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

The really disturbing part of the story.

[grimmjeeper]

I've been using computers since the 70's. I've seen every major manufacturer have problems over the years. Despite protests to the contrary, Apple is not immune. This is not the first time they've had software issues. It won't be the last. It doesn't make them any different than any other computer supplier. That's just the way things go.

But software issues aren't the real problem. 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". Some people will rant and rave. Some people will take the initial problem as an excuse to boycott Apple products in the future. Most likely though, people who cry "boycott" will calm down in a few minutes and accept the software upgrade push to fix the problem. After all, consumers are quick to be incensed but they're easily mollified by good customer support. That is, until Apple goes and deletes their posts. That's exactly what you want to not do. Everyone is going to see you do it. You're going to generate tons of bad publicity by yourself and you're going to drive away customers who would have otherwise accepted the fix when it's available.

This is an incredibly bad move on the part of Apple. I can't understand why in the world they would do it. That is, unless the stereotypes are true about no one being allowed to criticize Apple. And if that's the case, it's no wonder they're never able to break out of their niche.

Re:Does it now?

[d3vi1]

My Mid 2010 15" MBP (Core i7, 8GB, SSD) has no problems on Lion. My girlfriend's Late 2009 15" MBP (Core 2 Duo, 8GB, SSD) did occasionally lock after upgrading to Lion. What I've done to solve that was to disable HDD sleeping since it's pointless on SSDs anyway. I noticed that it happened only when the computer was idle for some time (at least enough for the screen to go blank) and when it did resume, I got a black screen with the rainbow spinning wheel.
The results are mixed, as can be expected with a brand new OS, but it's not a tragedy. You can always restore to the pre-upgrade backups that you should always make as a responsible admin.
All new OS versions have bugs, that's why we get the first 1-2 fixes quite soon after the release. Apple is already working on 10.7.2, as 10.7.1 is in QA by now.