iMac and Macbook Pros Not Waking From Sleep – Letter to Steve Jobs
No doubt most people that land on this page are here because they are suffering the same issue, well I thought I would share my letter to Steve with you about it (dated 26/08/08). I will update this post or create new ones to let you know what happens, if you too are suffering from this issue please leave a comment as I will be referring Apple to this post when the time comes.
Steve,
First, I hope your well.
I am having a consistent issue with my girlfriends iMac that is frankly getting beyond a joke. Her iMac is the first of the 24″ aluminium iMacs, it was bought on launch day. It started off fine but rapidly the issue appeared, if put to sleep for an extended amount of time (ie overnight) the machine will not wake from sleep. This carried on for a few weeks before i submitted a bug via the developer connection bug reporter with my ADC account. The engineers requested I send them the logs, which i did, they didn’t show anything. No sleep or wake event was in the logs when this issue occurred. They then asked me to SSH into the iMac via my laptop set up several lines of terminal commands sleep the iMac and then wake it up taking a snapshot of any data. Nothing happened, when this issue occurs there appears to be no bus power, the keyboard is rendered useless so how would the firewire port be any better!?
I tried in vain for weeks to get this to work and nothing, in the end I had to tell them that I couldn’t get it to work and the bug was closed! Despite the issue not being resolved! Anyway, I tried all matter of things, PRAM and SMC resets, changing the sleep modes, clean installs…. the list goes on…… making her follow procedures of ‘unplug this’ and ‘do it in this order before sleeping it’. Not surprisingly that was all to much for her. She isn’t tech savvy, she switched from windows and got a mac because she wanted it to ‘Just Work’. However the few days where she had followed my advice at this point seemed to pay off. It was waking from sleep again! This lasted a month or so before it started again.
Just 2 weeks ago I was staying at hers watching TV with EyeTV on her mac and boom, the machine powered off and rebooted. There was no proper shutdown procedure it just clicked off and rebooted. It did this twice in as many hours before we shut it down for the night. The next morning she was using it whilst i was out at University and the machine died, this time it would not power on. Upon hearing this i presumed the logic board had died. I booked us and appointment at the local genius bar and in we went. It was accepted straight away for repair no problem and out 7 days later with a new logic board and a new 24″ screen!! (The screen was fine before). In total, off the top of my head) I think the repairs came to £750-850! That’s fine as you picked up the tab thanks to the 3 year warranty.
The first time the repaired machine was put to sleep it wouldn’t wake from sleep again! So here we are now with me writing this email. I am writing you this email before I waste my time and money getting this machine to a genius bar to be told they won’t accept the machine as nothing shows as an issue in the logs, and i’ll be honest, despite the fact it happens every single time I know they will turn around and say it cannot be reproduced! You only have to look at the iMac and Macbook Pro discussion forums to see this, hundreds of people are suffering from this issue Steve, and I saw loads of them in the Apple store being told to go away (in a polite way) when they told the genius their macbook pro or iMac is not waking from sleep. The genius looked in the logs and said ‘there is no events in there there is nothing wrong’!! That is so not true! This issue does not for some reason show up as a sleep wake event or as anything else in the logs! My Macbook Pro has this issue! There is nothing in the logs, and funnily enough I saw most of these people when I was at the genius bar trying to convince the genius to give me a new battery since mine was clearly faulty, I had to sit there for 2.5hrs whilst my battery ran down to 30% full and powered off in front of him and then let him test it in another machine before he would believe me! Anyway, I digress….
I am writing to you because I want this issue resolved. I want my girlfriends iMac to work as it should, she paid enough for it and she is wanting to buy one of your notebooks and an iPhone, though is hanging fire on the notebook due to this issue. It costs us a lot of time and money to take the mac into one of your stores Steve (its not easy to carry either), I appreciate that these things happen, its the nature of technology. However, this machine was already meant to be fixed once, its clearly not the case, it has the same issue (though not dead yet!) and we can’t keep expending time and money going round in circles either being told the problem doesn’t exist, it can’t be reproduced or getting replacement parts after replacement parts and having to keep taking it in. I’ve seen the attitude of the geniuses in our local store and I know this is how it is going to pan out.
