Google admits Chrome bug responsible for crashing MacBook Airs
Google has accepted responsibility for a kernel panic issue on Apple's new MacBook Airs that was apparently being caused by a graphics resource leak in its Chrome browser.
Shortly after Apple released updated MacBook Airs earlier this month, a number of users began reporting that the machines were frequently crashing. Gizmodo noted this week that it was experiencing the issue with its own MacBook Airs and subsequently deduced that the issue was caused by the Chrome browser.
According to one poster on Apple's Support Communities, a Genius technician said that the problem was "the specific combination of Intel HD 4000 chip + flash + Chrome." Apple was reportedly aware of the issue and planning to release a patch soon.
Google issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging that it had found a "leak of graphics resources in the Chrome browser" that has been causing a kernel panic on the new MacBook Airs. The company is working to "find and fix" the cause of the leak, but in the meantime it has issued an auto-update release that will temporarily disable GPU acceleration features in Chrome.
The announcement comes on the same day that Google launched its Chrome browser on iOS. However, the iPhone version of Chrome is mostly a UI wrapper around Apple's own Webkit platform, as Apple does not allow third-party browsers available in the App Store to have their own rendering or JavaScript engines.
Google's entire statement as provided to Gizmodo:
Shortly after Apple released updated MacBook Airs earlier this month, a number of users began reporting that the machines were frequently crashing. Gizmodo noted this week that it was experiencing the issue with its own MacBook Airs and subsequently deduced that the issue was caused by the Chrome browser.
According to one poster on Apple's Support Communities, a Genius technician said that the problem was "the specific combination of Intel HD 4000 chip + flash + Chrome." Apple was reportedly aware of the issue and planning to release a patch soon.
Google issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging that it had found a "leak of graphics resources in the Chrome browser" that has been causing a kernel panic on the new MacBook Airs. The company is working to "find and fix" the cause of the leak, but in the meantime it has issued an auto-update release that will temporarily disable GPU acceleration features in Chrome.
The announcement comes on the same day that Google launched its Chrome browser on iOS. However, the iPhone version of Chrome is mostly a UI wrapper around Apple's own Webkit platform, as Apple does not allow third-party browsers available in the App Store to have their own rendering or JavaScript engines.
Google's entire statement as provided to Gizmodo:
"We have identified a leak of graphics resources in the Chrome browser related to the drawing of plugins on Mac OS X. Work is proceeding to find and fix the root cause of the leak.
The resource leak is causing a kernel panic on Mac hardware containing the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip (e.g. the new Macbook Airs). Radar bug number 11762608 has been filed with Apple regarding the kernel panics, since it should not be possible for an application to trigger such behavior.
While the root cause of the leak is being fixed, we are temporarily disabling some of Chrome's GPU acceleration features on the affected hardware via an auto-updated release that went out this afternoon (Thursday June 28). We anticipate further fixes in the coming days which will re-enable many or all of these features on this hardware."
Comments
The kernel panic is caused by a MBA feeling violated when all its private data was being molested.
Stop using Chrome. Problem solved.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nkingman
Stop using Chrome. Problem solved.
Lot of people like obviously, it's currently the most used browser.
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Originally Posted by myapplelove
All joking and google bashing aside, it's shocking how this can happen to os x in 2012, a gfx driver crash hasn't brought down windows since vista in what 2007? The graphics stack should simply restart without bringing down the whole os. There 's a problem here that needs to be fixed in the graphics driver, but the underlying problem which I can assume wont be fixed in ml, of the os allowing this to happen is what's really troubling here.
"the specific combination of Intel HD 4000 chip + flash + Chrome."
Crash, Infection, Java, Flash, Plugin.
Always the same word combinations...
Living on borrowed time…
Yeah dude whatever.
So even in an article where Google admits responsibility, myapplehate manages to somehow bash Apple for the problem?
Sure, the problem is though that the os shouldn't kerrnel panic because of that and crash, that's the whole pint of making a robust os in 2012. It should safeguard itself even from the most malicious code. What's also conveniently ommited here is that it's not the intel chip, it's the drivers for the intel chip, there's no problem on the hardware level with the intel chip. This case is revealing a much deeper vulnerability of os x.
The bell tolls. What will happen when its fine chime has fallen to silence?
I dig your hermetic poetry man.
Slow news day?
At first I thought you wrote "The bellend trolls."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Apple ][
So even in an article where Google admits responsibility, myapplehate manages to somehow bash Apple for the problem?
I tend to agree. I tend to see a user-mode program making call down the OS X API stack causing a kernel panic as something... 'odd.'
Even Apple agrees: "Radar bug number 11762608 has been filed with Apple regarding the kernel panics, since it should not be possible for an application to trigger such behavior."
This is an Apple bug that was exercised Chrome.... not maybe they sent crap down through the call... but I would hope that OS X would have done some level of checking before pushing the crap to the graphics chip, and having it spit up a kernel vomit. Heck, I'm surprised they didn't grey list the flash code in some profiler prior to the critical call and quarantine it;-).
War is not peace. Freedom is not slavery. Ignorance is not strength.
But you are a troll.
Quote:
Originally Posted by myapplelove
Finally a sensible technical post, this thread had started to read like a cross between Hemingway and Orwell.
Dude, the reason you come to AppleInsider:
It's not your fault.