iOS Simulator crashing mac after a few seconds of use

Question

This is such a strange issue, but lately I can't start the iOS Simulator without it crashing my Mac and me needing to unmount the HD, repair it, and then restart.

When iOS Simulator is running, after a few seconds, a bunch of colored lines start appearing on the screen as tiny tears and then the screen splits in half and either turns gray or blue with black lines. The first couple of times I could close the simulator in time and the screen would revert back to normal, but after a few times it's almost an immediate crash with almost no chance of trying to close the simulator. When I restart, I can't get past the grey screen and need to go into recovery mode. I have a 2GHz i7 MacBook Pro with 16GB memory running OS X 10.9.1.

Does anyone have any ideas at all what is causing this?

Answer 1

Turns out it was that widespread GPU issue that most early 2011 MacBooks have. I've taken it to get it's logic board replaced as it's the only fix. I should have Googled this before asking, but if you're here reading this then you're smarter than I am. Good work.

Answer 2

Because of security issues you have to update to 10.9.2 ASAP if you're really on 10.9.1