Apple Confirms MacBook Pro Thermal Throttling, Issues Software Fix (theverge.com)

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Apple Confirms MacBook Pro Thermal Throttling, Issues Software Fix (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on Tuesday July 24, 2018 @05:22AM from the fixing-things dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For a week, we have been seeing reports that the newly released MacBook Pros run hot, which all kicked off after this video by Dave Lee. They run so hot, in fact, that the very fancy 8th Gen Intel Core processors inside them were throttled down to below their base speed. Apple has acknowledged that thermal throttling is a real issue caused by a software bug, and it's issuing a software update today that is designed to address it.

The company also apologized, writing, "We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems." Apple claims that it discovered the issue after further testing in the wake of Lee's video, which showed results that Apple hasn't seen in its own testing. In a call with The Verge, representatives said that the throttling was only exhibited under fairly specific, highly intense workloads, which is why the company didn't catch the bug before release. The bug affects every new generation of the MacBook Pro, including both the 13-inch and 15-inch sizes and all of the Intel processor configurations. It does not affect previous generations.

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Amazing by nehumanuscrede · 2018-07-24 05:26 · Score: 1, Insightful

It's amazing how remorseful companies are when they get caught doing something silly :|
Here's a thought:
Fix it before you release it to the public and you won't have to apologize and tarnish your reputation.
1. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 05:28 · Score: 0
  
  Here's a thought:
  No, here's a thought.
  These things are going to heat up to like a jillion degrees and some dude's dick is going to catch fire. Apple's plan all along? You decide.
2. Re:Amazing by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2018-07-24 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  >> some dude's junk is going to catch fire
  
  That's not what Apple's proprietary port is for.
3. Re:Amazing by supremebob · 2018-07-24 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  So, what does the software fix do? Throttle the CPU slightly less under heavy load?
4. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 05:47 · Score: 0
  
  Or ramp up the fans
5. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  Knowing Apple it probably just re-enables the fan they deliberately turned off to make it quieter.
6. Re:Amazing by bluefoxlucid · 2018-07-24 05:49 · Score: 1
  
  They could have used an aluminum case and attached the board to that as a heatsink.
  
  --
  Support my political activism on Patreon.
7. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-24 05:50 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It's amazing how remorseful companies are when they get caught doing something silly :|
  Here's a thought:
  Fix it before you release it to the public and you won't have to apologize and tarnish your reputation.
  It was actually Intel's fault. They didn't change the TDP for the 6-core CPUs. MacRumors has a more complete (and less biased) Report, encompassing three Articles:
  https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
  https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
  https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
  Fortunately, it didn't require a hardware rev. to fix...
  Kudos to Apple for getting right on this issue, instead of issuing denials. No "You're holding it wrong" here!
8. Re:Amazing by HornWumpus · 2018-07-24 05:51 · Score: 1
  
  Throttle it/spin fans sooner, so the CPU maintains it's nominal base speed.
  
  --
  John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
9. Re:Amazing by bobbied · 2018-07-24 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  Here's a thought:
  No, here's a thought.
  These things are going to heat up to like a jillion degrees and some dude's [junk] is going to catch fire. Apple's plan all along? You decide.
  If you have a problem with that, you are holding it wrong.
  
  --
  "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
10. Re: Amazing by saloomy · 2018-07-24 06:02 · Score: 0
  
  These computers only have USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, which aren't proprietary. If that's what floats your boat, and your biology fits.... actually never mind
11. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 06:06 · Score: 0
  
  Apple either knew of the issue before they shipped, and did nothing
  Or didn't do adequate testing before they shipped.
  Either way Apple is culpable as well. In fact many of those mac rumor comments support that position. Apple's hands are not clean here.
12. Re:Amazing by Anubis+IV · 2018-07-24 06:08 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  According to the official statement from Apple (emphasis mine):
  
  Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro.
  So, it sounds like they forgot to digitally sign their firmware, which led to the fans or whatnot refusing to take orders, which led to the system running far too hot. That's why they're able to fix it with a software update in the first place.
13. Re:Amazing by MikeMo · 2018-07-24 06:18 · Score: 1
  
  According to TFA, there was an "missing digital key in the firmware" which prevented it from working properly.
14. Re:Amazing by American+AC+in+Paris · 2018-07-24 06:26 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  It's amazing how remorseful companies are when they get caught doing something silly :|
  Here's a thought:
  Fix it before you release it to the public and you won't have to apologize and tarnish your reputation.
  ...so basically, for any sufficiently complex venture involving human beings, never release it to the public.
  
