Q: New Retina Macbook pro 13 Haswell system hang/unresponsive

 

 

It's clear you didn't notice my previous post.

With my own eyes I watched a brand new and just-delivered Mac Book Pro Retina 15'' to freeze. Crash. Shutdown. Block. It was my colleague's one, just arrived this week, while my own 13'' arrived in the late weekend. We both experienced the same freezes, at least twice (twice for me and twice for his one, as far as I know).

Moreover, my brother in London reported me a similar "crash" on a new 15'' provided by his firm, too.

When you say "freeze. crash. shutdown. block." can you explain in a more detail each of those 4 stages especailly the freeze, crash and block parts, as the 'block' especially has no relevancy whatsoever to this issue with the late 13" rMBP 2013.

ifeltsweet wrote:

 

Experiended second freeze with a macbook air 13' mid-2012, no haswell then, occured using safari in full screen

definitely software heh ?

At this point we can say: defently not a hardware error by itself.
The most likely is that (out in easy words) some chipset might have something like a boundary.

Let's say, for a simple example, the USB chipset needs 5 milliseconds to send an "answer" if "asked" from the operating system, whether it is sleeping or not.

In the past, OS X asked this question to the chipset and waited 10 milliseconds.

Due to variation at the assembly process, some chipsets needed 6 milliseconds to answer. It is not that they are "broken". They are simply a little out of predefined boundaries.
Still all good, since they are inside the boundary of OS X.

Then Mavericks comes along. Due to max out the power savings, Mavericks has been programmed to wait 5 milliseconds, no longer.

What happens now is, that a few older devices start to have the freeze problem. Because their chipset (which should take 5 milliseconds to respond) need 6 milliseconds to respond.
And the 13" rMBP has a chipset on the board which always takes 7 milliseconds. By design? We do not know and probably never will.

All this as a very simplyfied example, so non-technical people get an idea what I am talking about.

So we are very very unlikely talking about broken hardware here. I see no way, it is "broken". Way too many devices are affected for that. Most likely, something is just a little out of boundaries. You can look at it from two perspectives: the boundary of the operating system Mavericks is too tight. Or the boundary of the hardware is too loose. Both perspectives are right in a way. Since older devices areaffected, too, it seems Apple tryed a little too hard to max out the power savings. I assume, on the build 13A2093 of Mavericks for the 13" rMBP they maxed it out even more, because they really, really wanted those 9 hours of battery life for this device.

Of course, now Apple is in a dilemma. They said "Our ner Mavericks is fantastic, it gives you extra battery life". Now they might have found out, that it simply doesn't work on too many devices to accept it. Now what? Fix it in Mavericks, but then go out and say "sorry, now Mavericks does not anymore give you that much extra battery life"? Wouldn't sound good.
I think, the software engineers are now working very hard. Not on fixing the bug. I assume this was a matter of only a few hours. But now they have to search elsewhere for an option to save some extra % of battery life.

Return the hardware because of all of this? I wouldn't. Nothing seems to be broken (and if, Apple would exchange it even after months, not just after 14 days).

These are my personal thoughts and ideas about this topic. Please note that they are not based on any official information from Apple. In the end, you have to decide yourself, whether you want to wait, or whether you want to return your device.

Mine now returned, I've taken a refund rather than a replacement.  I'll keep an eye on the forums and once the issue has been fixed by Apple, either software or hardware then I'll consider buying another one, if I haven't been tempted by something else in the meantime

IPad3_screwdagain wrote:

Also I believe the 15" model is upgradable for memory in the future, which means it's a different logic board aka mother board.  To be honest I don't have the time to read all the tear down articles, but I do know the 13" rMBP have everything tab mounted to the board and/or soldered.  No upgrades by the users or anyone in the future.  Which really takes all the fun out of it.  I stuffed a 256GB Samsung Pro SSD in my 2007 MBP a couple of years ago, and that bad boy screams about 20-30% better now, runs cooler, and the battery lasts much longer.

Read the text under the title 'Memory' on this image, you can't upgrade the memory, you like to guess a lot when making statements huh?!?

You've just discredited all you have previously said, you clearly don't know too much about rMBP's sunshine.

Mate, 13 inch is all affected, there are not many 15 or air affect, air is also very popular and sold more but there is nearly none complaint about this issue compare to massive 13 inch complain.

Plus one said native widows 7 boot camp also affected.

Plus not many iMac user complains.

So basically this is mainly the 13 inches issue, this is the fact, 13 inches has a design fault in its hardware, you may see a battery life reduce after the update because they use software to cover it up, the internal error message will keep happening under neat and consume battery.

