Kernel panic while trying to reboot. This is the first recorded failure I’ve had for this machine (there may have been non-recorded failures though^[1]). Battery drained fast, something putting machine under load, load average then shot up to astronomical levels:

$ uptime
 13:55:37  up 1 day  3:15,  5 users,  load average: 343.29, 177.94, 77.20

The panic happened while I was trying to restart the machine. Brief excerpt:

panic(cpu 0 caller 0xfffffe002b555210): userspace watchdog timeout: no successful checkins from logd (0 induced crashes) in 120 seconds
service returned not alive with context : unresponsive dispatch queue(s): com.apple.firehose.drain-mem, com.apple.firehose.io-wl
logd has not exited since first loaded
service: logd, total successful checkins in 169 seconds: 3, last successful checkin: 120 seconds ago
service: WindowServer (2 induced crashes), total successful checkins in 110 seconds: 1, last successful checkin: 100 seconds ago
service: opendirectoryd, total successful checkins in 169 seconds: 14, last successful checkin: 0 seconds ago
service: configd (1 induced crashes), total successful checkins in 169 seconds: 3, last successful checkin: 120 seconds ago

Debugger message: panic
Memory ID: 0x6
OS release type: User
OS version: 24F74
Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 24.5.0: Tue Apr 22 19:52:00 PDT 2025; root:xnu-11417.121.6~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T6031

Statistics so far for this machine

• Failure type: kernel panic
• OS version: Sequoia 15.5
• Uptime at moment of failure: a little over 1 day
• Kernel panics: 1
• Hard resets: 0
• Total failures: 1
• Start of recording keeping: 6 June 2024
• Total days to date: 1
• Average time between failures: 358 days

Summary of events for this machine

1. 2025-05-27: kernel panic while rebooting the machine to "cure" state of being permanently unusable due to continuous high load.

Historical data (all machines)

For comparison, previous generations of machines (from most oldest to most recent) that I’ve used have had averages of:

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1. Specifically, this is not the first time I’ve had to reboot this machine because it was apparently stuck in a permanently high load state. Maybe on those other times too there could have been a problematic reboot. ↩︎

Sigh, not off to a great start with this machine. Hard reset because I go stuck at the lock screen and couldn’t log back into the account I had just stepped out of (the root account, because — again, sigh — I had to enable that because you can’t change the icon on your ~/Documents folder as a mere administrator 🤦) nor could I switch back to my normal account (which still had a running session in the background). Note that the only reason I’d tried to go back to the lock screen from the root session was because the Finder was beachballing and the Control Center was too (so I couldn’t access Fast User Switching from there). I have no idea how to switch to another account from the lock screen on Sonoma — it seems only to magically let me see the "other" user prompt intermittently, according to some magical criteria that I don’t understand.

Statistics so far for this machine

• Failure type: kernel panic
• OS version: Sonoma 14.1.1
• Uptime at moment of failure: less than 1 day
• Kernel panics: 0
• Hard resets: 1
• Total failures: 1
• Start of recording keeping: 22 November 2023
• Total days to date: 1
• Average time between failures: 1.0 days

Summary of events for this machine

1. 2023-11-22: got locked out of machine and had to hard-reset.

Historical data (all machines)

For comparison, previous generations of machines (from most oldest to most recent) that I’ve used have had averages of:

Panic while the machine was unattended.

Despite this incident, the average time between failures for this machine is 170.6 days (up from 142), which is the best of any machine I’ve had since beginning to keep these records. (Technically, if I didn’t have so many keyboard problems — most of which were caused by my decision to use Karabiner-Elements — with my mid-2015 MacBook Pro, that one would probably be the most reliable.)

Statistics so far for this machine

• Failure type: kernel panic
• OS version: Sonoma 14.0
• Uptime at moment of failure: unsure; perhaps 2 or 3 days
• Kernel panics: 2
• Hard resets: 3
• Total failures: 5
• Start of recording keeping: 31 May 2021
• Total days to date: 853
• Average time between failures: 170.6 days

Summary of events for this machine

1. 2021-07-14: machine spontaneously powered off while absent.
2. 2021-08-06: spontaneous kernel panic while not in active use.
3. 2022-06-14: spontaneous reboot while actively using.
4. 2022-12-21: spontaneous shutdown.
5. 2023-10-02: unattended kernel panic.

Historical data (all machines)

For comparison, previous generations of machines (from most oldest to most recent) that I’ve used have had averages of: