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In a statement issued directly to Gizmodo last night, a spokesperson for Google has confirmed that Chrome is indeed to blame for our frozen and crashing new MacBook Airs.
“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.”
Keep an eye on their Chrome release blog for forthcoming updates.
Toldja so!
Actually, your article was kinda misleading, and sort of blamed Apple devices freshly opened up out of the box, were kernel panicing.
Just saying.
Nice trolling token
Haha… ok… apologies. I have been on a troll mission of late. Only because of all the Apple vs. Android fodder making easy targets. – But, re this one. Yesterdays article was actually very misleading. Could possibly have been worded differently.
You little scamp you.
I remember that Safari was doing a similar thing on Windows and most of the negativity was directed towards Microsoft, since an application shouldn’t be able to cause a BSOD/kernel panic.
“Chrome is to blame”? Really?
From that statement:
“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.”
i.e. it’s actually Apple’s fault, no?
No. In practice, it is impossible for a vendor to account for all potential misbehaviour of all third party software.
It is Google’s (or any other software company’s) responsibility to fully test their products and log a defect with the OS vendor if they discover an issue.
Not so sure about that, actually. Apple historically have extensively tested every new piece of software that gets onto their O/S (which is why it takes so bloody long for apps to get onto their store, but that’s another story), so it is Apple’s responsibility to ensure that software works on their platform before releasing it to the live environment.
They’re going to do this with the iPhone though because they want to protect their system, a OS X is a little easier to install third party apps without hacking the software itself. How can apple screen an app that is downloaded from a third party site?
By using the pop up box stating that it is a third party app and are you sure you want to trust it to install files to your pc. So really Apple aren’t to blame for how Chrome acts on OS X.
There are going to be compatibility issues though when new devices are released.
Chill, people! As any software developer (or user) can tell you, bugs happen. No big deal, they get fixed and that’s it, the world moves on.
In this particular scenario it is MHO that both parties are at fault: Google made it happen, because Apple allowed it to happen.
Im so happy its not just me… I was so upset i had a dud MacBook Pro :’(