  --
  Obliteracy: Words with explosions
15. Re:Amazing by zifn4b · 2018-07-24 06:37 · Score: 1
  
  No, here's a thought.
  These things are going to heat up to like a jillion degrees and some dude's dick is going to catch fire. Apple's plan all along? You decide.
  So what you're saying is, Apple is involved in a Liberal Feminist conspiracy?
  
  --
  We'll make great pets
16. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 06:53 · Score: 0
  
  It was actually Intel's fault. They didn't change the TDP for the 6-core CPUs.
  Yep, those bastards didn't tell them to do a simple video encode to max out the cores and see if it'd throttle in one minute. How could Apple possibly imagine and test for a possible workload like video editing and encoding on a Mac? I mean, who does those things?
  
  Kudos to Apple for getting right on this issue, instead of issuing denials.
  Next up Apple can run over your dog and fuck your wife. No denials! It's all good.
17. Re:Amazing by Zmobie · 2018-07-24 07:02 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  It's amazing how remorseful companies are when they get caught doing something silly :|
  Here's a thought:
  Fix it before you release it to the public and you won't have to apologize and tarnish your reputation.
  ...so basically, for any sufficiently complex venture involving human beings, never release it to the public.
  Truth. It still confounds me that people don't understand the idea that these projects don't have unlimited time and budget to fix every issue imaginable before release. Speaking generally, not all companies and actors are inherently evil (though if left to their own devices many would trend that direction). If I spent the amount of time and/or resources that some people demand working on finding every single tiny issue (that a lot of times get blown out of proportion) then either the end result would be so ungodly cost prohibitive that no one would buy it or the resultant would be obsolete by the time it could be released.
  I have a pretty strong dislike of Apple and admittedly only passing familiarity with this particular issue, but it is unfair to jump to that conclusion they didn't do any due diligence and just shoved the product out the door. This particular issue, there is a good chance that it was simple oversight or failure to perform proper QA procedure, making the chastising for this a bit more valid. It is also very possible that they genuinely did what they would normally and missed an issue. I'm not making an excuse for them, but without tangible evidence that they were being sloppy this is really an unfair assessment.
18. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 07:06 · Score: 0
  
  Everyone knows that the MacRumors site is less biased when it comes to Apple stuff. No question.
19. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 07:30 · Score: 0
  
  You're holding your junk wrong.
20. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-24 07:32 · Score: 1
  
  Fix it before you release it to the public and you won't have to apologize and tarnish your reputation.
  It's way, way more important for them to meet their hardware release dates. In 2 weeks no one will even remember this and they know it.
21. Re:Amazing by radarskiy · 2018-07-24 07:34 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  "It was actually Intel's fault. They didn't change the TDP for the 6-core CPUs."
  The i9 SKU was intentionally designed to have the same TDP as the 4-core i7 SKU.
  Not changing the TDP isn't a mistake, it's the entire point. None of the MacRumors articles you link to support your implication that not changing the TDP was a fault.
22. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 07:42 · Score: 0
  
  Instructions unclear, dick on fire
23. Re:Amazing by nehumanuscrede · 2018-07-24 07:42 · Score: 2
  
  Confounded or not, it's poor practice to release a product without sufficient testing to ensure it's going to perform as expected.
  I'm not just picking on Apple either. It seems in a rush to get the product out the door, many companies do a half-assed job at testing their products because the current attitude is " We'll just issue a fix later and blame the junior programmer ". This is especially evident in any game / software that's released today.
  It is for this reason I typically wait at least six months before buying whatever new " thing " it is I'm buying to ensure the unpaid beta testers have done their job and identified all the bugs that were still present on release.
24. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-24 07:44 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Either way Apple is culpable as well. In fact many of those mac rumor comments support that position. Apple's hands are not clean here.
  All hardware ships with buggy software to some degree or another. And this is extremely minor as it exhibits itself under very specific scenarios and in most cases artificial workloads and the end result is a slightly slower CPU and nothing else. We're not talking about a data leak here. This only makes the news because every tech "journalist" is looking for the latest Apple scandal to garner a bunch of clicks / views.
  It would have been much, MUCH worse for Apple to miss their hardware release date. No company, when faced with a choice of shipping hardware with a minor software bug that can be patched later, and slipping a hardware release would choose the latter.
25. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-24 07:49 · Score: 1
  