Chris I agree with you on the principle.  I too have been a product manager and design engineer at Cisco HQ and Sun HQ(before they lost their way to greed), a dozen or so years ago.  As you well know, there are other forces involved when it comes to ship sh*t, or slip ship, especially these days, decades.  If folks want to get an immediate sense of gratification, they should go ahead and return them.  It is apparent to me that this is not a h/w issue, directly, it will turn out to be a Mavericks kernel device driver and USB chipset(s) f/w interop issue as I mentioned in previous posts on this thread, and will result in an update to one or both.  Just an educated guess based on the use case analysis I've done on my new 13" rMBP and the info contained on this thread.  I'm the guy that posted the USB wake up messages on this thread several days ago BTW.  Kicking Apple in the crotch with a bunch of returns will most certainly send a message; but frankly Apple still retains a very high sense of quality vs. quantity, which explains their low market share; it's not Joe Six-packs laptop.  Believe me when I say the follks in Cupertino, and I know some of them (and no they won't talk, they are sworn to silence on this kind of stuff) but believe me they are on this like white on rice.   Pushing a bunch of returns won't burden or further the outcome one way or the other.  It's just punishment, which in the end accomplishes nothing with the higher intellects working on this already.  It will just punish the bean counters and the stock holders, temporarily.  And if you think for one minute I'm defending Apple at all, just look at my handle(alias) dude! 

exactly same thing here on a brand new 13' retina macbook. keyboard and trackpad hangs. but power button does work, have to restart (sometimes losing some work) to be able to continue.

Happens on average twice a day. Very irritating. This is my 5th macbook pro, never experienced an issue like this with previous macbooks.

Apart from this irritating bug, i'm deeply in love with my new macbook: she's very slim, has a stunningly beautiful retina screen, and her battery lasts forever...

What he/she (don't want to assume any gender here, that would mean real trouble!) said is very likely.  It's going to be an interop issue, to put it short and sweet, between the kernel drivers and the f/w.  Good job Oli...!

I think you are right about it being a software issue, it certainly feels like one and I've posted similar many many pages ago when this discussion was early.

I debated the return/not to return and held out for my 14 day period but ultimately on the principle of it all I decided on a return.

Regarding what people do with this I think is quite significant and could have reaching consequences for this product and future products.

Imagine a scenario, everyone accepts it and doesn't bother to return the product.  Statistics are then used by the bean counters as you mentioned and someone states the rMBP 13" was the most successful product launch.  Zero returns.  Nothing will change as a result.  It will be assumed this was awesome, no problems or bugs whatsoever, and therefore next year the same level of test/quality assurance/processes will be applied

If people act and voice their concerns, beyond this forum which Apple don't monitor, then someone somewhere will get a report on their desk that says rMBP returns up 30% on last year or something to that affect.  If the product manager is good he will want to know why as that affects his P&L.

I gradually moved from Windows to Mac back in 2005.  I was getting tired of having silly issues like this constantly on Windows and wanted something that "just worked" so I could enjoy using a computer once I'd got home after a tough day of programming.  I sincerely hope that Apple will not lose sight of how they differentiated themselves by ensuring quality above features and timescale.  I worry this might be the start of a slippery slope

Oh please, I didn't look at the specs on the 15". Excuse me!!  It doesn't discredit my other statements!  That would only occur if you are unable to not generalize.  And, as I said some of this is educated guesses, you and I don't work for Apple, RIGHT?!

I can't explain why there are not as many reports on this thread of 15" or other iMac user issues, probably fewer sales; and/or not everyone can be bothered posting to these threads.  I haven't looked to see if there is a similar thread for those platforms, have you?  As for the Winders user, it's the same f/w; which points to the f/w, and possibly the interop timing between the Mavericks kernel and f/w for this particular USB chipset version, as Oli... was pointing out.  Do we know the versioning of the other platform's USB chipsets and f/w, and drivers, no we don't, do we know which chipsets are being used in the Air(s) and their versions, no we don't.  The 13" is the latest hotness, so they are selling like hot cakes, mainly due to pricing, and actually they step on the Airs in price point with certain configurations, like the 13" rMBP 8GB, 256GB.  I started out wanting to get an Air, due to small form factor and price, in the end it was only $150 more to get the one I mentioned above, with retina, and more ports, and so on; so I bought that one, not the Air.  I would assume other smart buyers are also coming to that conclusion.  AND it only weighs ~.5 Lbs more than the Air.  Net-net it's a better deal.

Yes. It froze - completely blocked. Like my one. No button or trackpad or window or bar was working - everything frozen. He had to restart his 15''.

Toodles people, I grow bored with some of the uneducated belly buttons (you know opinons are like belly buttons, everybodys got one), and need to sleep.....  Night..night!!  We'll all find out what it was when the fix comes out!  K!

lol I don't understand why so many people is just trying to fool themselve..

its clearly some hardware problem in 13 inch MBP.

There is not many or nearly NONE iMac, MBP Air, 15inch MBP user is complaining here... and they are selling a lot too!! they all use haswell, same OS X, only 13 inch get massive complain.

don't fool yourself, there is no hope here, the 13 inch rMBP has a faulty chipset/part that cause this and can not be completely fixed, but it can be reduce/hide using software, they can turn the keyboard/trackpack/USB hub always on instead of sleeping to hide the problem but the battery going to last shorter, just that simple.  RMEMBER with 13 inch, people have 3 replacement in row and all have the same issue!! but how many other macbook/imac user complain about the same issue? nearly none. There one guy reported he said 'crash' in his 15 MBP, but this issue is not about crash, he is either making things up or he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Return your product, wait for 2 months and buy a new one.

IPad3_screwdagain wrote:

 

Oh please, I didn't look at the specs on the 15". Excuse me!!  It doesn't discredit my other statements!  That would only occur if you are unable to not generalize.  And, as I said some of this is educated guesses, you and I don't work for Apple, RIGHT?!

If you didn't bother to look at the 15" specs, as you just said, then don't make any such statement regarding the 15" specs haha.... jeez, for future reference that's known as discrediting yourself with an uneducated guess.