MacBook Pro Problems - March 18, 2006
Despite all the articles of defective Mac Book Pros, we decided to order one. We were disappointed when we saw how many problems the unit had. The first problem encountered was the loud hissing sound, which occurs when the LCD’s brightness was turned up all the way and the CPU wasn’t being put to work. The sounds didn’t seem too bothersome at first, but became extremely irritating after working with it for about 30 minutes. The biggest problem we ran into was with the touchpad. The touchpad on the unit we received was smashed in the top and was pushed off to the right. It wasn’t noticeable at first glance, but after working with it awkwardly for a few minutes we could tell that something was wrong.
With all the reports on its awesome performance, it was hard to believe how slow our 2.0GHz Dual Core Processor with 1GB of ram was running. For some reason it took us over 10 seconds just to launch iTunes with no other programs running. Apple’s new Front Row application was also quite slow and buggy. After pressing the “menu” button on the remote a few times, nothing happened. But after about five minutes it suddenly started to take in all the previous actions we had given it, making it go crazy. The computer also kept saying the DVDs we put in were corrupt until the 3rd time we restarted the machine. Apple has a lot of work to do with this.
With so many issues, I suggest that to anyone who plans to purchase a MacBook to wait until a “rev. b” is released. A new version soon should be expected soon if too many units are running into these problems. Note: Apple may have some big announcements on April 1, 2006, which is their 30th anniversary.
Links: MacBook Pro | TUAW Report
Recent: A Faster MacBook Pro
posted by Sahas Katta in Hardware & Reviews
on 3/18/2006 at 12:11 PM with Comments (60) & TrackPings (1)
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60 comments.
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Victor says
As usual, the problem starts when you marry to a single type of technology. If I were to believe that either Windows or Mac OS X are the single most reliable option in the computing market, I’d show I have a serious brain damage and would demonstrate my lack of knowledge about computing.
Apple themselves are pretty aware of that, considering that they decided to allow Windows as part of their systems. That was definitely a good move.
Intel Core Duo is a recent technology that will take some time to be as stable as the Pentium M. When Apple did the move to Intel from PowerPC, part of the “justification” (as if they need to justify what they do to anyone) was the heating issues of the core. They mentioned themselves that PowerPC would never be able to manage the heat as good as Intel. That is what shows this is a first release, because Mac OS X still cannot handle properly that issue whereas Windows already has experience in this (a MacBook Pro running Windows does not suffer the same problems that Mac OS X).
If there is people who believe they should pay (a rather large amount of money by the way) to test Apple products in their first generation, good on them. Myself I prefer to wait for the next generation (when there will certainly be value for money, after all that people who went ahead and purchased the product already dealt with most of the issues) that will be fully compatible with Mac OS X and even with Windows (as by them Boot Camp won’t be in beta anymore) and other Operating Systems.
Trejkaz says
Aaaahahahahaha. Boot Camp a good idea? Don’t make me laugh. It’s a great idea, as long as you never want to get back into OSX ever again.
Victor says
And you payed premium price for a product still in Beta and without most of its applications available for it to run on it natively, now that’s a smart move.
Trejkaz says
I don’t particularly care if 100% of the applications I never use aren’t able to be run natively.
Tusz says
It seems like theres a lot more problems with the macbook pros than with the macbooks. Am i right or am i right? i havent gotten my macbook yet but i ordered it two days ago. do you think that it wont have too many problems with it. I hope its ok.
sahas says
Honestly, my experience with both the MacBook Pro and Macbook have been negative. We purchased both of them to review and both of them had issues. We surely can not say that these products are bad, because if they were Apple wouldn’t be in bussiness today. But both machines we got had overheating issues and the Macbook had tons of system failures, WiFi card malfunctioning, and the list goes on. However most of these issues are claimed to have been fixed. I suggest that if you get a Macbook, make sure you test everything out in the first few days and if you find any issues you’ll still have a chance to return it.
Jesse says
I got a MacBook Pro 1.8GHz several months ago. I’ve used PC’s most of my life, although my first computer was Macintosh Plus.
While I’ve had a couple problems people have described, none of them have bothered me very much _except_ the HEAT issue. It’s infruiating that my hands sweat if I use the computer for longer than 15-20 minutes. In fact, my entire body starts sweating and I feel like I need to turn down my A/C after a while! No joke. It’s obviously due to the heat transfer into the metal casing. While the debate over this being a defect or not can be argued for eternity, it is _highly_ annoying and inexcusible for a laptop which costs this much.
My only other complaint is the fact that Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc.) are not yet universal binaries. I use these products constantly for my job and their performance is absolutely horrid. While I was aware this would be an issue until Adobe releases the next version of these programs, it is very disappointing.
Otherwise.. I love it.
