OS X Lion Ships With Faulty NVidia Drivers

TeaCurran writes with this mildly ranty objection to the most recent Mac OS X update; several friends who have made the leap on their MacBook Pros have various other complaints, too, including system slowdowns that resemble crashes (except that their pointers still work) and recurring black screens for some configurations (with or without the kernel panics TeaCurran mentions) — what's been your experience? "Apple OS X Lion shipped with new NVidia video drivers that are causing anyone with a mid 2010 Macbook Pro to get a kernel panic every 5-10 minutes. Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.' NVidia has responded that the drivers are the responsibility of Apple so they won't deal with the issue. How a major hardware manufacturer can ship such a faulty product without getting much press about it is completely beyond me."

Comments

Again

[Billly Gates]

This isn't the first time this has happened.

Re:Again

[GizmoToy]

Nope.

My late 2009 27" iMac has faulty video drivers to this day, and Apple's acknowledged as much. A secondary display will display digital static every third or fourth time you wake it up. I gave detailed bug reports, and worked endlessly over a period of a year and a half with Apple engineers to track down the problem and get it fixed. I spent countless hours helping them track down the problem, going back and forth on the issue at least 10 times.

I got a notification two weeks ago that the problem was fixed, and updated drivers were released in the latest version of Snow Leopard (and Lion as well, I assume), but only if your hardware was manufactured after December 2010. They had the nerve to ask me to try it on new hardware to see if the problem is resolved.

So I spent all that time helping them, and they screwed me. This issue is a bigger problem than mine is, but I wouldn't expect anything but the very minimum possible to appease customers on anything but the absolute latest equipment.

Re:Again

[CharlyFoxtrot]

As I'll remind you the next time this comes up. Macs do fail and dont always work, next we'll deal with the myth of inherent security.

Again with the straw man arguments.

It really sucks when your own propaganda is used against you.

Propaganda ? Get some perspective. Take a deep breath and repeat: we're discussing a preference for certain technical solution, not a religion. Don't project your attitudes onto me.

BTW, Windows updates dont fail as badly as this. Have not done so for years. The difference is when an update with Windows or Linux buggers up the drivers, I can get the original driver from Nvidia/Inte/AMD and fix it myself.

Well here's the driver for Snow Leopard for the GeForce GT 330M that's in that Macbook, that might work. Of course once Nvidia releases a driver for Lion you could try installing that but once they do Apple will just distribute it through an update so there'd be no point looking for it yourself. You seem kind of ill informed, you really think there's no downloadable drivers on OSX ?

Re:Drivers are responsibility of NVidia

[Billly Gates]

One of the reasons for choosing a Mac over a PC is that it is the responsibility of Apple and you do not need to worry about drivers and incompatibilities. Its in all in an integrated platform where you plug it in and work.

This issue of responsibility of hardware driver issues is why Windows sucks and also why Windows XP is still popular. People are afraid to upgrade their pc's with the OS that it came with. You are rolling dice when upgrading drivers or operating systems.

Re:The really disturbing part of the story.

[Em Adespoton]

The real problem is right here:

Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'

Censoring technical discussions? Removing posts?

Seriously?

This is the kind of crap that really opens up Apple for criticism. Sure, it's a problem. But you deal with it by coming out and saying "we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it".

They are indeed censoring technical discussions, removing content that has nothing to do with the technical discussion. There are other places to post rants and complaints that are non-technical. Personally, I'd think this was a good thing, except for the fact that Apple's support forums have a dearth of technical discussion at the best of times. The result? MacFixit for the technical discussion, various other places for the rants, and Apple doesn't get the lively discussion and technical feedback on their own forums that they really need to improve things. Not sure how they can fix this though.

As for "you deal with it by coming out and saying 'we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it,'" that's exactly what the article says they've done. They're asking for any data customers can provide -- they're just not getting any; only rants and petitions.