MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) freeze with Yosemite

OK, so fixed the problem for my retina Macbook Pro today, without help from Apple. Below is what I did:

Given that the people at the Apple store had marked my laptop with the black mark of being "liquid damaged," I figured that there was no harm in opening it up, since Apple would never agree to fix this problem. After buying one of their assinine pentalobule screw-drivers, I opened the case and saw no signs of liquid damage. This would be surprising except for the fact that I know that I never spilled liquid on it.

However, the whole case WAS full of dust bunnies. The rMBP fan system pulls in dust like nobody's business. The fins on the heat spreaders in front of each fan were effectively wearing little sweaters made out of dust. Not great for cooling.

To fully clean them off, I took off the entire heat spreader assembly and discovered the worst thermal paste application I have ever seen. Someone had gooped on a stupid amount of paste, and yet somehow also had failed to fully cover the chip underneath. So I cleaned that ridiculousness off with electronics cleaner, let it dry and applied a thin coat of Arctic Silver 5 and put everything back together after a solid spraying all over with a compressed air can.

Now I can freely switch back and forth between the discrete and integrated graphics, which previously caused reliable failures. The system is like the day I bought it. Problem solved.

A few things irk me about this whole situation:

- The thermal design of the rMBP is clearly on the edge of what is advisable. Apple should spend a bit more time on ensuring that the thermal paste is properly applied. It only took me 5 MINUTE. Of course, they don't, because it's some poor *sshole in Shenzen who works 20 hour shifts and gets shocked if he doses off that's putting this stuff on. OF COURSE he/she's going to glob on the wrong amount of thermal paste. This is disturbing because I paid $3k for this laptop and Apple decided to hang me out to dry because of their inattention to detail. I get that the company is now organized around building 2-yr-then-throw-away devices, but there needs to be a bit more attention paid to products that cost >> $2k.

- The *sshole in the Apple store probably could have fixed my problem with 10 cents worth of compressed air while he had the case open. The old Apple would've bent over backwards to help a faithful customer. The new Apple tries to deflect responsibility at every possible turn. Even getting a Genius Bar appointment requires navigating a gauntlet of BS menus that don't logically lead to what you want. Everything about Apple these days is about redirecting you and wasting your time. They even have a BS diagnostic app that they run at the bar for you that does an absurdly shallow scan of your system and declares everything OK. This is not okay.

As is, that stupid $0.10 of compressed air just cost apple a decades long customer. I'll take my money to a company that gives a sh*t.

If you have a supposedly "liquid damaged" system and you're even a tiny bit handy, I'd recommend you take matters into your own hands. If they haven't proclaimed your machine "liquid damaged" yet, then go to the Apple store and get them to fix your system. It's a thermal issue with their crap design. And tell them f*ck you for me.

I can confirm that 10.10.2 (beta version) update doesn't fix freezing. It was working for some few days without any issues but today I opened Photoshop and it froze again.

I have now disabled graphic switching again and it works without issues. It is the only solution that works for me.

Hello,

i have the same problem with my macbook.

It freezes and i cant work. I cant do presentations any more and i spend 2000 euros for this macbook.

This is really annoying.

Apple i want my money back or a new macbook!

OSX Yosemite - "Every bit as buggy as it looks" http://postimg.org/image/go8kb2vxb/

Restored my Mid 2012 Retina MBP 8 times tried all combinations and graphics issues persist. Reverted to Mavericks. I am still shocked how they are getting away with such wide spread issues. What annoys me the most is Apple not even acknowledging or letting customers know that they are looking into it.

Viesis: Thanks for the (unfortunate) information.

Leonidasp: Your check is in the mail.

.

I have experienced the exact same problem as many of you here. I have a MacBook Pro Retina 15", bought in August 2012, and it all started after upgrading to Yosemite. There might be a connection, or just a coincidence, to my Antivirus program (Symantec Endpoint Protection) finding a file "com.search.agent.plist" which "contains a strain of OSX.searchprotect".

Anyhow, regardless of the possible connection mentioned, my computer shortly after the update received kernel panics quiet a lot, and where not able to use due to all the shut downs (3-4 times/hour at least). Therefore it was turned in to the App store service. Handed back, "no obvious error" one day later. But the same problem was still there, everytime the Thunderbolt connection was used the computer rebooted and the kernel panic message came up. I turned the computer in again, and after changing the mother/logic board (not sure about the exact term there?) for $1000 it now works again

BUT

still having a problem, today during my virus scan the virus is there again! And this even though everything is erased once - but unfortunately the computer had to be restored from the back up (including the old virus I guess...). Just like last time the virus program is not able to either repair or remove the file, so therefore this brings us to my question, what is to do about the virus? It is probably not the reason for the kernel panics but it creates an instability and that is not wonderful really...

