MacBook Air (2012) freezing while streaming video?
June 25, 2013 10:52 AM   Subscribe

Hi MeFi! This is My First Ask, so my apologies in advance if I do something incorrectly. My MacBook Air that I purchased Nov. 2012 from a Mac store freezes while streaming video from Netflix and Amazon. I have tried both Google and Safari, and it happens on both browsers ...

I have conducted a google search and mac forum searches, and I see that others have had this problem. However, I have not found a solution online. More description of freezing issue: while watching more than three 30- to 45-minute shows in a row, my laptop freezes on a scene that remains visible, and the laptop makes a tic-tic-tic sound (which appears to be the audio from the scene on which it is stuck).

The only way to make it stop is to do a "hard shut down" by pressing the on/off/restart button for several seconds. The "escape" button will not allow me to refresh the website. I have not tried to watch a full movie on this particular laptop; my primary laptop is a huge MacBook Pro (no problems there). So, my main questions are:

1. Is this just "normal" behavior with a Mac Air due to the fact that it is not a full fledged MacBook Pro and thus does not have the streaming power of a regular laptop?
2. Is there anything I can do to prevent the freezing and ticking?
3. Should I take it back to the Mac store? (Again, I purchased it in November 2012). It would be difficult to reproduce the problem on the spot.

Thank you!
posted by quixotictic to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)
 
It's not normal behavior on my MacBook Air (OS 10.7.5, 2GB RAM, built Late 2010). I've never had problems with streaming Netflix on it.
posted by seemoreglass at 11:08 AM on June 25, 2013


Take it in to the apple store, my mac did this when it had a bad logic board.
posted by iamabot at 11:09 AM on June 25, 2013


You don't need to reproduce it, you just need to accurately describe the problems, the techs at the genius bar can look at your system logs, just give them a time frame of say about 5 minutes the last time this happened and possibly the time before that.
posted by iamabot at 11:10 AM on June 25, 2013


lyra4, can you not be bothered to even check out the system specs on wikipedia?

OP, your machine doesn't have a spinny disk, it has an SSD, they make no noise. You have a logic board failing, bad ram or possibly something else we can't diagnose without access to the console and the logs in it. To the apple store with you!.
posted by iamabot at 11:13 AM on June 25, 2013


Not normal. I stream video on an Air all the time, including both Netflix and Amazon without incident. In fact, the Air is more reliable for this function than the Pro.
posted by Lame_username at 11:57 AM on June 25, 2013


It seems to me that it's overheating, if this only happens after you've been watching video for a couple hours. You're not blocking the rear air vent, are you?
posted by neckro23 at 1:19 PM on June 25, 2013


Response by poster: Thanks everyone -- you confirmed my initial suspicions, so off to the Mac store when I return to my hometown!
posted by quixotictic at 4:19 PM on June 25, 2013


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