  "It was actually Intel's fault. They didn't change the TDP for the 6-core CPUs."
  The i9 SKU was intentionally designed to have the same TDP as the 4-core i7 SKU.
  Not changing the TDP isn't a mistake, it's the entire point. None of the MacRumors articles you link to support your implication that not changing the TDP was a fault.
  From the first MacRumors article:
  https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
  "These conditions may be presenting themselves due to the new six-core design of the i9 CPU featured here. While Intel increased the core count of the CPU, they did not increase the thermal design power (TDP), or the amount of dissipated power manufacturers should plan to have to cool for a proper CPU design. This is an issue because this number usually reflects normal usage, and does not account for turbo modes. It's also likely it can exceed the draw of previous four core CPUs given the similarity of clock speeds and process nodes they are featured on. "
  Sure sounds like an engineering oversight on Intel's part to me.
26. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-24 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  They could have used an aluminum case and attached the board to that as a heatsink.
  What do you think the Unibody Macbook Pro case is made from, anyway?
  Idiot.
27. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-24 07:53 · Score: 1
  
  Everyone knows that the MacRumors site is less biased when it comes to Apple stuff. No question.
  It's less biased than Slashdot; that's for SURE.
28. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 07:56 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, blame Intel for Apple not testing their thermal performance.
  Sounds like their fix is it tell the CPU to run at a lower tdp target. So the same CPU in an Apple laptop will be slower than others
29. Re:Amazing by MightyYar · 2018-07-24 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not just picking on Apple either.
  You aren't, but there is a tone of that on here. If Apple held the parts back longer for testing, people would bitch about how Apple's offerings are behind their competition. Like it or not, the market demands some balance between buggyness and performance. People probably undervalue stability and overvalue new shiny, but Apple is not really in a position to change that. Cars had useless fins way back in the 50s.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
30. Re:Amazing by avandesande · 2018-07-24 08:06 · Score: 1
  
  If you actually read any of those links everyone is blaming apple not intel.
  
  --
  love is just extroverted narcissism
31. Re:Amazing by avandesande · 2018-07-24 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  Except that Apple has gotten dinged pretty badly lately for screwing up with throttling issues. This should be one area they would test extensively.
  
  --
  love is just extroverted narcissism
32. Re:Amazing by jellomizer · 2018-07-24 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  There is only so much remorse a company can feel.
  Look there is a problem.
  Next week,
  We fixed the problem.
  The time and effort for any company to be perfect would mean no product will get released and will constantly being tested and regression tested.
  The CPU gets hot, it slowed down due to Intels spec. Apple figured they were being a bit too safe with the threshold so does a software update.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
33. Re: Amazing by bobmagicii · 2018-07-24 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  "it runs so hot we had to throttle it but we fixed that so now it will just melt as intended cuz you got the applecare plan too amirite"
34. Re:Amazing by jellomizer · 2018-07-24 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  Probably a bit of both.
  The specs of these 8th gen chips have 2 something ghz speed with 4 soomething ghz speed max. In general these chips have variable speed, based on thermal. This isn't really new. But unlike the old chips which you could overclock until they melt, there is some safety measures in them.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
35. Re:Amazing by bluefoxlucid · 2018-07-24 08:30 · Score: 1
  
  A mixture of unobtanium and fairy dust, contributing to its excessive price. It is, in any case, not thermally-coupled to the CPU.
  
