Wake up problems - caution: small rant

pedz

Registered
Very often (like two or so times a week), my 15" Macbook Pro will not wake up properly. The "I am sleeping" light on the front will go off the but display will never come one. Also, frequently, the "I am sleeping" light will never start to pulsate like it should. It stays hard on. If I leave it like that for long, it will drain the battery pretty quickly. So, it is not really going to sleep.

I believe the problem started when I set the option to prompt for a password from a wake up. I'm not sure of that. It might also be due to the DVI monitor I plug in to at work. I get to work, wake up the laptop, then plug in the DVI. To go home, I do the reverse: unplug it, let the screen get right, then hit the power button and type 's' for sleep. I then wait for the light to start pulsing before closing the lid and packing it up.

But all this is not the "Apple" way. With all my laptops before, I could just close the lid and be off. But that doesn't seem to work with this laptop. And the wake up is totally frustrating. When it does not wake up the first time, I have not found a "work around" to get it back alive. I have to just shutdown by holding down the power button until I hear the disk spin down. Then boot it back up.

I think Apple is going the way of Microsoft. To me, Safari is an utter piece of crap. It looks wonderful but way too often it botches the new web 2.0 web sites. Anyhow... off the topic a bit. I'd like to fix the display wake up problem but really, I am just seeing more and more problems with the Mac than ever before.

Rather than coming out with a new OS twice a minute, I'd pay more money for something that just works.

Is it time for Linux?

Sorry for the rant.
 
Hi pedz,

I'm sorry to hear you are having problems. It can be extremely frustrating when plagued by hardware or software problems, for whatever reason. Overall, satisfaction with the Apple laptops seems to be very high (Apple has been top or nearly top in some surveys, such as one by RESCUECOM and one by PC Magazine), so don't give up on Apple just yet. You may be one of the unlucky few who is having a bad experience...

I don't own a laptop, so I'm not going to be speaking from experience here, but I thought I'd try to help to some degree... I found a few threads within Apple's Discussion sections, although they might not exactly be the same problems as you are experiencing. In one case, the user had problems putting the MacBook Pro to sleep, and Safe Mode was a recommended route to take for diagnosing the problem, which seemed to work. Someone else had suspicions about the MacBook Pro not going to sleep, judging by the LED, and the SMC was suspected (also see Apple's support page on the System Management Controller). Another case involved the MacBook Pro not waking from sleep, and a variety of things were suggested, including resetting the PRAM. In another case, Parallels was suspected as causing problems.

Anyway, these are just a few ideas!

First of all, though, I'd recommend ensuring your software is up-to-date. I believe there have been firmware upgrade and a recent Software Update just for the MacBook Pro range, which seems to address the graphics cards. I'd also recommend having a look through MacFixit. One article on the MacFixit forum discusses the "little light" (power LED?) staying on after putting a MacBook Pro to sleep.

As for Safari, we will have to disagree! Safari might not be perfect, but I don't tend to experience problems with it very often at all and, when I do, these problems often affect Firefox on the PC too. When web designers code specifically for IE, for instance, I think it is very slack at best... Similarly, although I like Firefox on my work PC (which is an almost identical age and similar relative spec to my own Mac), it sometimes (temporarily) completely takes over the system, and slows Windows to less than a crawl!

Time for Linux? Well, that's up to you. As much respect as I have for Linux, I certainly wouldn't jump ship. I am very happy with my Mac experience, which is re-affirmed on a daily basis while I use Windows at work!
 
Thank you for the reply. I'm going to check those out.

As far as Safari, here is one page that demonstrates some problems:

http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/CombinationEffectsDemo

Each demo does its thing, then resets, then disappears (on my laptop using safari) If you see something else, please tell me because I'd like to track it down. On Firefox it works. The demo does its thing and then resets -- but does not disappear so you can run it again. I'm comparing this to Firefox on the Mac. This sort of thing is affecting me more and more often. I've seen the IE specific sites. In that case, I just don't do business there (unless of course I'm forced to :-( But Apple's Java and javascript implementations seem lacking. I can't say who is "right" but I just see it "not working" from a user's perspective.

I opened a bug report in Rails (script.acurlo.us) about this just now.

As far as Apple. I've been using Mac's since 1985'ish. I did the first debugger for C to go with the Magamax C compiler. I use to be a screaming advocate of them but I'm having some doubts right now.

I doubt I'll switch to Linux. I wish I could plop AIX on the old Power PC based machines. Oh well...

Thank you again for all your help. I want to go see if I can figure out my insomnia problem.
 
The demos at that site also all work for me with Safari 3.0.2.
Does that site (or others where you may have problems) work properly when you change to a different user?
 
Were beeeee the new safariiiii?

I'll go surfing in the mean time.

Oh, another site (that you can not verify) is Chase. When I try to download a statement for Quicken, I get a zero length file.

I'll try with other users too. This is *not* from the admin account.
 
I got 3.0.2 up and running. Things are looking much better. Both of the sites I mentioned are now working.

Thank you very much... I was really getting frustrated with Safari.
 
Back
Top