Thank you so much!

Ps. what is also not wonderful is that an OS X update cost $900 in new hardware - way to go Apple! ds.

Like everyone else on this thread, I also have been plagued by this issue. Since our company has an Apple small business account, and I rely on my mid-2012 MBPr 15", I'm going to take mine to the Genius Bar tomorrow.

I have gfxCardStatus 2.3. I have been able to use the integrated graphics over the last 45 days without crashing. I do this by forcing it into "integrated only" mode. gfxCardStatus has some sort of bug. The first time you select integrated only, it will switch back to "dynamic switching" mode. The second time, it will stay in "integrated only." When I do this, I have not experienced any crashes, even when waking from sleep. If it is in automatic graphics switching, the discrete graphics will kick in for a few seconds. I think this is where the wake from sleep freezing is occuring.

I am the company COO at my company and use my MBPr for everything. This includes running our SAP systems from inside a Windows VM in Parallels to working with our marketing in Adobe CC (everything from InDesign to basic Photoshop). If I force it into to the GT 650M OR HD4000, it won't freeze. If it does dynamic switching (websites with a lot of Java will often kick in discrete graphics), it will freeze at some point. When running the Adobe applications, I prefer the 650M (for obvious reasons). That's the reason I have this laptop is for the performance and the discrete graphics capability. My Dev account has expired, so I'm not sure if a 10.10.1.1 beta is in the works, but I sure hope that is a fix.

It will be interesting to see what they say tomorrow, considering how others have been treated. We've had a good working relationship with the small business unit and they have been extremely responsive for us. One of our mid-2012 MBPr's had the LG panel (LP154WT1-SJA1) and developed the dreaded screen retention issues. It would "ghost" from less than 30 seconds of a steady image. The Genius Bar replaced it with a Samsung (LSN154YL01-001) panel. It had the dreaded "yellowish" hue to it. They found it unacceptable and gave us a new unit with the factory installed Samsung that was the correct hue.

On the flip side, there is nothing I'm reading that convinces me that this is a physical hardware issue. None of our laptops started having these issues until Yosemite. Now all of them do. I'm hoping a "1.1" version of Yosemite is released soon to address these issues. Most of us purchase or use laptops like this for the high-end capability for working with graphics, video, and marketing! These flawed releases over the past 2 years have been progressively worse. It is very disappointing from the "leader" company that should be "better." On the flip side, our SAP systems do require windows. I run Windows 8.1 natively in BootCamp on my work iMac 27" (4GB graphics and SSD). The SAP system runs on a Windows 2012 with Microsoft SQL server. Every 2nd Tuesday of the month, I dread when their Office 2013 and server patches are released. Seems they goof up 2-3 things to fix 1 other. Same with Exchange Server . . .

With that in mind, I hate to say it, but the alternative is WAY worse than what Apple is doing. I wish there was a good alternative (yeah, I know, Linux, but in the corporate world, that is not very feasible). I hope that Apple will take a step back and get back to what they used to do best (not just better).

1) Get back to providing the absolute best customer service experience for all Apple owners.

2) Get back to releasing the most stable products and systems that we have come to expect from Apple.

For most of us, dropping $2,000+ on a laptop is in fact a LOT of money. The customer support should be on par with the premium product. My first iPhone was the 4 running iOS 4. I remember I loved it because it worked right the first time, every time. The same was even true when I upgraded from an old PowerBook G4 to my personal MBPr 15" mid-2012. It was on Mountain Lion at the time, and it worked 100% all the time. It seems Steve Jobs was a tyrant at times (ok, most of the time), but maybe that's what it takes. Things seem to be too "loose" right now. These flaws used to be considered unacceptable.

Just my 2 cents . . .

Jeff

Thanks for the update! Didn't see the .2 Beta update before posting my last post. Disappointing that it doesn't seem to be addressing this issue!!!

FWIW: http://www.macissues.com/2014/11/04/transparency-and-graphics-switching-in-yosem ite-affecting-macbook-pros/

I'd be very surprised if this weren't a HW-SW interaction problem (otherwise, the reports of replacing the logic board fixing the problem shouldn't work). In my case, the problem was entirely thermal -- reapplying thermal paste to the CPU and GPU solved the problem. But it's also true that that problem only manifested when I installed Yosemite. My guess is that they changed some low level code in a way that taxes the already precarious thermal budget of their design. Maybe it's a straight up bug that can be fixed, but it might also be an "optimization" that some fraction of their HW can't handle.

I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple has done the math and figured that losing customers over this (if they do) will cost less than actually fixing the problem. This is what happens when you put a bean-counter in charge of the ship.