  --
  Support my political activism on Patreon.
36. Re:Amazing by dwywit · 2018-07-24 09:32 · Score: 2
  
  "very specific scenarios" "artificial workloads"
  This is marketed as a high-performance laptop, yes? The sort of machine to be used for heavy workloads like video editing, so why wasn't it tested under the workloads it's supposed to be good for?
  Video editing is exactly one of the things this is aimed at. Rendering is a normal part of VE, so it's not a very specific scenario, nor is it an artificial workload.
  
  --
  They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
37. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 09:52 · Score: 0
  
  All hardware ships with buggy software to some degree or another.
  Non-sequitur bullshit. Artificial workloads can thermal throttle the CPU (Linus Tech Tips did a live show where the CPU package was hitting 100C. This is pretty clearly a failure of hardware testing to verify they have a sufficient heatsink/cooling solution. Whether buggy software is part of it doesn't detract from that. I'll retract the above if it can be shown the new update will reach max rated boost speed without throttle outside of Intel's specs (which nominally can't run boost speed on all cores simultaneously and is the sort of throttling expected).
  
  And this is extremely minor as it exhibits itself under very specific scenarios and in most cases artificial workloads and the end result is a slightly slower CPU and nothing else.
  Slower than the cheaper model system. That's a bit more than "and nothing else".
  
  We're not talking about a data leak here.
  Sure, we're not talking about SpectreRSB because no one is expecting Apple to be dealing with that. We are talking about something Apple could have reasonable tested for.
  
  This only makes the news because every tech "journalist" is looking for the latest Apple scandal to garner a bunch of clicks / views.
  Yep, can't imagine why. I mean, it's not like Apple's MacBook Pro costs an assload of money so the expectations for QA should be pretty fucking high. It's almost as if Apple charges that much based on their reputation for which they receive extra scrutiny. Those evil tech "journalist" bastards!
  
  It would have been much, MUCH worse for Apple to miss their hardware release date. No company, when faced with a choice of shipping hardware with a minor software bug that can be patched later, and slipping a hardware release would choose the latter.
  False dichotomy. If what others are saying is true that the CPU has a higher TDP then it's more than a minor software. Yes, a software workaround might minimize the throttling, but if it can still be recreated under a possible workload because of a failure to have a sufficient cooling solution, then that's a problem. I know that I personally would be pretty pissed to know because of a design flaw my CPU can't maintain maximum performance on a pretty low end system. For a top of the line system? That's utter shit.
  Again, if you can prove that this software fix actually resolves the problem and doesn't merely mitigate it, then I'll retract the above. Arguing that artificial workloads can trigger bugs is no real excuse when those sorts of artificial workloads should have been used for QA testing at some point. Simply put, though, people have seen throttling on Final Cut Pro Video Encoding. I'm sure if you try hard enough, you can try to claim any task is an artificial workload, though.
38. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 10:02 · Score: 0
  
  A laptop is a relativel closed system. I guarantee you the CPU is thermally coupled to the chassis.
39. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-24 10:22 · Score: 1
  
  If you actually read any of those links everyone is blaming apple not intel.
  According to this intelligent-sounding Slashdot user, there was an errata in the CPU datasheet.
  https://apple.slashdot.org/com...
  People are stupid. They blame Apple for EVERYthing.
  Or are you new here?
40. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 10:46 · Score: 0
  
  They should test their expensive turd no matter what the datasheet shows.
41. Re:Amazing by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 10:50 · Score: 1
  
  "It was actually Intel's fault. They didn't change the TDP for the 6-core CPUs."
  The i9 SKU was intentionally designed to have the same TDP as the 4-core i7 SKU.
  Not changing the TDP isn't a mistake, it's the entire point. None of the MacRumors articles you link to support your implication that not changing the TDP was a fault.
  
  Not changing the TDP isn't a mistake, it's the entire point.
  But the TDP did change and Intel evidently lied about it. Come on. In which universe does a 4 core part have the same TDP as an 8 core part, other things being equal?
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
42. Re:Amazing by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 10:58 · Score: 1
  
  According to this intelligent-sounding Slashdot user, there was an errata in the CPU datasheet.
  https://apple.slashdot.org/com...
  People are stupid. They blame Apple for EVERYthing.
  Apple is blamed because Apple deserves to be blamed. Apple shipped this product without testing it and/or ignored the test results.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
43. Re: Amazing by guruevi · 2018-07-24 11:01 · Score: 1
  
  Most likely Intel's code. The entire chipset is Intel, not Apple, they only put the wires in the right places. You can run Windows or Linux on it which would have the same issues.
  
