2012 Macbook Air 13" SMS or not?

Question

2012 Macbook Air 13" SMS or not?

I bought my daughter a 2012 13" Macbook Air. Last night we were watching a movie on it. I went to pick it up and move it, and the screen went black, but came back after about 60 seconds. I asked her if that happens often and she said it does seem to be very sensitive to movement. Thereafter each time I moved it it seemed to get worse, to the point that it actually had to be rebooted to bring it back from the black screen state.

I thought it must be the SMS (sudden motion sensor), so I opened terminal and did pmset -a -g. There is no setting for sms listed there, I checked repeatedly. Then I did pmset -a sms 0, and did not get an error back. So I don't know if there is an SMS in this computer or not. The motion problem does seem to have gone away, so either it was the sms setting, or some other issue. Can anyone confirm if there is an sms in these machines?

The hard drive is a 500 GB SSD and it has 8 GB RAM, all latest OS and system updates.

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Dec 26, 2012 6:43 AM

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Answer 1

JasonFear

Level 5

4,965 points

Dec 26, 2012 7:37 PM in response to James Weisbin2

No, SSD machines do not have SMS.

Above image taken from - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1935

For what it's worth, I took a 2012 13" MacBook Air fired up a movie and proceed to give it a pretty good shake. The machine never stopped playing the video or audio and never skipped a beat.

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Answer 2

JasonFear

Level 5

4,965 points

Dec 27, 2012 12:57 AM in response to James Weisbin2

Random addition which serves no direct relevancy to the original question outside of searching/archive purposes. Apple lists "SMS" on the following MacBook Airs -

AppleCare identifier

1.) MacBook Air - MacBook Air 1,1

2.) MacBook Air (Late 2008) - MacBook Air 2,1

3.) MacBook Air (Mid 2009) - MacBook Air 2,1

I suspect that these MacBook Airs had this feature due to the fact that they came with non-SSD with the option to upgrade to an SSD. The SSD was not considered standard until the Late 2010 models, at which point SMS is no longer listed as a technical feature.

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