MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) freeze with Yosemite

gam3r -- I did just that. I have an early 2013 MBP that started having this problem as soon as i upgraded to Yosemite. It was time for a new one anyway...so i did just that. Purchased a brand new MBP (late 2014 model). EXACT same issues from day one with a fresh install of Yosemite. This is not hardware.

Since my last post on here i've done some more testing with the old 2013 MBP. I installed a fresh install of Yosemite with no additional personalization except for installing Chrome. Ran it for a week. it continually froze or rebooted all week. Most of the time it was on a graphic intensive website or video. Wiped it, installed a fresh install of Mavericks. Not one issue. Never froze, never rebooted on it's on. Reinstalled Yosemite -- right back to freezing/rebooting itself.

This is software. There is no question in my mind. Two MBP's -- Two years apart -- Same exact problem as long as they are running Yosemite. Revert to Mavericks -- No problems at all. Why does it affect some and not others? My guess is that it's their nature of usage. I push my systems to the limits -- i use ever ounce of resources available. The hardware can handle it. Mavericks can handle it. Yosemite cannot.

People that browse the web, type word documents, spreadsheets, etc -- never push the system. It runs idle.

I am an OSX developer. And logged multiple bug reports with Apple. It is under NDA so can't go into specifics but they even got back asking for videos to showcase the problem. Did everything handed it to them, since then they closed my bug report saying it is a duplicate of another one. They are aware of it. But as usual they do not admit or even show hope to consumers saying a fix is due soon.

IMO It just starts falling on its face as soon as you demand a bit more of the GPU.

For example I continuously work on 2 screens (built-in and a thunderbolt external one) with 4 and 3 desktops respectively. I run things like virtualbox, photoshop and a bunch of 3d tools and other editors.

Performance is abysmal about 20% of the time. It works fine and then all of a sudden it freezes for 5 seconds while swiping to a different desktop.(it just stops with 10cm of the other desktop in the screen). Then it suddenly continues as if nothing happened.

As soon as I disable that "reduce transparency"-option pretty much my entire system halts. This is a brand new top notch MBPR with the heaviest specs (3 months old). My 2 year old macbook ran just the same software on Mavericks without breaking a sweat. I've always been utterly amazed with the performance of those apple laptops. That stopped the day I installed Yosemite.

I'm self employed and my work depends on the macbook (which is why I just bought a second one since the GPU panic on the other), but perhaps I should just take the income hit and take 2 days off and reinstall them both with Mavericks...

What surprises me the most is how big tech websites like TheVerge and other review sites not even admit or spot these issues and blindly give a 8/10 or 10/10 score when reviewing OS. This forum seems to be the only google search result where people are talking about Yosemite problems no where else, Maybe it is just isolated to few hundred people here but hard to believe considering how obvious the problem is and with 100% reproducibility. I am quite confident in my opinion that these issues persist on all retina MacBooks, its just most of them don't bother complaining or share their views, Situations like these really make me think of Microsoft being better alternative ( Hey at least they release couple of hundred bug fixes every week for windows )

It is annoying but my recommendation is to go back to Mavericks and don't let apple ******** ruin your day to day workflow. I know its tempting to use latest OSX but I got over it. I don't even care tbh. All that matters is usability which is really lacking in Yosemite. All they did was make a huge aesthetic change visually and break everything else.

To be honest I did notice that but never really thought about it. I suspect the biggest part of owners doesn't really push the hardware far enough to experience the issues, hence it is not being picked up more globally.

Anyhow, just run gfxCardStatus to force it into discrete graphics and enabled "reduce transparency". It is stable that way if I reboot it once in a while when it becomes sluggish. I do feel "dirty" doing that, because its a Mac for crying out loud! 🙂

As for the the extra power usage: I don't really care as I'm always near an outlet anyway. So I'll manage and hope they come with a fix one day so that I can go back to have nothing but positive feelings voor Apple...

They already lost me as an iPhone customer, hope they don't lose the rest either.

The problem seems not only to be related to advanced graphic use and so on. I was doing an Ph. D . course in medical statistics, that is basically using excel and a statistic program + powerpoint once in a while, all together simple stuff. Even though less tough usage than normally that week the whole system and laptop broke. And all the problem started just a few days after installing Yosemite. My MBP retina August 2012 broke down completely (multiple kernel panics and was not able to even start again after a while). After one "fix" (they did some kind of external reboot I'm not familiar with) at the MacStore it was returned with the exact same problem... My big misstake then, it now seems, was to not downgrade (or it should probably rather be seen as an upgrade it seems) to Mavericks again. Instead I turned in the MBP again, not having AppleCare it costed me $900 to replace the Logic Board.