Also, in your example, you state that you have nothing but trouble with Windows, but then catalog pain with enterprise applocations. Might another inference be that enterprise sw is generally terrible?

I am no friend to MS, but Windows 10 looks like it might not be completely terrible. I'll probably retreat to Linux for most everything, but for Adobe apps and presentation software, it's not obvious that MS would be that much worse than Yosemite.

I can confirm that this is definitely not a hardware problem. I have a Early-2013 MBP Retina 15. Begin having this issue immediately after upgrading to Yosemite. Like everyone else, the freezing/rebooting stops when dynamic graphic switching is disabled.

I bought a brand new Retina 15 MBP about a month ago. I have constantly tested turning dynamic switching on and off every few days. It freezes/reboots on almost every graphic card switch -- just like the older MBP. It works fine with it disabled or by using gfxcardsstatus and set to internal only.

This is an issue with Yosemite. Works flawlessly before the OS upgrade. And the new MBP proves that it's not hardware.

Apple -- Fix this soon!

I'll grant you that SW is a huge part of it and that it is a widespread problem (possibly also that you are very unlucky), but I have a very hard time believing that 100% of MBPs w/ Yosemite have this problem. There was severe defect affecting a smallish fraction of 2011 MBPs, and that generated 10x as many posts as this. This one is widespread, but not on that scale. It's not like Apple doesn't test their SW at all.

This either means that there is an element of stochasticity coming from HW (likely, with well-documented precedents) or that it's something about your SW config that's causing the problem. It's certainly possible that there is more than one cause for this problem, but in my case, there was definitely a HW element (which eliminated the Yosemite-induced problem once the HW was fixed). Same goes for everyone who paid to get their internals replaced.

vadeskoc wrote:

This either means that there is an element of stochasticity coming from HW (likely, with well-documented precedents) or that it's something about your SW config that's causing the problem. It's certainly possible that there is more than one cause for this problem, but in my case, there was definitely a HW element (which eliminated the Yosemite-induced problem once the HW was fixed). Same goes for everyone who paid to get their internals replaced.

Bold emphasis mine.

I paid for a new MLB, and it did not solve the issue. Nor did buying a 2014 rMBP. The odds of my 2012 replacement logic board, 2012 original logic board, and 2014 logic board having the same issue is astronomically low.

It's unfair to say that everyone who paid for a logic board had the issue resolved.

Like "derthax" I have the MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013), and since upgrading(?) to Yosemite I've had graphics problems and it crashes because of the GPU. I click the report every time I have to restart and it asked if it can report back to Apple.

There is no doubt - Apple must know of this problem. And it's a serious problem.

It would crash once a day. Then I took off Adobe Flash, and also discovered Ad Blocker Plus extension for Safari and installed it too. Between these I get much longer out of the machine, couple of weeks at least. Although I have noticed the memory requirements for Safari keep increasing and when it becomes sluggish it's probably sitting on 15GB of memory! Yes, 15GB. At that point I close Safari and restart it; seems to work.

Given that the same fault happens with MBPR from 2012 right through to 2014 editions I think we can rule out hardware. Mavericks worked brilliantly, and the one before that too. It's only with Yosemite that I've had problems, and those problems were immediately apparent. My machine has been exceptionally well looked after too; so it should be relatively dust free inside and there's no dents to it either.

I'm becoming a tad impatient with Apple on this.

I second your thoughts of this issue completely: This must be a low level driver issue.

My main board got replaced after showing a thermal sensor issue and it eased the GFX problems a lot but it did not fix it. (Plus many of you will encounter additional WiF issues in Yosemite - a real pain in the bum).

And it's highly likely that Apple did the math on it: The MacPro's use ATI now; Nvidia lost this contract and it may serve as an explanation that the low level/driver-code (which is not coming from Apple but the graphics card manufacturer) is low priority with Nvidia now. That's why Apple would not comment on the issue as they are helpless in some way and it is economically not viable to care.

MBP users might be on their own with that issue. 😟

Look, I hear your outrage and I share it, but this is a matter of logic. The fact that *anyone* who got a new logic board had the problem disappear suggests pretty strongly that their problem was at least partially HW related. There are quite a few people on here that report that getting internals replaced ameliorated the problem. It's still Apple's fault for having a) a ridiculously on-the-edge thermal design that routinely reaches egg-frying temperatures, b) sweat shop application of thermal paste that would handicap even the best design, and c) a version of their OS that clearly is at odds with the capabilities of their extant hardware. It's entirely plausible that you drew the unlucky straw more than once. The good news is that your machine might still be under warranty, in which case you might get to draw again. Obviously an intolerable situation all around.