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Why is Sleep Mode such a challenge for Apple?

S

Sal Collaziano

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 7, 2007
331
24
Royal Palm Beach, FL
There are times when I need to do the "alt/command - cd eject" combination for fast entry into sleep mode.. I've had my MBP since November and I'm running the latest updates. On several occasions (at least 10), I've come back to my computer very hot and still running - through the screen was off.

What's the deal? And how long is my computer going to last if this keeps happening? The thing gets very hot just sitting there with the lid closed for hours on end.
 
sleep mode is always something that works exceptionally well for macs and really ****** for everything else.

I cannot relate at all to what are saying.
 
Sal Collaziano said:
There are times when I need to do the "alt/command - cd eject" combination for fast entry into sleep mode.. I've had my MBP since November and I'm running the latest updates. On several occasions (at least 10), I've come back to my computer very hot and still running - through the screen was off.

What's the deal? And how long is my computer going to last if this keeps happening? The thing gets very hot just sitting there with the lid closed for hours on end.
Click to expand...

I watch my ProBook go to sleep (sleep light is pulsing; not just on) before I leave it alone. sometimes it stayed on and drained the batteries when I just closed the lid.
 
My school's Macbook Pro (Late 2007 edition) is weird when it comes to sleeping closing the lid). Sometimes it turns back on when I open the lid, other times you have to keep opening and closing the lid until down the road it finally works XD
 
There can be a number of things turning it on-

Applications that may not be letting it sleep in the first place.

Bluetooth devices that may wake the computer (esp mouse + kb)

Network Interface

Ghosts and Goblins

Bill Gates

just a few ideas
 
Put me down as someone who finds sleep on my MacBookPro flakey and unreliable. I have issues all the time trying to get it to wake. On occasion I have to do a hard reset. But at least once I day I go through opening and closing and opening the lid several times to get it to wake up with an active screen. It's especially bad dealing with an external monitor that gets attached and detached on a regular basis.

I don't think anyone...Mac, Windows, or otherwise...have gotten sleep and wake figured out.
 
Id have to say Apples are the only computer that can do the sleep thing properly... have you ever tried sleep on a windows laptop?

I had one for work once, I kept closing the lid like habit. It was useless.
 
The old insta-sleep was faultless on my PBG4. The new one-minute-then-sleep is really intermittent on my MBP Feb '08.

Apart from anything else the need to watch for up to a minute to make sure the machine has gone to sleep successfully really defeats the idea - I want to be able to shut the lid, pack it up and walk away, like I used to be able to.

I certainly don't want to have to tell it to sleep twice because it decides to wake up within that minute, whether or not the lid is open. I also don't want to have to reset the display colour calibration on wake-up every few times. And I don't want to have to log out and in or restart to get rid of the graphical corruption in Safari, iTunes, QuickTime, etc.

And I wouldn't mind at all if this all happened in 10.5.4 :)!

As for Windows, the sleep in Vista under boot camp was really good until Apple released the 2.1 update; now it's just like Leopard's.
 
MartiNZ said:
The old insta-sleep was faultless on my PBG4. The new one-minute-then-sleep is really intermittent on my MBP Feb '08.

Apart from anything else the need to watch for up to a minute to make sure the machine has gone to sleep successfully really defeats the idea - I want to be able to shut the lid, pack it up and walk away, like I used to be able to.

I certainly don't want to have to tell it to sleep twice because it decides to wake up within that minute, whether or not the lid is open. I also don't want to have to reset the display colour calibration on wake-up every few times. And I don't want to have to log out and in or restart to get rid of the graphical corruption in Safari, iTunes, QuickTime, etc.

And I wouldn't mind at all if this all happened in 10.5.4 :)!
Click to expand...

The reason it takes a little while to sleep is because it writes the contents of the RAM to your harddisk, so if there is power failure, you dont lose any open work. You can turn this off, which would go back to instant sleep. Its a few terminal lines if i remember. Google for 'turn off safesleep'. Also to the OP this might help your problem. Just to make you aware if you do lose power (remove the battery, or the battery completely runs out of juice, you'll lose any unsaved data)

Edit to save you the hassle of googling.. http://www.bluap.nl/bmsweblog/entry_148.php
 
Well,
sleep mode sucks for me as well. Sometimes my MBP wont go into sleepmode, sometimes it wont wake up. I dont use it any more in OS 10.
I noticed that under Xp it does function almost without a problem (only sometimes screen keeps black after wake up)...
 
notsofatjames said:
... have you ever tried sleep on a windows laptop?

