MBA 13 Mid 2013 crash Black screen

just wanted to add that I am having the exact same problem and hope that Apple will finally solve the issue...

What we should all do at this point is not to rely on only yoganinja (who has done a fantastic job so far) but we should ALL call our Apple Centres and make sure that they know what's going on.

... just to make sure Apple get's it this time....

Funny thing, I was just going to suggest the same thing. Everybody who can reproduce this issue consistently should make an appointment at the Apple Store and show them exactly how to reproduce it. For an extra kick, give them my case number, 524999600, as a reference so we can get a few hundred of these cases to cross reference. If they are agreeable, show them on one of their demo machines to help them understand it is happening on all mid-2013 MBA's.

I can rerproduce this too. mba 2013 with osx mavericks. anytime I hit the trackpad too early during the sleep process it just hangs at the black screen and I have to hold the power button to power it off.

This is completely absurd that apple has not yet released an update to fix such an easy to reproduce bug. Come on apple, FFS...

I've returned two 2013 13" Airs now, one replacement, then one refund... this is how I reproduced the issue in-store, at least PC World took it back no problem, so you should not have any either:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3K8yf32RGI

I noticed also that after the update, the backlight no longer fades on closing the lid, but instead shuts off abruptly. Baffling. I really liked the machine, and miss it dearly, but will not buy another until I am sure it works.

Glad to know this (probably) isn't a hardware issue. 2 month old MBA. I can reproduce with the exact same procedure you described. Thank you!

I discovered how to reproduce the bug with 100% reliability and then after googling for a fix I realised that yoganinja had come across the exact same method of generating the black screen of death.

I noticed first that it only ever happened when the backlight was on (I'd never had it happen when the backlight was completely off). This was apparent because one of the symptoms of the bug is that the screen went totally black but the backlight was still conspicuously on.

Then I realised that it happens just after the screen went black and you try to wake it up (by hitting input). Today, after another failure I figured that the final cause is that you try to wake up the screen in the split second interval between the screen fading to black but before the backlight itself fades out.. that's exactly how I locked up the screen.. then I could do it to order.. time and time again.

I'm relieved to see that it's not just me and that yoganinja has found the same failure mode.

So just generate a keyboard/trackpad interrupt between screen blackout and backlight switching off and you can reproduce the bug on the mid-2013 air model.

Apple called me back today; the engineers had some questions for clarification. I've told them several times that I've reproduced the behavior in most scenarios. Fresh boot with no apps running. Well-used with lots of apps running. Right after re-install of OS. Mountain Lion or Mavericks.

I still think it would be fun to have everybody make an appointment at their local Apple store, reference my case number (524999600), and demonstrate the behavior in front of them.

I took my essentially brand new MBA to an Apple Store in Calgary. I demonstrated the problem (hit a couple of keys right after the screen goes black). The tech proceeded to boot the machine off the network with a "known good OS", and the problem persisted. They kept it to run diagnostics overnight, then told me the next day that because the laptop passes the diagnostics, there is no problem. I had to chuckle at the Kafkaesque nature of their position ... it doesn't matter that I can demonstrate it - there is no problem because it passes the diagnostics.

As I tried to explain the absurdity of their position, I was told that if I want to do something else, then the next step would be to erase the HD, and do a full reinstall. I asked how erasing of the HD could possibly provide any further information, given that the tech had already booted the machine off their network with a known good OS ... and didn't really get a reply.

The point is that if I, and apparently other people can reliably reproduce the problem, then the techs at the Apple store should be able to locate it in their database of known issues, and not put customers through unnecessary hassle of leaving and picking up the machine, not to mention wiping the HD clean.

The famous "out of the box" Apple experience failed to materialize for me (my first black screen happened about 10 minutes after unboxing). The staff at the Apple store didn't help much either. I do have multiple other Apple devices - iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, etc., but this is the first laptop. I'm having second thoughts about the MacBook Pro I have on order at work ...

I'm picking up the laptop tonight. Maybe the face-to-face conversation will be better than the one I had over the phone.