  --
  Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
44. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 11:05 · Score: 0
  
  Wrong.
  It may have been Intel's blunder, but internal testing should have caught this. I mean, one of the repeated use-cases of these laptops (especially with the eGPU) is video editing. Literally everyone tests under maximum load as it needs to hold up.
  Sounds like the mothership fucked up somewhere.
45. Re:Amazing by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 11:07 · Score: 2
  
  If Apple held the parts back longer for testing, people would bitch about how Apple's offerings are behind their competition.
  And people would be right in both cases. The underlying problem is, Apple management consciously decided to let the PC offerings rot because that revenue is shrinking while handset revenue is growing. However little sense that makes, that's what they did, then one day they suddenly woke up, saw they needed the PC revenue to make the next quarterlies, and panicked to the extent that best practices were thrown out the window in the rush to catch up from a place they never should have been in.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
46. Re:Amazing by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 11:09 · Score: 1
  
  In 2 weeks no one will even remember this and they know it.
  Oh sure, how right. For example, nobody remembers "you're holding it wrong".
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
47. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 11:11 · Score: 0
  
  I have an IT administrator on Facebook that's a huge APL fan. He recently posted about "Microsoft's patch tuesday" giving him grief.
  Someone else posted that his IT department tests patches before releasing them via WSUS and causes no problems on his end.
  It seems like APL fans hate companies who don't internally test things before releasing to public. The proper answer is: Yes, intel fucked up, but APL shouldn't have used their product or noted that this was happening and said to Intel: WTF YO.
48. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 11:13 · Score: 0
  
  A company like APL known for thier User Experience and having over $200b in their bank... can't be trusted to test their 1 laptop reasonably well.
  Remember, we're not talking about an obscure bug here. It was painfully obvious.
49. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 11:28 · Score: 0
  
  apple probably copied the throttling code from the iphone. Reuasablity and all.
50. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-24 11:42 · Score: 1
  
  Again, if you can prove that this software fix actually resolves the problem and doesn't merely mitigate it, then I'll retract the above.
  And if you can prove that it won't, I retract what I said.
  All we have to go on now is that Apple said it would. Being that I doubt Apple would claim something publicly that is clearly false and knowing there's a giant community just waiting to prove them wrong, I tend to believe them.
51. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-24 11:48 · Score: 1
  
  Oh sure, how right. For example, nobody remembers "you're holding it wrong".
  I know right! Apple's stock has TANKED due to "you're holding it wrong". It's cited EVER DAMN DAY as a reason to avoid Apple products. Touche my friend!
  So anyway, you remember the things you remember, and not the ones you don't. Do you think if we googled for a few minutes we could find a few Apple missteps that you didn't quote here today, maybe proving my point? How about the 1993 Macintosh TV! What a flop, people STILL haven't gotten past that screw up! Or remember the Ping social media service? I don't, but still, it shows how these mistakes really stick with us and hurt the Apple brand.
52. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 12:05 · Score: 0
  
  Thank you. The voice of reason. Fuck all the apple idiots that are so quick to blame everyone but apple. It's apple product they are responsible. Too bad the apple police have to run in and shout down everyone who puts the blame where it should be.
53. Re:Amazing by NewtonsLaw · 2018-07-24 12:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Even if it was an error in the Intel data-sheet, didn't Apple actually *test* this machine under load before they released it?
  Did they not see for themselves that there was severe thermal throttling going oin and say "that's not right" - before sending it back to the lab for some changes?
  It would appear not.
54. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 12:41 · Score: 0
  
  And shills like you never hold apple accountable for their errors.
55. Re:Amazing by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 12:41 · Score: 1
  