I’d appreciate a response from you or one of your staff regarding this issue. Given the contact i have with macs both with the machines themselves and the number of others i know that have contact with them I think this is a fairly serious widespread issue. I am tending towards faulty SMC’s but I can’t be sure and I don’t want to play a guessing game. The best outcome for us would be a direct instruction from above for the apple store to carry out a thorough (not an ‘it doesn’t exist’ or ‘it can’t be reproduced’) investigation and a replacement of the relevant parts (Probably logic board and PSU) OR a better solution is a complete replacement machine and you take this one and send it to your engineering department so they can play with it to their hearts content to find the issue and try and find a fix for the hundreds or thousands of others that have it. The later option would also cost you less as replacement of all the parts again is going to cost almost the same as a replacement machine!
Regardless, I want to work with you on this one to get a resolution for us, but also maybe to help you find out what is causing it. What i don’t want is to be fobbed off by Apple geniuses and have to commute with the machine backwards and forwards multiple times. It costs us over £30 per trip so you can understand why having just had it repaired we are not thrilled at the prospect of another round trip to the Apple store!
Kind Regards,
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27 year old oil worker based in Aberdeen, Scotland.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
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August 29th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
[...] about a guy, called Guy and his iPhone posted on TUAW. Yesterday I submitted the news about the iMac and Macbook Pro not waking from sleep to them, needless to say I think they are not interested. I had a brief scout through their site [...]
September 8th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
[...] a recent article posted by David. J. Moore, he outlines in a letter to the Apple founder Steve Jobs, there may in fact be an emerging problem [...]
September 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
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September 11th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Just bought an iMac 24″. The dealer warned not to put it to sleep overnight. I didn’t listen and – surprise – the iMac does not wake in the morning. After hard restart, or just any restart, it takes 2 minutes for the iMac to recognize the wireless mouse!
September 13th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
[...] my iMac and Macbook Pro problems I have been having real issues with MobileMe. These have existed since day one, and still [...]
September 13th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
[...] iMac and Macbook Pro’s not waking from sleep. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Apple Engineering are about to wash their hands of this and the Apple store wouldn’t even get their hands dirty with it. Add to this the single 1 minute visit from Apple following my second letter to Steve and it’s easy to see they would rather ignore the issue than deal with it – Bravo! [...]
September 13th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
apple have become so lame of late, poor quality and don’t give a s**t about its customers anymore. Get em’ in from windows and forget em’
September 25th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I wish they would resolve the issue. The supposed patch has done nothing to fix the issue.
Not only does my macbook pro never wake from sleep, it also will keep the fan running after I shut down the machine. It ends up getting really hot in my bag even though by all other appearances other the machine is OFF.
February 4th, 2009 at 1:57 am
I’m just wondering if you ever got this resolved? I have the same iMac your girlfriend has (had?) the first generation Aluminum 24″ 2.4. It did the exact same thing about six months ago. What happened was I put it to sleep when I went to bed as usual. In the middle of the night I got up for some water and noticed a light from the den…the machine was awake so I slept it again. The next morning it would not wake up. The keyboard and mouse did not work. I unplugged it to reset the PMU, plugged it back in and it started up fine. Then yesterday for the first time since then it did it again. I followed the same procedure and it came back. When I unplugged it tho I heard the display make a very slight sound, like it was losing power, which made me think the machine was on, asleep, but the USB ports were inactive. The machine was slightly warm on the back, so this supported that theory. (Side rant: Why do these models NOT have a sleep indicator light???) It powered on fine and I ran the full hardware diagnostic (two hours) and it said no problems found. Tonight I came home and it had done it again. This time I assumed the machine was still on, held the power down and heard the machine power off. So I know it WAS on, but the USB ports had no power. Powered on fine, did a google search first thing, and found your post. Did you ever get any closure with this? I am running 10.5.6 and have four gigs of ram, otherwise this machine is stock. Cheers for any advice or feedback, I’m curious what happened with your situation.
Best,
M
February 28th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Mike,
thanks for your comments and sorry for the late response i have been very very busy. Short answer is no. I am still in contact with Apple engineering and the basis of the situation is they haven’t a clue and I don’t tend to hear from them until the make a 10.x.x update at which point they say “have you installed all the latest updates? and does it resolve the issue”.
In short Apple don’t appear to know their ass from their elbow on this one and are clearly praying that an update may inadvertently fix this issue. Please add my site to your RSS reader and any updates I get I will post on this blog
February 28th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Seems like a circular issue that will never get resolved.
