Oh, brother. We can already tell this one's going to be a fun, enjoyable journey to follow. Shortly after Apple's
17-inch unibody MacBook Pro began making its way out to early adopters, small legions of owners have reported all sorts of bizarre graphical glitches. While we first
assumed that it was NVIDIA's GeForce 9600M causing all the mayhem, further investigation has led us to believe that faulty fan controls could be the culprit. Granted, all of this is just speculatory at the moment, but it seems that some users have noticed that their fans aren't kicking into high gear when they should. 'Course, some folks
have seen those RPMs spin up while the funky lines and psychedelic colors remain, so it's still hard to pinpoint a definite root cause. We're told that folks from NVIDIA and Apple are spending their weekends working to figure it out, but we can't help but be reminded of an
eerily similar string of events with overheating MacBook Airs just last year. Hopefully a fix will be out soon; till then, just pretend those erratic colors are some new curative feature.
Read - Fan grumbling
Read - More discussions
posted March 8th 2009 6:41PM
Its not a bug, its an undisclosed feature!
Damn, you beat me to it.
What is sad is that there is someone I know who pesters me to death about buying a Mac (even after recently buying a ThinkPad) and actually does call things like overheating, bad screens, and bad logic boards "features".
I wonder.
Why after the messy 8600m GT thing, Apple didn't switch to ATi instead?
ATi has this PowerXpress thing too.
@Raymond because ati cards run even hotter
that's my first thought too!
Bug me not!
FACK!
S. Jobs has to go away and this is what happens?
Its like the arse hats running the place are Substitute teachers and all the little drones are having a free 4 all.
time to clear house...
This just proves that Steve Jobs IS APPLE!!!!, nothing like this happens when he is around.
bunch of clowns.
It'll buff right out.
Eh? That's not a feature, it's just testing brand loyalty.
@iHenchman#1: Now now, don't say that please. Otherwise my Apple stock will fall like a rock.
Anyone who paid for that $3000 aluminum toy deserves this kind've blowback. Seriously, they can;t even get switching between the chips without a reboot.
Commonly unadvertised feature.
Dear Valued Apple Customer,
We have it in our files that you're using the undocumented psychedelic colors feature. That feature is no longer offered for free, but it for now will cost only $3.99 a month. You have to accept this undisclosure agreement, the new EULA, and the new SLA. Your refusal to do so will restrict use of your machine to mirror mode. Our policy at Apple is to always nickel-and-dime our customers for their maximum experience. Thank you for your preference.
Steve
EULA: you will not use this feature to create WMDs
I REALLY want to use and enjoy a Mac, but Apple is making is very difficult. Between the high prices, underpowered GPUs, complete lack of options, removing firewire (and not including eSATA) on the MB, crappy iMac update, expensive Mini, and price gouging on the dual-Nehalem Mac Pro, and the ever present quality control issues, they are really losing points fast...
So, I took the plunge into the world of OSX86 on my (2.5 yr old) Dell e1705/9400 laptop. Amazingly, with a simple install of "iPC 10.5.5" and the "post install OSX86 Dell utilities", every single component is working fine. I would recommend it to anyone. (buy an OSX Leopard license please). So now I have a 17" "DellBook Pro" with 1920x1200 screen, C2D, Expresscard, Firewire 400, Nvidia Quadro 160M GPU, 320GB 7200RPM, etc.
Until Apple gets their shit together, they are not getting a dime from me for Mac hardware.
Apple should split into two companies:
1) Apple Computer, For Mac engineers who want to focus on Macintosh and raise the quality control back up to a high level. The way it should be for price Apple ask for their Macs.
2) And Apple Inc, For those inside the company who just want to make money selling music and videos at any cost.
early 08 MBP FTMFW!
I know that apple likes to cram a shitload of technology in a small package, but how can they not think that overheating will be an issue. makes me wonder if these products were put through its paces before they were released
Apple don't cram anymore technology into their cases that ANY other PC assembler. However, they pay peanuts, they get monkeys. It is very well known amongst Apple victims that they have very very poor quality assurance.
