Following numerous reports of freezing and crashing issues with new MacBook Airs in the Apple Support Communities, many (notable, Gizmodo) suggested that Google Chrome might be the cause of all of this grief. Google has now stepped forward to confirm those rumors.
In a statement to Gizmodo, Google states:
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.
Google has temporarily patched the issue by pushing a patch that disables some of Chrome’s GPU acceleration, and is working on a permanent fix, which will be released in an upcoming update to Google Chrome.
Have you experienced freezing and crashing on your new MacBook Pro? Let us know!