MacBook Air not wake up after sleep

Hey Grant,

I thought I would chime in and share my recent experience in troubleshooting this issue - I believe Mavericks is to blame here as I have not experienced this issue, nor any of the sub-issues in 10.9.4, with Mountain Lion nor with Yosemite.

10.9.4 'seems' to have fixed the issue but you can tell that the OS is struggling to power on/wake the display as I have noticed a 1 to 2 sec screen flickering with the screen waking up to a cool blue color shade followed by (within a sec or so) the default color profile. I have not experienced a single freeze, be it with the screen or keyboard, since updating my OS to 10.9.4 - perhaps you should give that a try.

Wissam

Hi Grant

I took my MBA back a claimed a refund under the UK's Sale of Goods Act as it was, "Unfit for purpose," and have since relied upon my my 17" MacBook Pro and an external battery pack. A much heavier solution.

I had two MBAs, one from 2012, the other from 2013. The 2012 version would crash whilst in a bag travelling back and forth between the train and office on London Underground.

The 2013 version behaved as yours. It was fine to begin with, then began to crash but at least recognised and error had occurred and reported it. This got progressively worse until it would crash without warning and without any human intervention whilst reading a document on the screen.

Apple replaced numerous parts, and the guys at the independent retailer used parts from their own machines after Apple ran out of ideas but nothing fixed it and I was able to demonstrate the crash on every one of the MBAs they had on sale - I also did this in the Apple shop until they intervened and threatened to remove me. I did ask why they would do that as I was only testing them to see if they worked?

It would appear an excellent product has been let down by poor quality components.

Meanwhile, after just 25 months, the hard drive on my MBP has failed. Luckily, I bought it for my business so purchased the extended warranty but it looks as if Apple's poor quality extends across its entire range as the screen and trackpad have already been replaced.

I have a 12 year old Compaq that is unusable as it is so slow. It's been everywhere, done everything and never let me down. I have a variety of other hardware that is equally robust, underlining Apple's quality issues that are totally unacceptable for a high end computer they are already over charging for.

I see you're in Australia. You have excellent consumer protection over there and the government's own experience of poor reliability lead to them forcing Apple to offer a 24 month warranty as standard.

I would advise anyone here to take their MBA back for a refund.

I would also advise people to join the Fac ebook group. Search for MacBook Air screen goes black and help publicly shame Apple into action.

Apple clearly don't give a hoot about their customers as they laugh all the way to the bank.

If large corporations used Apple, they wouldn't get away with it but as they've appealed to private individuals we have no way to bring pressure to bear and these forums are just an opportunity to vent spleen without embarassing Apple in public.

I have also left reviews wherever I can to further shame Apple and would propose all reading this and experiencing problems do the same. So few people bother leaving feedback it wouldn't take many of us to drag their scores right down and lots of people pay attention to that when making a purchase.

The only way Apple will put any effort into resolving this is if they think their sales will be affected.

It is hard for me to guage the overall QA of Apple or problems with their products except my own experience.

I have updated this MBA 11 to the latest OS which is 10.9.3 on May 17th.

I use this machine a lot so problems like this quickly become very annoying and the moreso I am still having problems with power management and hibernation on my second MBA and numerous OS updates over a period of nine months now. I suspect it is a hardware issue that they are trying to fix, not entirely successfully in software. A product recall of the MBA I suspect is what should have happened but it is too hard, too embarrassing and too expensive for Apple. I suppose since no one dies when this happens, a recall can be avoided, unlike brake issues in cars. For an end user though it can make life difficult.

I was on the phone last night to them and they tried to be helpful but I had to give up waiting for them to put me over to the Apple online store here in Australia.

I haven't given up. I really love this machine but the love is starting to wear thin and I will be asking for a refund.

I know exactly what you mean.

When it worked, it was great. Small, light, fast, great battery life etc. but when it let go during a presentation, operated by a remote control, to a board of directors pitching for a major contract and refused to wake up - we had to go to lunch and try again - that was the last straw.

From my experience of degrading performance followed by multiple system replacements and the ensuing clean installation of software failing to recover the original stability, it points to a hardware issue being masked by software updates, probably because they don't know which bit of hardware it is.

What the degradation could also explain is why some MBAs appear to be OK and others not. One of the components somehwere is out of spec, so if you're lucky enough to get one that's within tolerance, you're OK, for now...

You can sign up to Apple's OS X Beta program here for free - https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/mavericks/welcome

This will allow you to download 10.9.4 pre-release build which as stated previously has resolved the sleep/wake/freeze issues.