  AAPL stock is treading air for the moment by relying on sucking an ever increasing amount of money from its steadily diminishing market slice. If you want an idea what could go wrong with that, look at 2008 wheb AAPL tanked by more than half because everybody decided at the same time that they better not risk their disposable income on nonessentials.
  For now, AAPL support relies on an unbroken ten year runup of the economy, that encourages diehard fans to replace their products frequently and sink a lot of money into accessories and overpriced apps they don't really need, but that could turn south any time. Then guess what happens to this graph. Are you a betting man? Want to load up on AAPL today, hoping that Trump's worldwide trade war doesn't suddenly dry up the carriage trade?
  We don't need any 2008 style worldwide meltdown to trigger that scenario, just a standard recession, which is overdue.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
56. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 12:48 · Score: 0
  
  A laptop is a relativel closed system. I guarantee you the CPU is thermally coupled to the chassis.
  Coupling the heatpipe and heatsink assembly to the case on something as large as a laptop is quite hard to do with any kind of decent transfer coefficient. You cant use highly conductive thermal epoxy or not even the manufacturer can disassemble it, and the flex in such a large frame prevents use of thin film solutions like thermal paste or the foil/paste thermal pads used in high power density servers.
  If you take a look at iFixIt's teardowns you'll see little to no coupling between the expensively produced metal case and the heatpipe assembly.
  How do I make a claim for the guarantee you've offered? I would like my money back if possible. Please transfer 0 bitcoin to my wallet address.
57. Re:Amazing by MightyYar · 2018-07-24 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think you can really fall behind by skipping an Intel dev cycle. You need to start from the new chipset either way. These laptops all come out of the same factories and are all based on the same reference designs - granted Apple does a little more customization than most, but it's not like they are starting from scratch... the newest machines all look essentially like the last generation.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
58. Re:Amazing by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 13:21 · Score: 2
  
  So, you think that this fiasco is not because of Apple management panicking and forcing a impossibly short timeframe on engineering, so best practices practices were tossed to the wind? See, everybody else who offers Intel's 8 core part puts it in a realistic enclosure. Apple management seemed to think they could wave a magic wand and change physics.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
59. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 14:51 · Score: 0
  
  According to you apple assholes its concentrated unicorn farts
60. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 14:55 · Score: 0
  
  Ya like when apple said it was not throttling iphones; oh yes but we are but its for your own good. History has shown just what kind of a company apple is.
61. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 14:56 · Score: 0
  
  You are wrong. Or you are lying. You pick.
62. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 14:59 · Score: 0
  
  Sounds like apple was going for deniability through incompetence.
63. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 15:14 · Score: 0
  
  there was a missing digital key in the firmware that impacted the thermal management system. the patch adds the key.
64. Re:Amazing by MightyYar · 2018-07-24 16:45 · Score: 1
  
  No I think you are actually not being fair to Apple, which generally has decent quality. No need to be subjective - just Google for surveys and such. Apple is always at or near the top when it comes to quality. Consumer Reports has them at #1. PC Magazine ranks them even with HP and Toshiba. Square Trade has them at #4. And so on. You are talking about this like it was a hardware design problem, and it seems to have been a problem with an unsigned driver. It's a stupid mistake, but I mean, they fixed it and bugs do happen.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
65. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 16:47 · Score: 0
  
  Are you saying they're not?
66. Re:Amazing by BronsCon · 2018-07-24 16:49 · Score: 1
  
  The issue isn't the CPU overheating, it's the VRMs, which are underspecced for the amount of power they're being asked to put out passively cooled, have no active cooling. Ramping up the fans won't help, so it has to be software throttling.
  
  --
  APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
67. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 16:55 · Score: 0
  
  According to the official statement from Apple (emphasis mine):
  
  Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro.
  So, it sounds like they forgot to digitally sign their firmware, which led to the fans or whatnot refusing to take orders, which led to the system running far too hot. That's why they're able to fix it with a software update in the first place.
  The firmware's rogue.
68. Re:Amazing by Zmobie · 2018-07-24 17:07 · Score: 1
  
