Q: MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) freeze with Yosemite

I never had the freezes anymore, since about 3 weeks, working with the MBPr about 8h a day 5 days a week. I made a fresh Yosemite installation, and looked at every software i installed if it is really ready for Yosemite (but not tools which are not updated like gfxCardStatus or other gimmicks i had en masse) - since Apple support told me that this (or my problem) is software related. I am working with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign and Esko software, and some other tools.  I am also using Parallels Desktop with a Windows 8.1 VM heavily. So far i have a working Yosemite install on a 2012 MBPr.

I got the same problem.

Still no fix - this have been going on for a long time now.

Occur when I open some big homepages and sometimes in Photoshop. Also happens when I try to upload documents sometimes.

I Brought today to the Apple Store. they went for a logic board replacement. Will post an update when possible.

There's a Flash update available, let's see if it fixes random crashes on Safari.

You should uninstall Flash from your machine. Download and switch to Chrome whenever you reeeaaaly can't do without it. Most websites support HTML5 videos nowadays (except Facebook for desktop, duh! However you can change "www.facebook..." to "m.facebook..." and still see videos).

Yeah, I totally agree that Flash is very dispensable

But I just want to understand the issue here, and if it's software related or not.

As it seems that Flash triggers the GPU crash on Safari, I'll keep it for testing purposes !

If Flash is causing any issues, I'd argue it's a peripheral cause from what people are experiencing. If not using Flash helps with the crashes in the meantime, that's great, but I've had plenty of crashes on HTML only websites. Besides, the issues are not limited to web browsing e.g. Photoshop crashes.

Many in the enterprise and the mainstream public still use Flash for a variety of reasons. It's not dispensable for everybody. And there are vague reports of many other software causing issues. Uninstalling software is a stop gap measure, it just obscures the real issue.

You're right about Flash usage, I was just suggesting that some software may trick Yosemite into (badly) switching GPU and causing the freeze. The logs don't tell anything, apart that the GPU restarted...

Anyway, the Flash update didn't fix the isue, I had a crash just after installing it.

Come on Apple, come with a solution ...

Crash is not related to Java, Flash, JavaScript or anything else. You can make if freeze by using any application such as web browser, video or photo editing software or any other graphic intensive application.

I think that we should describe our issues more accurately.

These are my configuration & symptoms:

• Retina setting on 1680 x 1050 (one step above "optimal"), dark mode, no other options (transparency, etc)
• Safari is my browser of choice, with Flash installed.
• I don't use graphics intensive apps, apart from Pixelmator (which automatically switches to dedicated nVidia GPU) and iPhoto.
• Most of the time, the freeze occurs when I'm browsing the web. If I am listening to iTunes, the music keeps playing till the end of the song and the mouse still moves, but the computer is stuck (can't click, scroll, change volume / brightness  ...)
• After restarting, the system logs show a GPU hang on the integrated chip (Intel 4000), and loops through GPU restarts...
• I happened to have some glitches on the screen (screenshots below), but they are rare.

What about you guys ?

same duplicate ID as mine...

So there's an update for Safari, but it just mentions "WebGL performance on Retina displays" which indeed causes GPU crashes but that's not enough. As others mentioned, it can occur with anything that involves GPU switching (Flash, Java, GPU intensive apps and WebGL).

I will try to crash my GPU with WebGL and see if it's really fixed.

Like I said, if you disable WebGL on Safari, there is not freeze, but it's just on Safari.
The problem is cleary the fast switching, and WebGL which switch on Nvidia unnecessarily....

Interestingly (or unfortunately) I experienced my first crash in almost 3 weeks - even though I disabled auto graphics switching.

This is on 2014 MBP, Yosemite, using HDMI with 4K.

Prior to disabling auto graphic switching I would crash about once per day on average. I never had this issue prior to the Yosemite update. I'm not sure if the HDMI portion has anything to do with the problem, since in the past (prior to disabling auto switching) I would crash even when not using HDMI.

This new crash resulted in the keyboard and mouse not working, but background app like Spotify kept playing music. I had to hard reboot to resolve the issue.

Having had my 2012 rMBP swapped by Apple for a brand new model, I can report I have had one instance of the exact same problem - GPU Hang on the Intel GPU.  This machine has a different board, different chipset and even has two different model GPUs to the 2012 model.

Given this and the fact that the problem occurs across different usage patterns and different software, I'd say its not hardware or user level software but would agree its the drivers or whatever code/controller that looks after the GPU switching.

A search of the Intel support site (of course) does not furnish any downloadable drivers for OS X as we expect all these to be bundled up by Apple.  However there are regular driver updates coming out so maybe we'll get a fix some day.  I downloaded and opened up the windows drivers and its hard to be sure but looks like the same drivers for HD and Iris chips - at any rate the same download file is provided for both chips.  if it is a driver problem then that might explain why the problem persists across 2012 and 2014 machines.  The fact that the laptops have different chipsets leads me to think its less likely to be the controllers as they are presumably different.

All speculation though.  Come on Apple, throw us a bone here!