iMac Pro restarting because of a problem?

Oh the pressure! They haven't contacted me yet, but they most likely will and start investigating crash logs and all that. By Friday noon I will have received a call. We'll see what and when the postman delivers.

That's a lot of tech you got there, John. My setup is a lot more modest, but I am one of the very few in Belgium who edits episodal drama on FCPX. And I only need two screens, a (stable!) computer and a whole lot of fast storage.

It's really by accident that I found files and a related job that can reproduce the problems we are facing. DV-pal is something I haven't used for over a decade.

Regardless of the fact that this powerful machine may have been build to work with the latest technology, it should not freeze up and restart once you feed it a bunch of old, perfectly healthy files. Something's up, and I'm very excited to know what it is. Because the weird fact remains that the senior apple care guy could not find a single similar problem regarding the iMac Pro. Not in these parts anyway...

All the best,

Steven

The Freeze/Crash/Restart [FCR] saga continues.

Interesting history of the photo of my home-office. Actually, I'm on my new iMac Pro (the one in the middle with the keyboard) only because my heretofore primary mission-critical machine is the one now on the left side of the picture with the double screens was rendered useless, so I just use it basically as a monitor for the stock market. It's an original early Mac Pro, SSD, loaded with memory. Was doing perfectly fine, UNTIL, I went to do the upgrade from Sierra to HIGH Sierra when all h**l broke lose. Thank God I had numerous redundant full clone external backups because during and after the process of the upgrade on the Mac Pro the system went entirely off the rails. Not to make any excuses for Apple, but in their defense my gut feeling is that I had one of the first Mac Pro Tubes off the assembly line with the earliest hardware configuration, albeit it did have an SSD, which went through many corrections and upgrades over the term of its life, which I understand is now over until at least 2019 when the new and improved Mac Pro will be launched.

Long story short, nothing on the MP worked after the upgrade. The upgraded MP limped in pain just to get to the new HS desktop, then went totally goofy. Flashing screens, freezes, hangs, crashes, total chaos. I went through a few days of agony with Tech Support (who honestly did their best) which went nowhere. Having done the upgrade I was now stuck in APFS-file-format land with no easy path back to restore to LOW Sierra (which was stable) from my external clones. During the restore, I blew up (it actually started smoking) an external SSD clone drive, and then destroyed yet another spinning external clone drive! God. Unbelievable. As a last resort, ended up having to reformat the SSD back to HFS and to an on-line restore of the prior OS. After literally days of tinkering with the restore I finally realized the machine had been rendered unusable as it was not stable, hence the emergency replacement purchase of the next best thing, my new iMac Pro. So that's the story of how I ended up with an iMac Pro. Would have bought a new MP if they were available, but won't be until next year, if then.

So, you are not alone. We are all watching to see how Apple responds to our systemic freeze/crash/restart (FCR) issues on our iMac Pros. I'm hoping Apple's tech support can pin down the problem to a particular production "lot" via serial numbers, after identifying the problem if indeed it's the hardware, which it certainly would appear to be. Then again, who knows. Let's give APPLE A CHANCE and see how they respond to your case ticket next week.

Hang in there!

All the best,

John

Ocean City, NJ

From 2001, another FCP setup . . . .

Hey Steven and John, I thought my setup was dandy, home office with 5 iMacs, two Mac Minis with VMWare, went with new iMac Pro on the advice of my sales rep and while it works it works great but so far any task I leave running at night tends to end up with a restart by or in the morning.

Steven, if you need kernel traces or dump files, I've been keeping all (most) of mine since December.

Good Luck/Cheers,

Martin/Happy

Just had my first restart on my 4 day old iMac PRO 8 core version, went to google and found this tread,

im very disappointed and don’t know what to do now with this iMac , I thought I’m buying such expensive machine for a long time.

Buy the way it restated in the middle of the day doing nothing.

There are others and I'm one of them. I guess because it was an Apple product and cost nearly $NZ14K, it would get sorted without my intervention, but it does get annoying. My new iMac Pro (64GB 10-core Vega 64) arrived a month ago and I have been running it for about three weeks now, mainly using VectorWorks CAD and a bit of Parallels (MSOffice). Always had the problem of it shutting down and re-starting overnight (most nights), and sometimes during the day about 5 minutes after waking up from sleep. Started turning it off myself every night to avoid that, but it still does its own thing sometimes during the day after waking up from sleep. So, there are probably a few others out there that just aren't peeved enough yet, or think it is their fault due to some old peripheral they have.

Well, that's exactly what I'm thinking myself. An iMac Pro restarting when it's doing nothing, after sleeping, well... for a lot of people that's not a valid reason or alarming enough to call Apple Care. Bottom line is that most tasks on this or any other iMac Pro seem to be done correctly and very fast. Most, but not all. Not in my case. And luckily I found myself a task that makes an iMac Pro lose his s**t every single time. A task that a late 2014 iMac with exactly the same versions of the same software installed, can do without flinching.

I reckon this is something engineering can actually work with.

Let's see when I'll get my call... In the meantime, hang on in there everybody and whatever you do... don't put it to sleep or feed it DV-pal mov's after midnight.

Hmmm, it looks the same at first glance but it's probably quite different. Freezing doesn't mean restarting. And it does not mention the iMac Pro in particular. I think this was just an issue with parallels that could be seen on any Mac Machine. Correct me if I'm wrong for some reason. Also, I've never used parallels...