With sweaty palms,
Jesse
Trejkaz says
Won’t they let you exchange it? My MBP doesn’t have anywhere near that level of heat. The only thing it warms up is the underside.
sotiri says
Mine heated up so much it left burn marks on my hands… I took it back to Apple 4 days ago and still haven’t heard back from them. I’ll post their response when I get it.
Amy says
I have a comment on all the complaints about the adobe products. I am using the macbook pro and I don’t have any problems with any of these things you guys are all talking about and I’ve had mine since it was only 15″ display. If you guys are using the adobe products and they are crashing when you open more than one of them, well thats because you have more than one open and rosetta doesn’t like that all too much. But I have the 2GB hard drive, and the only time my programs crash is when I run microsoft programs, if I have word or excel or powerpoint open, then everything else crashes, but if I don’t have those open…its smooth sailing. I work with photoshop, indesign and illlustrator open at the same, and acrobat all while listening to my itunes and messing around in iPhotos, no problems at all, until I open the microsoft software. Doesn’t seem to me that the problem is adobe and the intel chip, i think its adobe and microsoft b/c i had that problem with my tower also.
I highly recommend having the 2gb processor though, when I went to the mac store, there was a lady there that uses the adobe products as well and everywhere else I looked it up said the same thing, as long as there’s enough processor speed, it should run fine (and it does), the problem is when it runs through rosetta it bogs down the processor, so if you have enough ram and processor speed, its smooth sailing.
Jesse says
A follow-up to some of the comments left after mine:
First off, everything I’ve read is that the heat issue I’m referring to is fairly typical for the MBP. However, if what Trejkaz says is true (that some don’t heat up except on the bottom), I may consider bringing it to an Apple store to see what can be done.
Regarding the Adobe comment from Amy above, I think there is half misunderstanding in my complaint and half of what you say I totally disagree with. For the first part, the Adobe products never crash on me (I never said they did). I said the performance was horrid and this is due to them not being universal binaries. They literally aren’t made to run on the Intel processor. The difference in speed between the 1.83GHz MBP and 2GHz MBP is negligible at best. I have 2GB of ram. Perhaps if you’re doing basic home-photo altering type stuff it runs fine for you, but I’m a professional graphic/web designer and perhaps I demand more. I use the identical Adobe products on my 3-year-old PC and they easily run twice as fast, with half as much RAM and a comparatively slower processor. The fact that Adobe products run horribly (meaning running MUCH slower than they should) under Intel-based Mac’s is one of the biggest complaints out there and happens to be my #2 if not my #1 complaint. I choose to do design work on my (somewhat) ancient PC instead of my brand new expensive MBP because of the performance, which is ridiculous.
All other programs I’ve updated to universal binaries from their previous PPC-based incarnations run nearly 2x as fast.. I can’t wait.
Chris says
I have had experience with 4 MBP’s now the newest ones only get half as hot as the first ones. (I can set the thing on my lap)
The battery died in my MBP within 4 months. the first signs extreme heat,
power failure,
airport cuts in and out,
noisy as hell,this started at 3 months
finally would not power on without being plugged-in.
I got a loner from the store while it was in for repair. It didn’t get too hot or have any of the original problems, but it scratched
1/2 the CD’s I put in to rip to iTunes.
When I got mine back (scratched up) it seemed fine for two weeks, now all the original problems are starting up again power failure airport loss heat, and they had replaced the battery.
It sickens me that I spent over $3000 on this computer including the warranty for a machine that has had more hardware problems than all the PCs’ I’ve owned combined.
The other two MBP’s I’ve used Where my Brothers. I talked him into a MBP before my problems aroused. He got a newer model and didn’t have the battery problems, but he got kernel errors. apple replaced it after 3 trips to the apple store. his newest one seems fine though he has not had it long enough to know for sure.
SO 1 in 4 problem free! NOT WORTH BUYING NOT YET!
PS: great OS. MY first apple leaps and bounds better than XP, the HARDWARE is CHEAP JUNK IN A PRETTY PACKAGE
Amy says
I wasn’t necessarily commenting on your complaint [jesse] just in general. I am a professional graphic designer/marketing director and I have no problems what-so-ever with my MBP, just offering my advice for those who want to buy them now…..I am doing WAY more than just home photo retouching…anyhow, just trying to give the macbook pro some praise. Its getting slammed on here and I think its a great product. From what I hear CS3 is set to come out in the spring so the adobe problems should go away for those who have them, fairly soon.
dana says
I got my macbook pro in july and it works great, i use adobe cs2 all the time and it only quits itself very occasionally otherwise it is fast. My one gets really hot, leaves read marks on my legs for 30 mins afterwards, i dont hear the fans come on either unless they are reallly quiet and on all the time so i dont notice them. Wondering if i have faulty fans. i do ha e hissing noises etc but not so loud really. i love it though, it works great!