Message was edited by: @Wiss - Posted the correct link for Mavericks Beta

I think the problem is that it has been fixed previously. The 10.9.4 is another attempt at 'fixing' this issue. I think it is substandard or out of spec hardware componments.

I've waited long enough anyway for it to be fixed.

Sadly I have to agree. This is my first apple product i am not completely happy with. I have a 2007 imac, 3 iphones, an ipad, and a ipad mini but this has been a pain to use. I have learned to turn it off when not in use. I also don't seem to get 9 hours from the battery.

You don't get the battery life as each software update modifies the power control to try to hide the problem they have.

Take it back.

A friend bought a Samsung at the same time I bought my MBP. It's faultless (apart from Windows :-)), whereas my MBA went back for a refund after 6 months and my 25 month old 17" MBP (£2,000 worth) has been back twice already to replace faulty hardware and now the hard drive has failed.

Lesson learnt. Don't buy Apple computers.

I took it into Macworx in Joondalup. I didn't realise it but there have been several firmware updates, for SMC and EFI just this week and guess what? Yes, all to do with battery drain issues 'while lid is closed' and 'improving reliability when waking'. Wow.

It was a real problem which they partially fixed with 10.9.4 then there was still more fixing to be done.

It appears at this stage that my MBA is fixed. It only took 9 months to resolve the issue. Apple have taken a hammering over this from users and quite rightly so too so lets hope this is the end of it.

I might also add that in defines of apple, I got very polite and personal attention from Apple over this. I pretty well got assigned someone to look after my complaint. I was skeptical about taking it in as requested. I think in fact, coincidentally, Apple have only just fixed this problem and it would have fixed itself with the updates anyway if i had waited.

While we all have a go at Apple when things go badly off the rails (and stay that way for most of a year), they deserve to be slated but credit where credit is due too. I can't imagine getting the level of help and support from any other company in the technology sector. I can also just take a product into a a shop down the road to get fixed. I had an Acer that had to be couriered to Sydney and back to get fixed and it took over a week (which is still not bad actually).

I am rethinking my products though. I love my Apple stuff but Microsoft are catching up. I am trying out Windows Phone OS (and liking it). I have a Microsoft Surface 2 (with Windows RT) and love that as well. Not surprisingly some of the stuff I love about Windows Phone and Windows RT are the same things I like about Apple, locked down and secure with no malware or virus issues. Windows itself of course is a major target for Malware and my little MBA has never had an issue aside from this annoying sleep/wake issue and never had any security on it.

The 11 inch MBA is an awesome device. I may fall in love with it yet again now that this very annoying problem is solved (I hope so as so far it has been a bit like the final bathroom scene out of Fatal Attraction where she comes back to life in impossible circumstances)...:)

Well it's just happened again.... running 10.9.3 and have already installed the Air EFI firmware update v2.8, so clearly the problem hasn't been fixed.

Noted!

Mine is fine at the moment. If anything happens I will post. It did appear though that the latest firmware updates did work for me.

Grant

wattgn wrote:

I took it into Macworx in Joondalup. I didn't realise it but there have been several firmware updates, for SMC and EFI just this week and guess what? Yes, all to do with battery drain issues 'while lid is closed' and 'improving reliability when waking'. Wow.

It was a real problem which they partially fixed with 10.9.4 then there was still more fixing to be done.

Are you running Beta software (10.9.4)

Same issue here, last firmware updates done and OS X 10.9.3 : my mid-2013 Macbook Air still can't wake up when it get asleep and is unplugged (lid-closed) for more than a few hours. I have to force a shut down and to start it again. Most of the time, on the first reboot the wifi controller disappears.

No issue when the laptop is plugged on power AC, i think it's an improvement compared to OS X 10.9.2.

Happily the SSD storage makes the system fast to restart but it's still super annoying and makes me fear about for my data integrity.

First real deception about Apple product quality, i hope they won't let us drop.

-Anthony

If you feel that Apple deceived you I can't help, take your Mac to an Apple Store and tell them that you have been deceived by Apple and want some recourse.

Good luck.

My mistake. I wasn't using a beta and I just checked. It is 10.9.3.

I'm not too smug yet about it working as the problem is complex and often returns after using the MBA for a period of time which is what happened to me before with this issue. If you do a system refresh, the problem will disappear, for a time at least.

I'm hoping with the latest fixes this problem will be history. Apple are certainly aware of the issue but have been shamefully slow to act on what has been a long running saga that should have been put to bed months ago.

Grant