Filed under: Software, Bugs/Recalls
Keynote bug: Spontaneous reboots
Despite Keynote's maturity, a significant bug remains. Several users are reporting that pressing the "Play" button after composing a project causes the machine to immediately reboot. From what's been reported so far, it seems to be limited to laptops, specifically iBooks and MacBooks, with and without an external monitor attached. At this point, no fix has been found.
Have any of you experienced this problem? Can you lend a hand in the troubleshooting?
Thanks, tipster!

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Alex Hutton said 11:52AM on 8-30-2007
Mine happened when accessing a large quartz file embedded. Unfortunately, it was not repeatable.
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Alan Graham said 11:57AM on 8-30-2007
This has happened to me numerous times. I am glad to see I'm not the only one...it gets really frustrating because it doesn't happen all the time...so you never know when it will occur.
Really $%^&* frustrating!
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James said 12:04PM on 8-30-2007
The fact that it's limited to laptops makes it that much worse. Nothing like trying to give a presentation and having your laptop reboot.
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Iain Collins said 12:07PM on 8-30-2007
I have a similar issue with the otherwise quite nice application "Xilisoft Video Converter". Clicking one of the toolbar buttons tends to cause my MacBook (a recent, Core 2 Duo model) to instantly reboot.
I'm not sure if this is a hangover from the instant-shutdown/reboot issues with the original MacBook hardware, but like this issue it seems to happen immediately in response to a specific trigger.
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Jonas said 12:51PM on 8-30-2007
I've had experienced this once, and it really came at a bad time, i was writing notes on the presentation, and did some changes in Keynote, and the whole machine is rebooting when I'm pressing the Play-buttuon. CRAP.
Crap, the morale in this story is to save more often... :P
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Paul W. said 12:43PM on 8-30-2007
I'm using Keynote '05 and Keynote '08 on a Mac Book Pro and have not seen this bug.
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Eriksson said 12:56PM on 8-30-2007
Yep! I have ze bug! Macbook - Leopard - Keynote 08'.
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Tim said 12:51PM on 8-30-2007
I've had this happen to me several times on my Macbook on both the old and new ('08) versions.
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Dan said 1:04PM on 8-30-2007
YES! This is really annoying. Does anyone know if Apple is working on a fix?
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olivier said 12:53PM on 8-30-2007
plugged my macbookpro witk k08 last tuesday for a big big presentation, and the laptop froze and would not restart. first time ever. obviously happened during the shortest but most important presentation of the quarter... took me 15 minutes to restart numerous times. before giving up. fucked up. but probably not a keynote-related issue.
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Sportsmedjosh said 12:54PM on 8-30-2007
A little off topic stuff still. I noticed this today while working in Word typing "=rand (200, 99)" and pressing enter creates crazy pages of text.
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MUTE MATT said 12:55PM on 8-30-2007
I haven't yet seen this with Keynote 4, but it happened several times with Keynote 3. It seemed to happen more often when I hadn't saved my presentation yet! I don't know if thats just Murphy's law biting me in the butt, or part of the problem. However, I never press play anymore with out saving first!
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Angela said 1:14PM on 8-30-2007
Happened to me on my 2.33 MBP. NOT good publicity for Apple in public.
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Geoff said 1:26PM on 8-30-2007
I've had a similar problem with playing movies fullscreen and certain games. Again, only on my MacBook Pro. I'm not so sure the issue lies with keynote or any of the other products (as one was obviously not an Apple product) and more with something lower level.
I've been to AppleCare repeatedly for this and have gotten many a run-around (disk permissions, create a new user, reinstall) and nothing has seemed to work yet.
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KeynoteKen said 1:25PM on 8-30-2007
The worst part about Keynote and trying to replicate bugs is that it's mainly being used for confidential purposes. Even if it IS Apple, no one wants to send their company secrets in a file to be picked over for problems. Since making any changes to the file (like removing the confidential stuff) may fix the problem, I'd be surprised if they've been able to receive many problem files at all for determination.
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PSM said 2:13PM on 8-30-2007
OMG, that is a huge bug. I rely on Keynote to run projections for professional theatre, and thankfully have never come across it. I have always used a Powerbook and currently a MBP, which maybe is why. I do remember a bug in Keynote 1.0 which would cause it to freeze when saving a project. That happened to me right before a performance once, and we lost 20 minutes of changes and had to hold the curtain while we redid all of them in about 10 minutes.
I have not experienced anything really problematic with later versions, although the last show I used it for was in June, running '07. I haven't done anything in '08 yet besides just playing around.
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R2B2 said 3:27PM on 8-30-2007
I've experienced this a number of times on my Intel Mac Mini, so it's not just related to MacBooks.
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Paul said 3:48PM on 8-30-2007
This has happened to me many times. It's getting frustrating!
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john russell said 3:37PM on 8-30-2007
I'm in the same boat as R2B2. My Intel Mac Mini has done this numerous times in Keynote ’06. I haven't used ’08 enough to have the bug appear.
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KeynoteKen said 4:10PM on 8-30-2007
Movies and Games, too? Then, no, it doesn't appear to be a Keynote only issue, it's just that crashes during a presentation can have a much greater impact on a user than a crashed game/movie.
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