After the replacement it works perfectly though, even with Yosemite, but that is just a matter of time it seems...

So I'm still wondering about the main issue here; a hardware replacement solved the problem BUT a software issue created it? How should that be interpreted?

I don't need to use gfxStatus, because I always have an external display connected. Macbook automatically switches to discrete is external display is connected. My main concern with yosemite is its performance and how I see garbled graphics everywhere when using expose or during other instances

Technically mine is too, but I transport it between my home office and the customers I work for. I've had it crash on me before I connected the external display at a customer 🙂 I just don't take the chance anymore, no more trust.

Just like Blizzke thats's exactly what happened, it was mainly having problem while using the external display in someway (through both Thunderbolts I believe...)

The garbled graphics I was talking about, here is a screen shot of when it occurred in Finder window. this happens everywhere

Regarding hardware vs. software...some of you may have seen my posts in this thread from the past, but in short, I had major issues after upgrading to Yosemite. I then insisted my motherboard be replaced and was met with NO resistance by the genius despite not being able to reproduce the problem. My replacement is about a month old and I have not had a single crash. Truth be told, I still had the transparency setting reduced, but I changed that a week ago. Still no crashes. I'm using it normally and NO CRASHES. How could there not be a hardware component to this problem under those facts? I've said it before and I'll say it again. This is how the software hardware scenario fits with the facts:

1) A small percentage of people are affected. Yes, we're all on this thread going crazy, but if it affected EVERY MBPr, it would be major news. If it were ONLY software, it would affect all those using MBPrs and Yosemite. This is not the case. This means only a small percentage of motherboards were built with the defect and because it affects new MBPrs, they are still making some defective boards.

2) Some people are "cured" with a hardware replacement. How do you explain this if it is ONLY software?

3) Some people are not fixed by new hardware. Why? Because they got a bad replacement as well. Clearly they are still making bad boards.

The bottom line is that there is a relatively small percentage of MBPr motherboards that are defective. Under Mavericks this defect does not manifest itself in a crash. Under Yosemite the defect manifests in a crash when switching from discrete to integrated and back. Apple is remaining silent on this because it only affects a small percentage of customers. Think about it, how many people does this thread represent? Virtually nothing compared to the hordes of people using MBPrs. Sure not all of them affected are complaining. They are lighter users who crash every now and then and just blame themselves. We know better but we're 100x more sophisticated than the typical user just by virtue of following this thread, and for 100 other reasons we could all probably recite.

Sooooo, the word is out to the "geniuses" that when a customer comes in with a video crash issue, replace the mobo without hassle, and hope for the best. Why don't they fix the issue in software? Must be more difficult than we would think...because there IS a hardware component to the problem. Why don't they fix the hardware? Too expensive to re-engineer the mobo I would imagine at the next major hardware revision, this will be addressed. For now, the dollars and sense analysis fell on the side of Apple remaining silent and just replacing motherboards for anyone who asks.

gam3r that is something I haven't really experienced. I did have a flash of unfilled graphics memory a dozen times when I turned on the macbook, as in noise... Yesterday my thunderbolt screen became full magenta after connecting for 3 seconds before it initialised, that was also new 🙂

As for the "it has to be a hardware problem": perhaps apple used different revisions of the same graphics chips in the mbp's and that's why it affects some people and others not... Which means that somehow I ended up with 2 of these crappy versions 🙂

Yes I see noise too similar to TV noise in other places. When maximizing apps or using expose

reply to dansmacbook:
I totally agree on it being mainly an hardware issue, BUT the new "depending Yosemite" could still be the cause, that is, the OS being too heavy for too weak computers forcing the hardware to break. Just like you, my MBPr is just like new after a logic board change, without one single problem so far - it seems like a new mother/logicboard is more capable of handling Yosemite.

That said, it's still embarassing for Apple to have create a "too heavy OS", that's similar to the tactics Microsoft used in the 90s forcing costumer to upgrade on new computers all the time. And why shouldn't they, I mean, we as customers (especially myself!) are stupid enough to upgrade, honestly what was wrong with Mavericks? 🙂 so...