I don't see how you can get more cooling with a firmware change when the fans are already going at full speed.
Does that mean the whole unit will now run hotter before it starts to throttle? How is this going to impact some of those bad solder joints MacBooks are famous for?
The issue wasn't cooling; it was how the CPU incorrectly throttle itself that caused it to overheat again too fast.
There's another thermal control unit involved and what people found was that the firmware for it was causing the CPU to drop down to 800mhz instantly when it detected the specific terminal event and when it reset that, it went back up into high-overheating load (such as the benchmark sustaining the high load) instead of staying at the right balance. In other words, it went into a loop of super low power load and then super-high load instead of the middle where the terminal balance is right for the load it is doing. Because of this low/high loop, the performance was not consistent and degraded as the overheating cause it to drop to 800mhz all the time.
Where Apple likely messed up is that the firmware was not placing the CPU at the middle to avoid going into a loop, this allows the CPU to sustain a better CPU performance consistently and for an extended period of time.
The issue was not the CPU throttling itself, it was the CPU being configured to draw north of 100W and the VRM not being able to handle it, overheating, and leading to the system board hard throttling (down to 800MHz rather than slowly stepping down) the CPU until the VRM cooled down at which point the CPU would be un-throttled and the cycle would restart.
Apparently the power configuration is the one Apple's always used but previous CPUs didn't come close to the current generation in ability to draw power, so they'd never reached the VRM's thermal limits.
By lowering the CPU's maximum TDPup to 50~55W, they avoid the VRM over-heating and while the CPU does not turbo as high as with a 100W TDP allowance it can stay there just fine.
> When did MacBooks became famous for "bad solder joints"?
There has been more[1] than one[2] case where GPUs in MBPs stopped working because of bad solder joints. And ifixit has a guide about how to fix your mac by putting it in the oven[3] to reflow the solder joints.
To be fair, most of those other laptops aren't made by a company that's famous for meticulously stressing details and restricting hardware configurations so that consumers won't need to research or worry about internals.
The PC vs Mac hardware dichotomy is best summed up as, "Apple gives you less choice so that they can exercise more quality control."
That PC vs Mac dichotomy really doesn’t carry into pre-built PCs and definitely not into pre-built laptops and other portables. Both have a responsibility for quality control.
I agree in principle, but there is still a difference here.
Dell sells way more PCs (in much more varied configurations) than Apple does. They're generally more repairable, and they're generally cheaper. They're also willing to let you max out specs and build weird configurations; configurations that arguably don't always make much sense. That range means they also sell a few objectively cruddy laptops, so you need to be careful and read reviews and do comparisons before you buy.
Apple positions itself as different from those companies. The comparison I'm making above isn't something that only self-building PC nerds understand; the same explanation is what I give to regular consumers who are trying to decide whether to go with Windows or Mac - people who will never try to build their own stuff.
"Should I buy a Windows PC or a Mac?"
"Do you want to spend a lot of time researching brands, reading reviews, and thinking about hardware specs?"
I think the point still stands that Apple is positioning itself in a different category than companies like Dell. If not, I'm gonna have some complaints about that $3K price tag.
The closest comparison is something like the Microsoft Surface - an expensive, premium device, with low repairability and configuration options, but (theoretically) increased reliability with a streamlined experience that "just works" out of the box. When the Surface line has problems, I put more blame on Microsoft than I would put on a company like Dell in an equivalent situation.
There is a correlation between how repairable a laptop is and whether it uses a custom build process, single-body design, or if you're directly soldering chips onto a motherboard - all of which can help with reliability. Fewer moving parts and less build complexity means fewer places where things can go wrong.
I wasn't criticizing Apple or Microsoft for anything when I said their laptops weren't repairable, I was giving them the benefit of the doubt that some of their engineering decisions around repairability are made for good reasons.
I don't think that's a particularly controversial idea. I mean, no one is seriously going to argue that they are repairable. So assuming there's a good reason for that, this is the standard explanation that I and other people would give to someone complaining about repairability - that Apple optimizes for other things.
Heck, it's the explanation that Apple gives: "Our devices are more reliable when we're the only people messing with their internals."
I had one of those problematic 2011 MBPs, and reballing/reflowing/baking was only a band-aid. For many users, the issue was known to recur after implementing the fix.