Jesse says
I took my MBP into the Apple store today just to see what they’d say.. and not surprisingly, the “Genius” gave me Apple’s official line on these issues, saying the heat is within normal specs, etc. This was even after we let it run with the CPU at 100% for 30 minutes (it was very warm). When I wouldn’t let the issue go, explaining it’s not acceptable that a laptop I paid over $2400 for in May would make my hands sweat all over the computer and make my body temp rise to the point I needed to adjust the A/C, he finally told me: “A lot of people are really pissed off about this. To be honest, they all get hot. There’s not much we can do.” He _did_ offer to send it off and see if they can “fix” anything, and I might take him up on that when I get back from a trip to NYC this week.
Amy — I understand your desire to give the MBP some praise and I don’t disagree. As I stated before, I love almost everything about this computer _except_ the heat issue and the fact Adobe products run like sh*t. I’m a bit surprised you think the performance is acceptable if you do web/graphic design for a living, as my 3 year old much-lower-spec PC runs all my Adobe products _much_ faster, as did the Dell laptop I replaced with this MBP. Perhaps I have high demands, but for what I paid for this laptop, I feel I’m entitled to that. I could have paid half as much for a PC that runs Adobe products faster and doesn’t have the heat issues. Besides, this blog post is called “MacBook Pro Problems”, so it’s natural that’s what we’re focusing on. I love the MBP enough that I want to stick it out for the Adobe updates and see what I can do about this heat issue..
The “genius” told me getting something like this pad may help with the heat issue, but I’m really skeptical..what do you guys think?
http://tinyurl.com/2k6f3q
Trejkaz says
To be fair, the fact that Adobe products don’t run as well as they might is actually the fault of Adobe. You can add it to the list of other issues with their software, the most annoying of which is that in Illustrator, you can’t scroll sideways using the same method you would use to scroll in any other application.
tusz says
You must all be on drugs
ive had my macbook for tw weeks and have had none of the above problems
if i open EVERYTHING, and let it run for a few hours, it gets a little hot but it is quiet, cool, fast, hasnt crashed. i love it. You must all bbe really unlucky or just super picky!
Luc Beaudoin says
How do you know which rev you have? I assume it’s somewhere in the “about menu”. My airport is extremely flaky. It cut out after about 10 min too, but I think the cut only lasts a short while, but long enough for my server to boot me out and cause me to need to log back in.
Also, I’m not impressed by the display, but I hear it is a very common problem with other displays that use a common chip.
Hatchimoto Mishimuri says
I have two MacBook Pro laptops, and have had serious problems with both mag power cords. Apple needs to go back to te drawing board on this. The connector collects dirt and the connectors simply stop working. One of the cords pulled out of the connector and I had to attempt to repair it myself since it was one week past warranty and a new one is so expensive. Looks like a class action lawsuit coming if they’re not recalled.
Luc says
I haven’t run into the other listed problems. However, I have lots of trouble waking this unit from sleep. I have found that opening and closing the cover often resolves the issue. Sometimes I have been able to resolve it by unplugging and replugging USB devices.
Trejkaz says
LOL @ the idea of a class action lawsuit because one guy decided to put his power cords in a dirty place.
Gregory Stein says
I bought a MBP 3 weeks ago and was a little disappointed with service both in San Franciso and Atlanta. I now have problems with the “Chess” feature. It opened up fine the first two times and now closes after my first move. ???
Rachel says
The first MBP I purchased came with a major system failure. After a half an hour on the phone with Apple tech support they agreed with me that I had gotten a bad machine. So I’m now on my second MBP and have had a few issues.
1) It got extremely hot and burned my leg. It also burned the power cord. They agreed to replace the first power cord but they said that the “laptop” was not meant to be used in the lap and because I was using it wrong by using it in my lap that they were not liable for any harm that has come to me.
One work to Apple Computer — McDonalds –when you knowingly make a product that harms people then you become liable for that harm.
They’ve had issues with their power supplies for years, I should know I worked at Apple for seven years. A coworker of mine had his house BURN down because his power supply overhead and caught fire. Apple does these things and knows about the problems but they have almost as many lawyers as they do engineers.
So beside my laptop burning my leg, I have had the computer get into a mode where it comes to halt, takes very long to restart and is not usable. Again, (being a former quality engineer) have tracked this down to the heat. When the unit is heating up and the fan is spinning (this is in a 68 degree F room), the system just cannot cope. It’s clear this unit has major problems and in searching the internet I’m not alone.
It’s not going to be long apple before you burn some child with your product and then the public will care enough about your dangerous product to take action.
Trejkaz says
Pro-tip: if you feel something getting hot, don’t keep it on your leg until it burns you.
Rachel says
Yah I would agree Trejkaz. Unfortunately I have a high pain tolerance and didn’t notice until I put away my laptop and noticed my leg was very hot and burned. The burn only lasted a week but still, I would hope they would have worked out their heat issues by now.
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