macOS Sierra freeze on iMac late 2009 using Safari

REwozz

very sorry you have gotten so upset.

I suggest turning the imac off. I cant afford to get all worked up about the internet and computers. Life is much more than that!

peace.

John Chapter 6 wrote:

REwozz

very sorry you have gotten so upset.

I suggest turning the imac off. I cant afford to get all worked up about the internet and computers. Life is much more than that!

peace.

I (and everyone else) have no freeze problems with Chrome, why are you even posting here?

I have not experienced a problem using Safari in the past 13 days.

Btw:

Apple deleted a post I made. I am not nor do I know anyone in the business. What I wrote is a coincidence.

Anecdotally, yes, freezes occur when I have Safari and iTunes open & running.

If I add Chrome to the list, the freezes happen MUCH more frequently, like 3-5 times per day.

I have been playing around with virtual machines over the weekend and installed Sierra in a Parallels VM on Sierra. The idea was to try to run Safari in the VM when needed so that hopefully only the VM would crash rather than the entire machine.

I noticed that the there was a clear difference in the Safari settings in the VM compared to Safari on the main machine: when opening the Passwords panel, the newly installed Sierra in the VM asked for an additional passord to open the settings, while this was not the case on my (clean install) main Sierra.

This led me to think that something may have gone wrong during the clean install of my main machine. I have done a reinstall now (hold cmd-R during boot, choose to reinstall without deleting data), which took a good 40 minutes, but Safari settings now looks the same as in the VM. Clearly something got changed.

I'll try to work with Safari again (although I've grown to like Firefox a lot now - especially with the tree style tabs extension) and report whether this is a fix. Anyhow the reinstall is non-destructive and keeps all data in place, so might be a good thing to try - just in case your install also has some issues.

rewozz wrote:

It's not a solution if it doesn't work for everyone, all these so called "solutions" only serve to confuse.

If you want to really find a solution, you send feedback using the Feedback Assistant in the betas.

I have to disagree. I sent Apple feedback about the Safari-freezing-the-whole-Late-2009-iMac issue using Feedback Assistant in the betas of 10.11, 10.10, and 10.9. Yes, this problem really does go that far back, and Apple has done nothing about it. Now that the Late 2009 iMac is now considered by Apple to be obsolete, I'd say the chances of Apple issuing a fix for it are zero.

The best fix for me so far has been to stop using Safari and use Firefox instead. I still get freezes, but maybe once every 5-6 weeks, instead of once or twice per day.

The freezes you've had in the past were caused by other issues, the topic reads macOS Sierra freeze on iMac late 2009 using Safari. The OP clearly states this bug started happening in Sierra which is exactly my experience, never had this bug previously; almost 7 years going strong.

The fact that you claim freezes with Firefox every 5-6 weeks is not only nebulous (how do you know it's Firefox?) but also disproved by all the empirical evidence in the community which has found and confirmed WebKit to be the culprit. This means iTunes can cause a freeze no matter what browser you use, it's just a matter of time.

Since I don't use iTunes I can confirm Chrome to be a workaround for now, Firefox would work too I'm sure.

It's the exact same bug, exact same Mac model, exact same symptoms, usually triggered by Safari but sometimes triggered by other apps. Screen freezes but mouse pointer is still movable, I can still ssh in, and system.log reports a problem with watchdog_daemon/windowserver at the exact same time as the freeze. For me this problem goes right back to 10.9 at least.

And I never said Firefox was causing the freezes. I said that not using Safari caused the freeze episodes to greatly reduce, by about 98%. It's quite possible, likely even, that iTunes, which I do use, is causing the ones that remain.

The point I was trying to make is that the 2009 iMac is an obsoleted model and the chance that Apple will issue any sort of fix for it at this point are essentially zero. Sending in a bug report through any channel about obsoleted hardware is a waste of time.

It doesn't matter if it's 100 years old, it's supported by Sierra which means Apple is obligated to fix it.

Pessimistic speculations about whether or not a fix is in the pipeline is not helping anyone.

i have had this issue since installing sierra. doesn't happen with firefox or chrome, but i really miss safari. i use the reading list a lot.

i really hope they issue a fix. although my mac is 2009, it is quad core i7 and i have updated RAM and installed a hybrid SS drive and it is still running great.

Another test scenario I've tried: use Safari and iTunes as usual (almost constantly TBH), but quit Mail.

With iTunes closed and no ongoing work in Safari (other than a 2-5 tabs open in background), I've opened mail once per day to capture new messages and close it.

It's been 3 days with this easy test scenario and no crashes yet.

Fair to say that's the longest period between freezes in past 30-40 days.

I have the exact same issue... I had to revert to el capitan and it only happens in about every 2-3 weeks

i installed 10.12.2 yesterday and Im still having the same problem with Safari freezing, but I have been able to close it so far without needing reboot.

Had a first with our iMac. After it froze last night for the umpteenth time, I decided to see what would happen if I left it alone. I checked about 5 hours later and it appeared to be back to normal. However, when I tried to put it to sleep, it refused multiple times so in the end, I still had to reboot.