I had one for work once, I kept closing the lid like habit. It was useless.
Click to expand...
At the moment I also have a Dell Windows XP laptop (Precision M90). While I don't use it much, sleep on it has been working very well, especially since SP3. But I certainly had some issue with hibernate in the past until MS created a hotfix to solve it.

I think sleep is just a challenge for Mac OS X and Windows. Overall, it has been more of a problem for me on Mac.
 
Ha ha ha my Iridium Starbook, short of not going to sleep when you close the lid, doesn't even turn the screen off! I was never sure whether or not it was a faulty unit since it has (or rather hasn't) done it since day one...
 
Thanks for the replies and information... I never had a problem with any of my windows notebooks. I'd just close the lid and that would be the end of it. My problem here is either closing the lid or going into sleep via keys, leaving the room and coming back later to find a very hot notebook.

I also get the issue, occasionally, where I can't get my MBP to wake..

Maybe these things will be fixed in future updates....
 
notsofatjames said:
The reason it takes a little while to sleep is because it writes the contents of the RAM to your harddisk, so if there is power failure, you dont lose any open work. You can turn this off, which would go back to instant sleep. Its a few terminal lines if i remember. Google for 'turn off safesleep'. Also to the OP this might help your problem. Just to make you aware if you do lose power (remove the battery, or the battery completely runs out of juice, you'll lose any unsaved data)

Edit to save you the hassle of googling.. http://www.bluap.nl/bmsweblog/entry_148.php
Click to expand...

Yeah, well aware of that but a) from reading all the material it seems the default is the most appropriate for the new machines, and b) I'm not happy about messing with that sort of stuff when they don't provide a GUI for it. Cheers though.
 
I've spent about 10 hours today trying to get sleep to just be consistent on my Mac Pro. I've read at least 200 pages and threads (like this one), and no one has solutions.

With me, I can manually sleep the MP and everything works perfectly, but trying to let it sleep on it's own is a 50/50 proposition. After wasting 600 hours all I have learned is the following:

--Console occasionally tells me that the machine awoke from sleep, even though it never went to sleep.
--Identical scenarios (same apps running, etc) often give different results. The machine will go to sleep on its own and all I do is wake it up (using an arrow key), and walk away. It doesn't go back to sleep.
--The lower the time setting for auto sleep, the more reliable it is. If I set it at 1 minute it will go to sleep 99% of the time. If I set it to 10 minutes the machine will go to sleep about 25% of the time. A 5 minute setting results in a coin flip.
--There are literally thousands of people who can't get sleep to function properly on Mac's. Lots of good reading out there. I hope you find a solution to your problem.
 
RaceTripper said:
Put me down as someone who finds sleep on my MacBookPro flakey and unreliable. I have issues all the time trying to get it to wake. On occasion I have to do a hard reset. But at least once I day I go through opening and closing and opening the lid several times to get it to wake up with an active screen...
Click to expand...

I've also had similar problems w/my MBP. Also my G5 iMac was acting up with sleep mode too (only after 10.5):confused:
 
I have problems sometimes, too.

It either doesn't go to sleep when I shut the lid, or, when I open the lid it's just a black screen.

Then, I have to shut the lid, wait for it to go back to sleep, then re-open it and hope the password box is there. (I have it set up so that it needs a password after sleep or screensaver)
 
I might have similar problems with my iMac.
Although I have it set to never sleep the computer, I do have display sleep set at 10 minutes as well as a hot corner to sleep the display.

However, I'll sometimes sleep the display, be lying in bed, and my screen will magically turn itself back on. Sometimes several times in a night.
 
If you open the lid and the screen is black, why don't you press the power button? No dice?
 
try putting a windows klaptop to sleep then come back and let us know.

my mac is never off always sleeping it works brilliantly
 
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