I am far used to my machine not shutting down properly. not sleeping and waking properly and just in general with all things related to power or the motherboard .. sound etc. used to it now working PROPERLY or at all.
I am out of warranty so I’m out of luck.
I love my macbook pro otherwise. But I am burned.. and when people tell me about purchasing a mac for themselvels I tell them my story.. “I love macs.. far better than windows.. but only thing is.. “
April 29th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I encountered the same problem with my MB 2007. If I use an external monitor it works fine, but a soon as I unplug the monitor it goes to sleep. Apple tech told me its the logic board, but how can that be when it works fine using an external monitor. Tried every recommemnded solution to no avail. I have the new MBP aluminum, and I am concerned that the same thing may happen to my new MBP. Even the Apple service center can’t fix it. Pls help
May 5th, 2009 at 3:27 am
I’m happy that I found this post, but unfortunately it’s because I have the same issue. I have a 24″ aluminum iMac bought in late 2007, running 10.5.6. Last Friday I woke up, checked some email, and then took a shower. About half of an hour after getting ready, I went to go back on my computer and it would not wake up from sleep. I tried a hard restart, and nothing. The Superdrive moves, as if it’s checking for something, but the screen is completely black and the keyboard is completely unresponsive. Interestingly enough, if the mouse is plugged directly into the USB port, the light from it comes on as if it is working normally.
So I tried PRAM and SMC resets, and had no results. I made an appointment to take it to my local Apple store. The person at the Genius bar concurred, and was also stumped. He said it could be the logic board, or a number of other issues. He wasn’t sure at all, but agreed that it should not be doing this at all after having only purchased it 16 months ago. So today I got a call saying that they could not reproduce the symptoms and it could’ve been a flook. OK, fine.. I get it home, and yes, it starts up like normal. I get some work done on it, and then go watch a movie. Midway through the movie, I was curious to see how the computer was doing… and it would not wake up from sleep mode. Hard restart, PRAM and SMC resets are doing nothing.
Further more, my case is extra frustrating since it turns out I do not have Applecare. I thought it was purchased when I bought the computer, but apparently not. I have a feeling it wasn’t rung up properly when I checked out, but in the last year and a half I’ve never checked myself, because I haven’t any issues and assumed I’ve always had it. Between home and business, I have 5 computers. 4 have Applecare (interestingly enough, the other 4 run OS’s previous to Leopard), and the one that is having issues apparently does not have Applecare. Regardless of the warranty issue, I plan on fighting this. There is no reason for my machine to be having these issues 16 months after purchase.
If you have any updates to your issue, please keep me informed. It is much appreciated. Good luck.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
I found this site and I am having the same problems with my 24 inch Aluminum iMac that was purchased in late December of 2007. It was working fine this morning. I burnt a CD for my son for camp. I went away from the machine for 2 hours it was in sleep mode. I go to use it and it will not power up. It sounds like the drive and DVD drive try to spin up but the screen is black and nothing happen….it just keeps trying. You have to unplug it to stop it. I have made an appt with the Apple Store but I am not looking forward to being told that a 17 month old machine needs a new $900 logic board. This is what seems to be a reoccurring thread on boards all over the internet.
August 29th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Add me to the list. My 24″ iMac purchased late October 2007 has been exhibiting the same behavior. It goes to sleep either on it’s own, or me putting it to sleep, then when I go to wake it by using keyboard, mouse, or power button I think I hear some hard drive noise, but nothing happens. I hold the power button down for five seconds, and I actually hear it shut down. Have reset PRAM, SMC, even reinstalled system. Very frustrating!
October 5th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
And me. 24 ” aluminium iMac December 07. Whole family loved it – until now. Will not start from sleep, or after shutdown, if left plugged into the power. If I leave it unplugged for several hours, then jam the power lead back in, it sometimes starts – but not always! I think i’ll just leave it ‘always on’ until it fails completely. I can’t face half the cost of a new one to repair it. Oh well, back to PC hardware and running Ubuntu. At least the parts are cheap, and you can get support and a sympathetic ear…
November 10th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Same here. 20″ aluminium iMac from october 07. The issue is getting more and more frequent.
November 21st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
[...] thought I would post a very short update on my post about the iMac not waking from sleep. Apple never got back to me…. only goes to show they don’t care! As for the Mac…. [...]