Even for the eventual repair order, Apple stuck in the same logic board with the same parts. I think the main difference was that those logic boards throttled the CPU to run cooler.
That early 2011 Macbook Pro was the first laptop I ever had (by any manufacturer) that died. I was lucky I still had the MBP around by the time Apple issued the repair order. I was able to swap out my dead logic board and eventually unload the laptop.
My AppleCare had lapsed the time it died. The logic board was already replaced once while it was under Applecare, and maybe 3 months after the first logic board replacement, the GPU flickering issues started recurring. At that point, I didn't have the board replaced again under AppleCare because it was clear they were going to replace the logic board with one that for all intents and purposes, had the same design (?) defect.
1) Louis Rossman has a vested interest in drumming up attention for his videos and has, on multiple occasions, used false statements and misleading practices to do so. Just like in the initial release video of the Touch Bar MBPs where he used an unshielded USB-A to USB-C cable and then complained that WiFi wasn't working. When used with a shielded cable, the issue went away and yet he never issued a correction or retraction. The issue was with the adapter he used, not the computer. Which leads directly to...
2) The issue stated in that video that required reballing was an issue with nVidia chips and affected all laptops that used that platform, both PC and Mac. To suggest that it was an engineering issue on Apple's part is disingenuous and only further reinforces the idea that he's not making these videos to be helpful but to drive traffic to his channel and repairs to his store.
3) Just look at how he used the Linus story to get the repair done at his shop. He has a pattern and, unlike what most people think, it's not altruistic. It's all to benefit him. I don't blame him but let's not pretend that he's doing this because he cares about users or the "right to repair" movement. He cares because he can mislabel and misconstrue the positions of the people against it to benefit his business. He'd love it if Apple was forced to provide him schematics and docs. He's in it for himself.
Sure, he's got his axe to grind. I mean, you can't watch Louis and not think he's got an axe to grind -- like maybe even literally in a makeshift workbench in his kitchen with a whetstone. But even if you watch his videos with the most cynical stance, it's still very eyebrow raising. Apple has had it's share of design 'doh! That's pretty much undeniable in gory detail -- far beyond the big headlines everyone knows about.
The problem is his arguments are devoid of context or proportion. He is looking with a microscope—both metaphorically and literally—at tiny details on a circuit board which don't seem to be a problem for >99% of Apple's customers. Are these points of failure really any more common on Apple devices than their competitors?
(There is a remarkable difference in mindset for the majority of MacBook and PC laptop owners. PC laptop owners will often just ditch their machine if it stops working. It's weird to say but I see it all the time.)
Now I don't doubt that most of what Louis says is correct. But I also appreciate much of it from Apple's perspective. If everyone in the independent repair industry was at least as competent as Louis is today, Louis would have a point. But they're not, so he doesn't. Besides, Apple's intransigence creates the market which Louis takes advantage of; he shouldn't complain.
Oh and I keep getting irritated every time Louis bangs on about those damn "refurbished" iPhone screen assemblies. He should know full well that the replacement glass used on these refurbished assemblies is cheap fragile non-Gorilla junk. I know multiple people who have had their iPhones independently repaired only to have the screen break again in a matter of days or weeks, under the most innocuous of circumstances. We are being scammed, and Louis defends the scammers.
>If everyone in the independent repair industry was at least as competent as Louis is today, Louis would have a point. But they're not, so he doesn't.
This is exactly the point that I feel like I constantly have to get across to people that support him. Louis is incredibly smart when it comes to electronics repair. It's exactly the reason that I know, for certain, that he's being disingenuous. He's too smart and too knowledgeable in most of these topics to gloss over these issues the way that he does unless he has an ulterior motive and it's clear that he does. Apple's fight against "Right to Repair" (which is misleadingly named anyways) isn't about people repairing their own devices, it never was. It's about preventing repair shops from doing those repairs and giving Apple a bad name because someone sees an iPhone where the screen fell off the front ("where the front's not supposed to fall off!").
I would be very surprised if Louis specifically endorsed non Gorilla glass replacements. It's possible that he does. I just watch his repair videos. As far as that goes: don't buy them, and don't get repairs from someone who would sell you one!
