Q: Mid-2013 Macbook Air screen goes black?

It IS a global phenomenon - and it seems to last a while.

I bought mine in Switzerland mid july.

I believed it was the newest version, but i was sold a mid 2012 model with 10.8.4 OS.

Realised also to late that there was an issue.

At FNAC they tested it, issue reproduced itself. Now I have to wait 4 to 5 weeks if I'll get a new one, or if they change something in the power / battery or other parts.

For me it had nothing to do with chrome or any other programs as it happened anytime

I'm curious here about the number of folk looking for returns.

I seem to get this blackout perhaps once or twice a day.  Some days not at all, some perhaps 3 or 4 times.

Yes, it is very annoying.....but it is not what I would call a "show stopper".   I went back to my olde work Win7 laptop the other day: Boy, it was slow !    *That* was the reason I moved to my Air.  

I'm not a fanboi, and I find some things very irritating (why can't I easily create a text file in the Finder as I could in Windows Explorer?  why do I have to move things to trash instead of highlight & click delete? !!), but overall, my experience is that my workday feeling has improved: & many of those 'irritations' are things for me to learn to do differently.

Having a large SSD means I can have a Win7 image for those tricky things (let's face it, Microsoft Office works better on Windows than the Mac!), but overall this irritant is not stopping me want to use it.

I guess really I should head into the Genius Bar for a chat about it to see if they think they know anything about it.....it almost sounds like the mythical 10.8.5 release may hold out some hope....

& don't let me stop others from expressing their right to return it, if that is what you want!   Just my perspective!

cheers!

I'm not experiencing any problems with mine now. I am therefore no longer looking to replace. My issue definitely appeared to be caused by Chrome, which is a shame as I am very pro Google. I will wait for the next release of Chrome, install it and see if my problems returns. I have been blackout free for over a month now and I use my MBA on a daily basis.

Those that have chrome installed and can live without it i recommend removing it if only for a period of time that you can prove your machine is stable without it. Those that don't have it installed I cant offer any help, those that are experiencing black outs from moving there machine around I would seek an replacement immediately, you have a obvious hardware issue.

Just wanted to add that I, too, am experiencing this problem. Macbook Air, 11", 1.7GHz i7, 8GB RAM, OS X 10.8.4. Purchased and shipped directly from Apple on August 8th. For me, the problem doesn't happen often – once every couple of days, and generally seems to occur when I'm running on battery power. (It seems to occur most frequently immediately after I've unplugged the MagSafe adapter.) The first couple of times it happened, I assumed I'd done something to activate sleep mode: hot corners, accidental shortcut key, etc. I was outside of the 14-day return window when I began wondering whether it might be an issue – but until today, it wasn't a big deal. After a few seconds and a couple of keystrokes, the screen would brighten up and the machine come back to life. (I don't have things configured to require a sign-in after screen-saver/sleep – so I'd jump right back in without being forced to log in.) Today, though, the keyboard taps did nothing. I spent at least five minutes messing with it – opening and closing the display, plugging in the power adapter, tapping keys, connecting an external monitor – and it was just not coming back. After waiting another five minutes and nearly performing a hard reboot, things finally returned to normal. I've not yet used the machine for big presentations, but what a pain it would be to have this problem hit in the middle of a presentation!

I almost always have Chrome running and rarely shut down the machine completely (generally only reboot to perform sofware upgrades). My first MacBook Air was nearly flawless, apart from subpar battery life and fact that I dislike not being able to easily upgrade the RAM or SSD capacity. I had exactly one instance of the machine becoming entirely unresponsive, requiring a hard reboot. I upgraded to the latest model to double my memory and hard drive capacity and take advantage of the much-improved battery life. On my 11-inch machine – running a lot of stuff (I just paused to count – and I have 33 tabs open in Chrome and 11 in Safari; running a couple dozen applications, including Windows 7 atop Parallels) – and I can go about 5 hours of consistent usage without connecting to a power source. Very pleased with that. But I'm not happy about this screen blackout issue. At the wrong time, it is a showstopper.