Recommendation: If you must buy an Apple product, then please buy the best warranty that you can. A good and expensive one. Then you are covered. You will still have to make lots of trips to the Genius Bar, but you will not be out of pocket too much... AND .... you may be tempted to buy more Apple products whilst you are there (if you wait around long enough to have forgotten why you came, or how many times you have been before).
On the subject of Genius Bars: PLEASE PLEASE make an appointment well ahead. My many trips to the Genius bars have shown me that there are many many people waiting to complain about their defective products. The wait can be extensive.
A recent study showed that Apple along with Asus were the worst two companies for product failures.
BUY Apple warranties. Please.
Paul sadly is right. There's just so much crammed on that tiny, special MBP motherboard that it's a miracle they can cool it at all, given how small and thin the whole thing is.
There's a reason that the other 17", higher end GPU-sporting (and the 9600M isn't even really high-end, more around a generation old midrange part since the 260M replaced it, and the 280M is the new flagship) notebooks have bigger packages and fans+heatsinks galore; they run hot.
The cooling system is obviously under engineered and will likely never (in its current design) totally dissipate all the 8600M's heat. It just can't. Forcing fans to max all the time isn't really a good fix if it isn't working for everyone. More than likely, apple will release a firmware update or .kext which underclocks the 8600M and applies the fan tweaks as well. Then we will see more robust cooling solution packing 17" MBPs roll out.
Did anyone even test these things with the better graphics turned on? I mean, sheesh apple. This reminds me of the whole we-applied-about-20-times-more-thermal-paste-than-necessary-because-more-is-better debacle. Anyone remember that one?
Here's a link to the report that kccboy2004 mentioned in case anyone's interested: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Squaretrade-888128.html.
@jakem,
you beat me to it. I was looking for that for ages. thanks chap.
@nerdtalker,
are you saying that Apple products are badly designed ? it certainly sounds like it.
All Apple do, is to design the box that components fit into. You are saying that they put the wrong components into the wrong box. True ?
That is all they had to do. And they got that wrong.
@kccboy2004
I laughed a bit at the notion of designing a laptop being as simple as designing a box, and then chucking parts in it.
Take a look at the MBP '08 mobo on iFixit. The ICs themselves are reference design chips (for example, the CPU, northbridge-GPU combo, dedicated 8600M GPU, e.t.c. are all reference designs), but the motherboard and packaging itself, their placement, as well as ports, cooling, and whatever other modular components apple throws in there are all apple's own design.
If, by badly designed, you mean insufficiently designed to cool the thing (read through the forum, some people have their CPUs running up at 200 degrees F! That's way beyond what the TM2 thermal throttling built into the Core 2 Duo is designed to even throttle to, the GPU is running at almost 180+ in some peoples posts too), then yes, they're craptacularly designed.
@nertalker,
I like the cut of your jib.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cut%20of%20your%20jib
@kccboy2004
"A recent study showed that Apple along with Asus were the worst two companies for product failures. "
Apple is one of the worst, yes, but the other one is not Asus, that's Acer, I think.
@kccboy2004
I can haz link to study? I'd be really interested to see how specwise-identical laptops stack up against each other.
Actually, the problem isn't that they put a bunch into a small package, its that they try to increase the quality of the product in such ways as reducing fan noise/speed and using quieter hard drives. Hard drives have nothing to do with this, but reducing fan noise does. I have a MBP17, and the stock settings for the fan are on the edge! I run them up 1k faster all the time then stock, and I've never had a problem since... but i do hear the machine more. Just like a Dell. So, there is a trade off... performance and quality. they try to do both, and it doen't always work. So stop your bitching, get a fan speed controller and up the speeds. you wont have a problem.
I wonder how many of those Apple failures were from the fragile white MacBook case.
