. Interestingly, I upgraded two machines at the same time into the mid-2012 series of MacBooks. One was this MBA and one was a MBP. On the MBP, I decided to do a fresh load, rather than a Time Machine installation, simply because it was now the third computer that I would have done the Time Machine thing with, and that just didn't feel right. I probably dodged a bullet on that one without realizing it.
Interesting. My wife has been experiencing this exact same issue, but it was with her iMac 27" machine, which is one of the most recent ones that are thinner on the edges. Her original machine before that was an older iMac 27" but I have moved her install over from many Mac's in the past with no issues, so I don't know how old the original install is. Probably goes way back, 3+ years or maybe even more.
Anyway, I thought maybe she had a hardware issue as I had never seen this problem on my many Mac Pro machines, nor on my MacBook Pro, both of which have been updated with fresh OS installs but transferring all the old apps and data using Time Machine backups (or just cloning the hard disk with the Migration Asssistant). So she decided she wanted to be mobile here at work, so I got her the new MacBook Air and a TB monitor, and cloned her drive over to it using the Migration Assistant to the OS that came in the box. Alas, the problem persisted!!
Then to top it all off, I upgraded my MacBook Air to the latest version also and migrated mine over, and suddenly it started doing it also. So I am convinced it is clearly some software that is installed on the machines that gets copied over by the Migration Assistant, and messes things up. The question is exactly WHAT is being copied over that causes the problems? I would much rather figure out he culprit and nuke/reinsall just that, that to have to set her machine up from scratch.
The machine she was using before has now been given to our new designer, and she is using it with a fresh install and all the apps were loaded fresh. So far she has not complained about any problems with it?
So yeah, I think I agree with Tom, it is something getting copied over by the Migration Assistant code. The real question is can we figure out what it is?
I know her computer has Office 2011 installed, iWork '09, Firefox, Adobe Flash and probably not much else. I don't think my Air has much more than Office 2011, iWork '09 and Firefox on it. I wonder if it something to do with the Office install, as I do recall she mentioned a few times it would do it when she was editing Word documents??
Ok, so i have a brand new Mac Book Air 1.3GHz Intel Core i5 that came out about a month ago.
I have put ZERO programs on the computer. The Air is purely for travel as i have a computer at home, so it's basically just for gmail and browsing.
And this is happening to me as well. So it can't be to do with programs being on the computer. It's really frustrating. Reading through everyone's issues and possible fixes, genius bar appointments etc, it seems there's no consistent reason for this happening to our Airs.
It would be nice if Apple actually responded to this, or could at least tell us why/what reason this is happening.
I am also running the most up to date version of mountain.
ugh... saga continues.
Sudden sleep for mid-2012 Macbook Air