  Don't get me wrong, I agree that it is bad practice, but I disagree with the generalization that all or even most of these companies are doing that. The sheer complexity of tech now a days creates huge volumes of tests that essentially just continue to layer on top of each other. Rarely do the testing requirements for a new release decrease especially given how feature hunger almost all markets have become with the drive into insane fringe technologies (AI is cool and all, but it is in infancy for almost all real applications). Granted these technologies will eventually not be fringe anymore, but I digress. My main point with all this is that test cases rapidly increase, while quality and testing/release time are expected to stay exactly the same or even improve significantly.
  This then creates the real problem that almost no one really looks at unless they are the ones trying to do the testing (or in my case, improve that testing time), and that is investment in better test tools, methodologies, and technology. This sometimes ends up viewed as strictly overhead expenditure creating a situation where what you said comes to fruition and they simply cut back on what they are going to test and how thoroughly. I think many larger companies are getting on board with this investment in improved testing efforts and strategies though, and sometimes things like a simple thermal throttling issue are going to fall through and piss people off.
  Does this excuse them for it? No, in all honesty they probably did just cut back on how thoroughly they tested this hardware, but I don't think it is fair to say this in a general sense.
69. Re:Amazing by Zmobie · 2018-07-24 17:26 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is it is really all blind conjecture. They had/have a problem, one that from the outside seems very easy to find and horribly obvious, but there are lots of reasons this could have been overlooked in a testing environment. Like I said, I don't want to necessarily make excuses for because they did screw up whether from incompetence, laziness, or just a honest mistake. It just really doesn't seem fair to make a blanket statement about it is my point.
70. Re:Amazing by Zmobie · 2018-07-24 17:29 · Score: 1
  
  Well if that is the case maybe it is more warranted than I initially thought. As I said, I only have a passing familiarity with the issue and don't generally keep up with common trends with Apple hardware (I dislike most of their security practices and the walled garden ecosystem, so no point keeping up with it especially when I haven't written anything for any of their OSs since college).
71. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 18:01 · Score: 0
  
  Being that I doubt Apple would claim something publicly that is clearly false and knowing there's a giant community just waiting to prove them wrong, I tend to believe them.
  Except what are they claiming they fixed? That all thermal throttling is caused by this one software bug? Or that this one software bug is responsible for a certain class of throttling? If it's the latter then they can fix the software bug and when there's still thermal throttling they can argue it's working as designed. They already put in the weasel words "only exhibited under fairly specific, highly intense workloads" while ignoring that people have found the system throttles after about a minute of video encoding with Final Cut Pro. So, I can totally see there being a rise in performance and Apple continuing to deflect that it's an incomplete fix.
  Seriously, Apple has a long history of arguing stuff is "by design" which rationally shouldn't be. It's an argument that's nearly unfalsifiable.
72. Re:Amazing by AmiMoJo · 2018-07-24 19:41 · Score: 1
  
  Where did you get all that from? The articles you linked to only say
  
  While there were many theories as to what was causing the throttling, Apple has discovered that there was a missing digital key in the firmware that impacted the thermal management system, driving down clock speeds under heavy thermal loads. This is what has been addressed in today's update.
  
  No idea what a "digital key" is in this context. Maybe they mean an entry in the thermal management lookup table, like a key/value pair or something.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
73. Re:Amazing by thegarbz · 2018-07-24 20:45 · Score: 1
  
  One of the example fixes that has been published had nothing to do with fans as much as it had to do with limits imposed on the CPU management being setup incorrectly compared to the actual design of the thermal management leading to the CPU to not actually thermally throttle but to engage the power limit throttle despite having current and thermal capacity to spare.
  I wouldn't read too much into Apple's official statement in that it looks like it is deliberately dumbed down for consumption by the media.
74. Re: Amazing by thegarbz · 2018-07-24 20:46 · Score: 1
  
  Intel's API, not Intel's code. The limits and thermal properties are set entirely by the vendor, not by Intel. Intel provide the chip and the specs and it's up to the vendor to provide the power and thermal solutions, and to set any limits as a result.
75. Re:Amazing by thegarbz · 2018-07-24 20:47 · Score: 1
  
  It was actually Intel's fault.
  
  The spec was Intel's fault. Releasing a laptop to the public without as much as a simple performance test is very much Apple's fault any way you cut it.
76. Re:Amazing by Rockoon · 2018-07-24 21:35 · Score: 1
  
  This is Intel so we cant just assume the VRM's are on the motherboard. Intel has in some cases put VRM's under the cpu's lid since at least Haswell. In such a case, ramping up fan speeds could easily help.
  