My guess is that Steve Jobs, being an obsessive perfectionist who also greatly enjoys style (as totally not evident by his fashion choices) pushes the boundaries of design very far and the result is laptops that are just too close to their thermal envelope for comfort, but very, very stylish and quite feature laden. (and expensive, etc, etc, but let's not turn this into another long, never-ending PC vs Mac debate)
@ kccboy2004 It's ACER, not ASUS, named in that study. The ASUS products I've had experience with have all been VERY reliable. Slander where slander is due...
@mo,
lmao
Why are you all making such a big deal about the results of just one study?
Hardware reliability studies are themselves notoriously prone to unreliability - if you search you will find it easy to locate independent studies done in the last year and a half that have named Sony, Dell, Lenovo and (yes) Apple as having "most reliable laptop", among many other brands!
The results continually change based on the geographical area under study, and particularly the methodology involved. No one study has ever been accepted as providing a conclusive answery. SquareTrade themselves released a report (Nov 08) that said iPhones were *twice* as reliable as BlackBerries, and to be frank, I don't really buy that, either.
The one thing that does arise from most hardware reliability studies, is that the gap between the top brands is usually quite small, and is constantly changing as companies adopt newer practices. So relying on one study will get you nowhere, irrespective of which study it is.
btw does anyone have a link to the actual SquareTrade Aug '08 study (not a press release) because all the reports I can find only say that Apple is in the bottom three, not where they actually ended up or what the results for all companies were.
@kccboy2004
I had to laugh when i read the article, since they say informed buyers will go after the best combo of reliability, features, and price... all of which apple seems to lose out on, moreso according to this study. In truth, good marketing will sell ALMOST any product.
It just works, right?
yeh bro, it just works. i'm gonna go get one of these tomorrow cause its so nice and shiny, and only $3000.
$4,500 here in Australia
Of course it works.... The question is, does it work well? Now THAT is a different story!
The overheating is a new feature. A heater for those cold winter nights. :P
um how hard would it of been for Apple to test this first? If its a fan issue i find it hard to believe it it would of not been noticed in testing.
QA Tester: Our displays are failing!
QA Manager: Yeah, and othe laptops don't? You typical anti-apple troll. Don't forget this is first gen, you should expect these teething issues / growing pains when you get cutting edge hardware.
QA Tester: So we ship?
QA Manager: Yeah. Then we fix.
Your comment is a little unfair. It is staed and firm Apple policy to test all products within one year after release. The testers are all volunteers, referred to in broader circles as "EA's", or "Early Adopters". For the privilege we charge them full retail and then tend to discount around one month after release. Inside Apple we tend to refer to them in code as SJ's ( a tribute to Samuel Johnson, who wrote on the subject of Second Marriages;
89. Marriage
On second marriages: "The triumph of hope over experience."
http://www.samueljohnson.com/marriage.html#89
HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE. (maybe next time it'll be better !). (fingers crossed).
Yeah it's unfair, I'll concede I'm a cheap stirrer.
But WTF was the rest of that meandering post?
@Decoy
It was clever, that's what it was. Although that Second Marriage thing was a tad bizarre...
There's one thing i learned from my 2006 Macbook Pro, you know the first Macbook Pro with an Intel chip. Never.. NEVER buy REV-A apple products.
they usually get it right by REV-C, iPhone 3.0 is going to be the phone I want it to be... I really hope so.
What a surprise. Not only is it Apple's fault but it's more heating issues.
my little sister, who is only eight, keeps on saying that Apple is "Full of Hot Air". does this prove it ?
Kccboy
Stop bringing you little sister in to be a puppet for you.
@kccboy2004
Bag of heat...I mean hurt..?
good evening engadget... still tryna recover from my loss of an hour (7:00 never looked so bright ya digg?)
id go crazy if i had to go thru all these issues after spending $2000+ for one of these things... geez hope apple looks out for you guys who took the plunge