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Mid-2013 Macbook Air screen goes black?

I just got my shiny new mid-2013 MBA (haswell 13" i5 256GB SSD 8GB RAM) and it's been rockstar (no WIFI problems). However, last night, when I was browing the web, the screen went black all of a sudden and wouldn't come back on. I had to press the power button (heard the fan shut off), and then press power again to make the system wake back up from sleep. Any ideas what caused this, and should I be concerned in the future?

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Jun 20, 2013 2:41 PM

Reply
929 replies

Aug 16, 2013 1:49 PM in response to whitemoonlight

My 14 day is coming up in a few days, too, but I don't want to have to get a replacement, restore all my applications and data, only to find it has the same issue.


Instead of uninstalling Chrome altogether, I have opted to set the screen saver to be activated in 2 minutes instead of sleeping in 2 minutes, and when I have to step away from the laptop for a short while, I just activate screen saver via hot corner, so my laptop would be locked. When I come back and log in, the blackout doesn't happen since it never went to sleep. I set it to sleep after 10 minutes, so that I know my computer would be sleeping and saving energy if my short break turns into a long break.


Hope this helps.

Aug 18, 2013 9:59 AM in response to jportnoy

You can repeat the issue by doing follwoing.


  1. Unplug the power cable.
  2. shutdown your macbook
  3. start it.
  4. when you see the login screen leave it for 30 seconds and it will trun off(that's normal)
  5. now press any key and it will wakeup and show you the login screen
  6. now login with your password and just leave it for 30 seconds(don't do anything else)
  7. it will go back to sleep mode and that's NOT NORMAL.


This is NOT caused by Chrome and It's only happening on Mac OS 10.8.4 and I have tested Mavericks and It doesn't show this issue on that,


Apple is working on 10.8.5 update and hopefully that will fix the problem. I'm 99% sure it's a software related issue.

Aug 19, 2013 8:57 AM in response to jportnoy

Ok, I have a Macbook 13inch, 8gb ram and 512gb HD.
Experiencing the same issues, and lately (after the latest update?) the problem is getting worse.

At this point it happens min 8 times a day, and I get this weird scrambled screen when i try to go out of sleep (all stripes). Then the login screen appears.


Not sure when this 10.8.5 update is available for all of us. But I definitely would feel more at ease when I would see this issue is fixed...




How do I get access to the update? Via this forum? Or do we need to do something else?


tx

Jun 16, 2015 8:22 PM in response to jportnoy

I have figured out a workaround.


If you go into preferences and change the time for the display to sleep to actually be shorter than the default, which is 2 minutes and change that to 1 minute, then the issue won't occur anymore.

Aug 20, 2013 7:56 AM in response to Community User

I was experiencing the same issues, but after chatting with a guy from apple support it seems to resolved.

I was suggested to restore the energy saver defaults, and then to reset the SMC by doing these steps:

  1. Shut down the computer.
  2. Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected.
  3. On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
  4. Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
  5. Press the power button to turn on the computer.
    Note
    : The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.


Hope that would help.

Mid-2013 Macbook Air screen goes black?

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