For now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't get worse and will be fixed by a future software update. I thought about swapping out the machine, but it appears that many have had similar problems with replacement boxes. (Plus, my hunch is the issue is software-related.) I do wonder if the issue isn't one many users ignore. I'm a power user but didn't bother to research the problem because it had been a minor annoyance (until today). Regardless, we pay a premium for Apple products to avoid the standard issues, to get fully compatible hardware and software. I'm not a fanboy (note that I am running Windows 7 on Parallels) but have been quite happy with my Apple notebooks over the years. I travel a lot, and the Air made my life so much easier. The "travel footprint" (weight, size, etc.) of the 11-inch model isn't that much larger than a full-size iPad. It's a great little machine, for me the right combination of power and portability. But Apple does need to make an effort to get to the bottom of this problem.

Did you have this issue, when windows was running?

Yes, Windows/Parallels was running today. But I'm almost positive I've seen the screen blackout occur before without either running.

The point is if it hapends in windows it is probably hardware issue, if  only in MscOS them maybe software. But windows should be run in bootcamp, but not in Virtual machine.

Right. No. No Bootcamp for me. I only ever run Windows and various Linux configurations in Parallels.

http://www.ehow.com/info_12183681_blank-screen-macbook.html

Those are more your standard-fare blank screens. This is another sort of issue, I think. Not a "GUI crash" and not a power issue. Highly doubt it's "bad screens." While it is related to sleep mode, it seems to be some sort of timing issue, a software problem where the sleep mode is triggered when it shouldn't be. I've adjusted some of my energy saver settings as some have suggested and will keep an eye on things. It is curious that the frequency of the behavior seems to vary for everyone. Also tricky because it doesn't appear to be consistently reproducible for most.

So I called apple support about this problem a few days ago.

They ran me through three steps

1) Delete this file com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

2) Shutdown the MBA

3) Start it by pressing CMD+ALT+LEFTSHIFT + POwer (apparently this wipes memory)

4) Shut it down again

5) Press CMD + Left ALT  + P + R then power button, device should not start (after second sound let go)

Aparently this resets some other parts of the memory

6) Restart normal

7) They asked me to make sure "prevent computer from sleeping when display is off" was unticked in energy saver options (which it already was)

Until this afternoon I had no more black screens...

In middle of presentation today the screen when black again

It then happened twice more today

Main apps running  where Skype and Chrome, Terminal and Finder and textedit

The only difference I could think off was that I was running on battery

So this problem only seems to happen when I am running on internal battery power never on mains power.

Will call them again tomorrow and then see what happens next.

I have build: 12E3200
No, I am not running Windows in any form whatsoever (someone in this thread keeps asking about this)

10.8.5 has been released. I returned my MBA because I was tired of waiting for this issue to be resolved but also looking forward to rMBP.

You guys/gals should upgrade and see if the latest software fixes it.

Tyrone,

And to think I gave away my MBP for this MBA....

I just received my USB3.0=> GigEthernet adapter and lo and behold problems on right side USB port with it shutting down every 5 minutes.
All is well on the left side USB port. Whats up with Apple's Quality Assurance?

Maybe I should follow your lead and switch to rMBP

Am installing 10.8.5 now, will post result to this thread tomorrow (I'm in London UK timezone)

I just upgraded, reset system.

Opened Chrome, clicked on Apple icon, click on Sleep - condition occurs where screen is dark, mouse is present, and I must wait to be able to log in again.  Though.. I think it does not hang for as long before update.

Closed Chrome, clicked on Apple icon, click on Sleep - goes to sleep immediately as expected.

Anyhow, appears 10.8.5 does NOT fix the Chrome / sleep issue for me.  I'm crossing my fingers that the issue where my MBA goes to sleep intermittently after login has been fixed, but that one harder to test.

I don't know what it is about Apple's QA in the past few years but it hasn't been great. I highly doubt that Apple will make a big deal about annoucing refreshed rMBP's. Most likely they will be refreshed along with the release of the Mac Pro considering they're targeted for the "pro" industry.

If 10.8.5 doesn't fix it, I would recommend returning the MBA and wait for the Haswell rMBP with Mavericks.