I know multiple people who have had their iPhones independently repaired only to have the screen break again in a matter of days or weeks, under the most innocuous of circumstances.
I realize this will be unpopular, but my observation about people who walk around with perennially broken glass on their phones, is that some people can't keep nice things. If your lifestyle is that rough, either use a completely enclosing polycarbonate case, or get a more robust 2nd phone. Expecting a computer made largely of glass to stand up to roughhousing contradicts common sense.
> I would be very surprised if Louis specifically endorsed non Gorilla glass replacements.
He pretty much does.
"So what they do is they take this screen ... and they replace the front glass layer. Most of the time the only thing wrong with the screen is the front glass layer is cracked. They put a new glass on it in China and then they sell it to us in the United States as a refurbished iPhone screen ... That is not a counterfeit."
I understand why Louis gets worked up about this particular issue, but he's just flat out wrong. These refurbs are dodgy as fuck. The assemblies as sold are counterfeit.
> some people can't keep nice things
Absolutely. I don't disagree, but this doesn't describe the people I spoke about. Accidents happen to all of us, even when we're particularly careful. I would never expect a glass computer to survive rough treatment but I do expect that when it's repaired with a "refurbished Apple screen" that it is made of substantially the same material as the original.
>I understand why Louis gets worked up about this particular issue, but he's just flat out wrong.
Which is exactly why Apple's distinction was the logo on the product. If it's not the exact same product, it shouldn't be able to bear their logo. Judges deciding that it doesn't matter because users will never see the logo are missing the point, imo. It only opens the door to all kinds of 3rd party parts and repairs where it's not the exact same product but you're paying for it as if it is.
Apple charges a huge premium for their machines because they supposedly integrate design and QA so that they don't ship with broken video cards like cheap commodity computers do.
I have had a Mac since the 512K days and they have always shipped with commodity components and Apple has never had some magic pixie dust that made them fail at lower rates than if they were in a PC. Nor have they ever individually tested every machine to guarantee it works.
Apple has and will always ship with broken video cards. And broken displays. And broken CPUs etc etc.
When did MacBooks became famous for "bad solder joints"?
Have you noticed how low the bar is for "famous" these days?
Whether it's some FaceTube "star" or tech "scandal" du jour, everything is massive these days and everyone on the planet is affected. Somehow, there are no small issues anymore.
My friend and I have a hobby of linking each other to headlines of "The Internet is Outraged about <X>" where the article body embeds 10 random tweets.
Wow. I'm pretty sure this is the first time in 8 years I've commented anything that's been flagged. I'm not entirely sure what "this" is.
Is it saying "don't go robbing the masses"? Is it agreeing with the parent's comment by means of a literary reference that I thought was an approachable and analogous representation of the phenomenon the parent was describing? Seems whoever flagged this read it in a wildly different way than I intended it. Would it not be "this" if I had worded the same point differently--e.g., "You know, you're right, parent. These events totally remind me of 1984's Two Minutes Hate."?
Genuinely curious what "this" is that I shouldn't do, dang, because I've spent 8 years intentionally avoiding doing it.
It's simple: the comment was unsubstantive and snarky. Bad combo, especially on flame-prone topics. We're looking for thoughtful comments here, as you know.
The issue isn't just the quality of a comment in its own right—it's the quality of what it leads to. These things compound.
there were a whole series of macbook pros from around 2010-2012 which had the nvidia discrete GPUs, BGA chips, come unsoldered from the motherboard on their own under normal usage.
Discrete GPU on my former MBP 2010 would regularly crash. Would need to force it on the integrated, slower though less power hungry Intel GPU.
Supposedly the whole Nvidia debacle is the reason why Apple hardware doesn't sport Nvidia anymore. Though you can get them to work sometimes with iGPU, its more safe to keep up with AMD.
I'm not sure about FreeSync vs Gsync though, and I suppose Moonlight doesn't work on AMD.
Note that bad solder joints only existed for 1-2 years and were solved long ago. AFAIK they were caused by NVidia (and MS) using untested lead-free solder balls without underfill.
Does that mean the whole unit will now run hotter before it starts to throttle? How is this going to impact some of those bad solder joints MacBooks are famous for?