Apple Issues Firmware Upgrade For MacBook Pro

Lucas123 writes "After declining comment on an apparent downgrade to the serial ATA hard drive interface in its new MacBook Pros, from 3Gbps to 1.5Gbps, Apple today issued a firmware upgrade to fix a problem reported by 'a small number of customers' using drives based on the latest SATA specification. Apple warned that it has not shipped drives operating at the higher-speed specification, saying, 'While this update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbit/sec, Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported.'"

Comments

We don't offer modern technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell is intrested in buying a sata 1 drive these days?

Even newegg only sells a handfull of sata1 drives anymore... ok... 3... they sell 3...

Not quite the hardware i'd expect for a macbook premium price.. What a rip.

Re:We don't offer modern technology?

[ifrag]

Most Sata II drives should be able to fall back to Sata I. In fact, I've bought Sata II drives which have come configured as Sata I drives (apparently the user was expected to use the manufacturer boot utility to reconfigure the drive). My newer Hitachi drive came set as Sata II by default though so maybe Hitachi stopped doing that. Could be the difference between their consumer and enterprise series.

Re:We don't offer modern technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

My sata 2 drives can hit a max xfer speed of 85MB/s max. 60MB/s average sustained. With burst rates upto 120MB/sec.

The sata 1 drives in the same machine come nowhere close to those speeds. Not by half. NCQ on sata2 is well worth it. If you're moving to sata drives. you would be stupid to use sata1 at all.

Really tho i don't care. If i was apple i'd be selling people the obsolete sata1 drives i got at a huge discount too. It's not like apple fanboys would notice. Or even consider it a bad thing if they did. They are the ideal customers to screw over. that perfect mix of trendy wannabes with more money than sense. it almost seems wrong NOT to take their money.

GO APPLE!

Really?

[LBArrettAnderson]

The SSDs that they offer don't read faster than 1.5Gbps? I know many don't, but even I (an apple hater for life who has to use one at work) thought they'd offer something closer to top of the line. Most new MLC and SLC SSDs read at 200MBps+ (1.6Gbps).

Battery Life?

[SixGame]

I still haven't seen a battery life comparison between the 1.5Gbit/sec and 3.0Gbit/sec options. Does their marketing still hold true, and if not, what's the total change in battery life?

Apple updates a driver!!

[brunes69]

Post to front page.

In other news, Apple has decided to start offering decaf in the office espresso machine.

Re:Great for apple

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They did: You just register some customer information with Apple here and a fedex delivers your hardware patch within a week or so... It's the Apple way.

Thank you!

[iamapizza]

Thank you for running this article informing me about a firmware upgrade for the MacBook Pro. It pleases me to no end that you are going out of your way from serving us with "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters" to do this.

I would, humbly, like to request that you run more stories about Apple's firmware updates or even rumors, product reviews and comparisons against other technologies, as I immensely enjoy perusing such unprejudiced information on a regular basis. It is gratifying to know that there are wonderful Apple-news websites such as Slashdot out there for the masses of us who have seen the light and can revel in the glory of their superior products.