January 18th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Add me to the list….24″ aluminum will not sleep properly. If I leave it on and disable sleep it runs just fine. Put it to sleep last night and woke up with an unresponsive white screen. Tried the resets and now it will not boot…just a black screen.
June 21st, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Add me to the list too. I just got this thing too. =( bleh!
July 9th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
You may be able to add me to this problem as well. I have a 24″ iMac bought 2 years ago. It has worked without problem since then (except for a failed keyboard after 6 weeks – replaced under guarantee).
This morning my wife put the beast to sleep and now it won’t wake up. I can hear the hard disc turning and the DVD player swallowed a disc – there is power inside. There is no response from the keyboard.
I have a 2nd iMac so have plugged this into the first. This is a standard Mac alu keyboard with a “Mighty Mouse”, there is no response and no laser light from the mouse. Therefore there is no power on the USB ports. I have a Moshti USB block that takes its power via a firewire port. The Moshti name is lit so there is power from the machine via this connection but non on any of the USB ports.
My first conclusion therefore is that there is a problem with the USB ports or drivers.
As Murphy would dictate, it is friday evening so no repair man untill Monday.
Has anybody been able to wake the sleeping machine via a network connection from a nother machine?
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:01 am
Yep, add me to the list. I have 20″ aluminum imac purchased May 2008. Worked great until March this year. One day it froze like Windows. Never had that happen before on imac and then, this not waking from sleep started. At first, it didn’t do it all the time but now it is. I’ve also done everything I’m supposed to do without any resolution. And like everyone has reported, when the computer boots up properly and you run diagnostics, it doesn’t find anything. And you can do all the restarting and rebooting because it won’t do it. Here is also something weird. I can power up imac. The display is black. No chime. I hear things running. Keyboard unresponsive. And I let it sit. Sometimes it will take 5-10 minutes and I will hear the chime. I immediately shut it down and immediately press power button. It comes up properly and runs properly! Lately though it is taking longer and longer for it to chime. Today, it took 1.5 hours. I’m really frustrated.
Please let me know how this turns out. This has to be some factory defect. I’m reading about this all over the web and no one has a solution.
November 16th, 2010 at 10:07 am
Same here. I brought a Macbook Pro 13″ two months ago. Sometimes goes to SLEEP and the only way to wake it is to force restart.
any solutions?
November 23rd, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Update to post of 9 July 2010. Due to the number of people having the same problem I simply instructed my wife not to put the iMac to sleep, either leave it running or power off. It doesn’t solve the technical problem but has removed the basis for irritation/anger; it also has cost me almost nothing.
My more recent iMac 20″ (purchased Nov 2008) has not (yet) suffered this problem, I put it to sleep most nights.
Whilst I too like the Mac environment, I am far from convinced that the engineering quality justifies the higher price and lack of choice compared to the PC. I will not, for instance, buy another MacBook after a series of hardware failures, expensive & time-consuming repairs with a fatal hard disc failure just a week after the last repair with a loss of 60% of the data and finally a design that does not appeal – I want an extended keyboard for a start.
Why do Apple still maintain this arrogance that they can consistently come up with a top line software/hardware product? They could licence the software to selected approved constructors to give their engineers a better incentive to perform and give us some choice.
February 5th, 2011 at 10:31 am
imac 24 inch ,2007, 10.5 – similar problems faulty sleep/wake then have to reboot. when sleeping it is half awake as it is still hot, which is the my main reason for putting in sleep mode, to save energy.
when apple acknowledge there is a fault when enough people complain they will have to repair for free as they would be legally bound for selling a dodgy product, as they had to with the faulty early mac pros graphics cards. keep the pressure up by emailling them.
March 21st, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Apple sucks.
Been a customer for fourteen years.
What happened to them?
April 5th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
I’m having issues just like everyone, my mbp is a work computer, I called to take it to one of the retail outlets and they didn’t have any slots open for 3 days. I can do no work.. I hate to crib and I forgot to back-up cuz time-machine was acting weird on me. I procrastinated and here I am.
April 30th, 2011 at 8:40 pm
…so how do you set the computer so that it does not go to sleep in the first place? I’m losing sleep over this. Just kidding.
May 17th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
i reset the smc on my Macbook pro and the problem (screen doesn’t wake from sleep) seems to have disappeared.
here’s the info on that:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US