Check "console" (w/out the "). I understand it logs this problem. It's "sleep wake" and I have a lot of computer stuff that is illegible to me. I saved it to my Google Drive.

No more "when the problem happens bring it in". (What do I do when Apple is closed?)

After 3 visits to Apple I've had it. Back to the store for an exchange. I paid for the extended warranty, So I'll see what happens

yoganinja,

Thanks for the time you put into this. I just decided to look into this issue myself. I've had the same thing happen on a few occasions. Since I bought an extended warranty, I was on the verge of returning this. Knowing that this is just a simple software issue, which will likely be resolved, restores my faith in my decision to recently switch to Mac.

Kudos to you!

Hi,
I bought a MAB 2 weeks ago and, in fact, I'm experiencing similar problems.
What is different with my MAB, is that, at several occasions, I was not able to wake up the MAB again. I had to do a full restart with the power button.
Besides that, when I close my MAB at the end of the day (by just closing folding the screen down or by switching off completely), it won't start again the next morning. The only thing that happens is the keyboard lighting up and the screen lighting up just a little bit. Once again, the only way to solve is, is to do a hard shut down, and restart the MAB (and in certain cases I had to try this several times before it would restart...

Any others experiencing the same problem?

> reference my case number (524999600)

Feel free also to reference my repair number (R107528152), where they just wasted about $400 in warranty repairs to replace the logic board without fixing anything. They also wasted several hours of my time. Believe it or not, after they completed the repair they kept it at their store for another 24 hours of "testing" before returning it to me. It's failed on me twice already today.

The failure happened to me a few times under Mountain Lion. After upgrade to Mavericks it happened a few more times and that's when I decided there was a problem that needed support attention.

Parts and Services

So do i , I bought my mba 2013 at 2013/11/18 and I got the same problem in one week that happened three times about this situation. MBA 13"3 I7 8G 256SSD，I just tried to use check disk permission and verify my disk,and I googled this problem,I think this is a bug not a hardware problem. So I don't want to change my MBA back to fix it cause I thing if apple change the new hardware of my MBA this problem will happen again.....

So my method is waiting apple to publish bug fix.....

Hi Yoganinja, the same hang-while-sleeping issue happened to me quite a few times but this morning I lost some edits to a source code file I was working on. Is there a bug # on https://bugreport.apple.com for this issue that you are aware of ? I'm not finding any reference to your Case number on there.

Fergal

This issue is 100% repeatable, and as far as I know affects all mid-2013 MBAs. When I picked up my MBA from the Apple Store, the tech again said that all diagnostics passed, so, again, there is nothing wrong with my MBA. I proceeded to crash my MBA again in front of him. Then I proceeded to crash his MBA.

In front of the tech, I summarized the simple steps that crash the MBAs in an e-mail, and he agreed that he would pursue the issue with Apple, and keep me informed of the progress. That was about a week ago, and I have not heard back since. I'll follow up later this week.

Apple appears to be in denial on this issue. It may be that they just don't want to admit that the issue exists, as that can impact sales. It just doesn't look good ... "Here is your new MBA, and, by the way, disable sleep if you don't want it to crash."

For a company that claims market superiority based on above-average system stability, failing to even acknowledge that the issue exists is rather disappointing. Bugs, crashes, etc. have to be expected on any computing device ... that's life, and I don't really fault Apple for that. Frequently, the issue is hard to reproduce, and then it is really hard for the company to address it - but they still have to try. In this case, it is completely reproducable, so there is completely no excuse to acknowledge it, and lay out a plan for fixing it. I've debugged many intermittent problems myself, and you really count your blessings when you, or someone else, finds a way to reliably reproduce an issue ... at that point you can assign the fix to a clever intern, and a few days later the problem is behind you. If a company is not interested in addressing reproducable issues, then it is hard to have faith in that company's ability to put effort into the hard-to-reproduce issues - and there are plenty of those.

So, Apple, acknowledge the issue, propose a plan for fixing it, and let all of us move on with our lives.