MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch Late 2013, 10.9, unsystematic freeze/hang/unresponsiveness

No, on the second MBP I installed everything to avoid migrating the problem to the new MBP. Trust me as I said, no hardware, reinstalling, etc.. doesn't help (until proven otherwise). The only thing wich seems to totally prevent the problem is doing all the work in a VM (particularly browsing).

It's weird. I had the problems described in this thread- freezing while the sound continues to an eventual kernel panic. At the same time I had another problem - really long and slow startup times.

I did two thing. Removed all non apple drivers, I had various Kexts from all sorts of third party software and hardware migrated from my old profile. I also deleted the contents of a folder which was causing the slow start up (can't remember exactly which one right now and I'm out I the road)... But I haven't experienced a freeze for a couple months now and I'm a heavy user of my mbpr oct 2013 haswell.

> They don't even respond to bug reports.

Whilst I feel your pain, that's not strictly true. They've responded to me a few times albeit with nothing more than requests for more information or a terse "we are working on it". I think I mention this in my earlier comments.

I think it's silly to do no browsing in OS X. I have been browsing in my 13 in mbpr and have not had any issues since those I reported some earlier in this thread. It is true I was browsing when it froze, but maybe it is smarter to think there is some plugin causing the problem to show up and freeze the computer, and not to browse on a VM.

I get your anger, I really do, but my point is there must either be some unit to unit variation in hardware that is at fault or some combination of use characteristics that must be hit.

Rather than attack me, take a step back and try to identify common factors that may be contributing as once Apple can reproduce it, either on your unit or in-house, they can address it. For example, if it only happens while running Chrome but not when running Safari, that's an important data point; so is your observation that when you use Windows in a VM you have no problems.

Unfortunately, scattered reports aren't at all debuggable, which is why Apple asked some for more data.

Everyone with the issue should be sure to log tickets with Apple about the issue so they can at least narrow it down to certain configurations, serial numbers, etc.

beauchampy, do you still have the kernel panic output from that crash? That would be useful to post if you do, as panics are much easier to debug than hangs are.

Are they automatically logged anywhere? If so I can look back...

Look in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports.

If there is 'some plugin' causing it, how does it help if you can't identify the plugin. What's more, I had the issue while browsing with either FF, Chrome or Safari! So, the only quick and indeed 'dirty' solution is to avoid doing any browsing in OS X. If some one could point out a specific app, plugin or whatever, fine. But nobody thus far seems to have found it.

Ofcourse it is a specific hardware-software combination, otherwise you would have experienced the same problem. I did file bug reports to Apple including config, installed apps etc. But is it up to the users to spend enormous amounts of time, coming up with common factors, trying to find the point of failure? Let alone that most users in this thread seem to be experienced users, what about users who just want to browse, email but haven't got a clue how to approach these problems?

I would expect Apple to be much more proactive and responsive instead of a bug file report form and a thank you email letting me know that the report has been filed. A complete freeze with the only option to restart and leaving no trace whatsoever in the logs is not a minor glitch!

Apple does not notify users who file bug reports of fixes.

Apple takes the bug reports and if they have common factors will use those to investigate.

They can't fix things without bug reports and/or without being able to reproduce it in-house.

Well, it wasn't Chrome hardware acceleration. So that rules that out.

If you look at some of the first entries in thread then the problem also exists on completely freshly installed machines (no migration of profile), including performing additonal reinstallation of the base OS.

It might be certain apps that cause it, but so far in my experience it's any app: Twitter, Spotify, Safari, Chrome, Parallels, etc.

My freezes were much more frequent when another monitor was connected via HDMI, however i still got them whilst working inside of apps (mainly adobe after effetcs/premiere)

Crash logs (when generated) Always pointed to the GPU, However this obviously isnt a common factor as users are reporting it on non-GPU rMPB.

Obviously apple want to get the issue resolved, why wouldn't they? Just suprising it's taking them so long to get a fix or even pinpoint the issue on such a catastrophic failure of their flagship mobile equipment.

Yeah, me too Jeppe. I was being hopeful... :/ In 10.9 and 10.9.1 it'd freeze even if I didn't touch it. On 10.9.2 the freezes have been much more sporadic so I hoped it was related to Chrome as that's known to cause other issues.

Will investigate 10.9.3 in due course but since they didn't mention this issue in the release notes I'm not optimisitic.