You may be right. I did notice the mouse pointer freezing about 20 seconds before the machine re-started. There could be more to this than I think! I'll take more notice next time as to whether I am using Parallels at the time or not. I will sleep the machine tonight and see how it behaves in the morning.

I do, John, I do. But they have not contacted me yet. The deal I made with the Apple Care senior was that if I hadn't been contacted by somebody from engineering before this friday (noon, standard European time) he would call me with word of how things are doing. So, I guess it will be Friday then. I'll keep you all posted.

Besides, there is a new OS update coming soon. Maybe some fixes are already incorporated in that update. Is anybody here running the latest beta by any chance?

Guys, it's not the fault of the peripherals. Its the T2 chip and the software for it. It's been months and no sign of getting this fixed so my assumption is that it's a design flaw. Of course, they won't admit it, unless a class action suit is filed. I'm very torn because I love this machine and I have saved money for years to afford a professional machine and now all that hard work seems it has gone to waste. Apple really ***** this time.

Hi INvisibleART,

Thank you for keeping us posted on your trouble ticket. Let's give Apple the benefit of the doubt, that they are obviously aware there's a problem with some or all iMac Pros, and they realize it's got nothing to do with any peripherals or third-party software as posted here even a virgin iMac Pro out of the box is experiencing the Freeze/Crash/ReStarts, and that engineering is working feverishly to resolve this. It's in their best interests to push this issue to the very front of the line in terms of priority.

In Apple's defense, and please don't mistake my kindness for weakness, I should mention that although I have not yet contacted Apple (and I have AppleCare) about this issue, that an Apple representative called me out of the blue on the phone and emailed me with the following message: "I'm reaching out to you on behalf of Apple who would like us to gather additional details/data about the issue you've reported to Apple Discussions." I didn't have the opportunity to talk as I was busy on another call, but they left a voicemail message, as well as emailing me.

Now this is the Apple I "remember." Going the extra distance. The Culture. The Experience.

I've been sooooooo loyal to Apple for decades now, evangelizing for Apple all along the way, with total purchases probably nearing 6 figures, and fully embedded into the Apple "experience" in every way. I am an Apple user because I have always trusted them to do the right thing and to always resolve any issue I've ever had to my complete satisfaction.

So, THIS IS A REALLY REALLY BIG DEAL to me (and obviously everyone else).

At least Apple has acknowledge there is a real problem here (potentially monumental in terms of recalls, refunds, compensation, PR, etc.), and I'm still betting they'll get to the bottom of this. They simply have to. They know that once reference to this issue gets into the "wild" the press will incinerate them. So, as much as my blood is boiling, and as is everyone's, I will remain gracious with Apple for a "reasonable" time, whatever that might mean.

I've lost time and money over this. Everyone affected has as well.

Let's wait until Tuesday for Apple to explain themselves and what their policy will be. I'm counting on a victory, but this would be a total deal-breaker for me if not, sorry to say.

All the best,

John Hay

Ocean City, NJ

Haha John, the pic says it all. Well, that intervention places you one step above or beyond my current position. I wouldn't mind being called by them as well (and they will, next week, I'm still confident about that). After all, I've been editing episode drama on Final Cut Pro for over 10 years now, that's roughly 130 hours of fiction. It would break my heart to see Apple descent into mediocrity.

But I don't like to generalise, and I loooove facts. So, let's put some light on the facts. What do they (the engineers) know and what do they believe? They are the ones who have the data. And how real are their concerns (I hope VERY real). If they can show me the attitude I expect from them, then I'll help them solve this in any way I can! So in case they are reading this: I HAVE A TEST THAT CAN FREEZE AN out-of-the-box (+compressor) IMAC PRO, 100 PROCENT, EVERY TIME.

Thanks for the update and by all means keep them coming. At least this is going SOMEWHERE.

INvisibleART,

I think you really hit the nail on the head in saying "It would break my heart to see Apple descent into mediocrity."

Beyond fixing these vexing issues on our iMac Pros, my greater interest is in Apple's overall response and in their attitude.

I can deal with the truth, no matter how bad it may end up being. I'm ready and open to any explanation provided and expect to be treated with dignity and fairness in a timely manner. That's all.

If I were Apple right now I think I'd be working 24/7 throwing all available resources at this before it all ends up in the press. A delay over the weekend waiting for a response from Apple is disheartening but not the end of the world. Tuesday we will know more.

Until then, I remain a loyal Apple customer. I think they will figure this out, and I hope they are quick to respond.

John

I got a (pleasant) surprise, Apple actually reached out to me yesterday based on this or the other thread and I'm actually working with somewhat from a higher level support area on the issue again. He also won't be back in the office until Tuesday but I have some action items and feels like we're actually moving forward again. I'm feeling a little more positive on this.

Cheers,

Happy/Martin

Glad to hear HappyPappy that things are moving along for you. As for me, I've become so disenchanted over the last several months since my Mac Pro exploded when I tried upgrading it from Sierra to High Sierra, and now dealing with all this (the Freeze/Crash/ReStarts) that I'm just getting fed up. Okay, fair enough, I probably got one of the first Mac Pros off the assembly line and it didn't have the advantage of the newer ones currently shipping. Okay, so be it. So now what do I do? I need a working Mac Pro. The only reason I have an iMac Pro is because the Mac Pros currently shipping are now virtual relics, and from what I understand the "new" Mac Pros won't be available until 2019, and that's only a rumor. If Apple doesn't step up I'm not sure what I'll do.

I'm still waiting to hear "their" side on this coming Tuesday. We'll go from there.

****

Thank you,

John

[Edited by Host]