  Honestly I think being VRM-limited is hilarious regardless of where they are. Only overclockers are supposed to hit that wall.
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
77. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 22:48 · Score: 0
  
  Then people will start complaining about the noise and complain about a higher power consumption after the patch (which will only be like a few minutes difference if that).
  It really boils down to this; Consumers want a thin laptop. They want it to be fast. Needless to say a mass majority of the consumers do not understand thermodynamics and what problems arise when you try to jam so much into a small space that restricts airflow. This goes right down the alley of All-in-one computers. Same problem. They just don't understand you can't have it both ways.
  The only solution to this problem is cryogenics. That will bring up its own host dangers, impracticality and financial obstacles.
78. Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 23:53 · Score: 0
  
  Oh the butthurt!! It hurts.. the butt!!
  Word of advice: stop trying to defend beloved Apple when they are obviously on the wrong.
79. Re:Amazing by radarskiy · 2018-07-25 00:55 · Score: 1
  
  "In which universe does a 4 core part have the same TDP as an 8 core part, other things being equal?"
  You do die level cherry picking to fit a small volume top bin, the same way you get i7 SKUs with the same core count and TDP but slower clocks.
  The old 4 core i7-7920HQ has a core clock of 3.1 GHz and a TDP of 45W: https://ark.intel.com/products...
  The new 6 core i9-8950HK has a core clock of 2.9GHz and a TDP of 45W: https://ark.intel.com/products...
80. Re:Amazing by radarskiy · 2018-07-25 01:03 · Score: 1
  
  "Sure sounds like an engineering oversight on Intel's part to me."
  You are still assuming that the part does not meet the TDP specified, rather than Apple failing to load the correct V-F curves for that SKU via firmware.
81. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-25 02:11 · Score: 0
  
  "MacRumors"
  "(and less biased)"
  Lol, uh, no. Forgive me if I highly doubt their articles and conclusions.
82. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-25 03:17 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah they have a terrible history with it. Haswell had built-in. Skylake and newer Lakes went back to having them on the motherboard instead. Skylake-X the HEDT part has them integrated *again*. Hilariously enough Kaby Lake-X doesn't have them and they fit the same motherboards. This leads to a situation in which a mobo can burn a Kaby Lake-X chip if it was previously booted with a Skylake-X inserted. This was fixed only recently in BIOS updates and the entire Kaby Lake-X line is deprecated anyway.
83. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-25 03:29 · Score: 1
  
  According to this intelligent-sounding Slashdot user, there was an errata in the CPU datasheet.
  https://apple.slashdot.org/com...
  People are stupid. They blame Apple for EVERYthing.
  Apple is blamed because Apple deserves to be blamed. Apple shipped this product without testing it and/or ignored the test results.
  Listen to yourself.
  Do you REALLY think Apple did either of those things?
84. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-25 03:42 · Score: 1
  
  Where did you get all that from? The articles you linked to only say
  
  While there were many theories as to what was causing the throttling, Apple has discovered that there was a missing digital key in the firmware that impacted the thermal management system, driving down clock speeds under heavy thermal loads. This is what has been addressed in today's update.
  No idea what a "digital key" is in this context. Maybe they mean an entry in the thermal management lookup table, like a key/value pair or something.
  From the first linked MacRumors article:
  "While Intel increased the core count of the CPU, they did not increase the thermal design power (TDP), or the amount of dissipated power manufacturers should plan to have to cool for a proper CPU design. This is an issue because this number usually reflects normal usage, and does not account for turbo modes. It's also likely it can exceed the draw of previous four core CPUs given the similarity of clock speeds and process nodes they are featured on. "
  Sounds like Intel messed-up in their docs. Should Apple have caught it in testing? Maybe yes, maybe no.
85. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-25 04:01 · Score: 1
  
  It was actually Intel's fault.
  The spec was Intel's fault. Releasing a laptop to the public without as much as a simple performance test is very much Apple's fault any way you cut it.
  I'm sure Apple did plenty of performance testing; but apparently not enough.
86. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-25 04:08 · Score: 1
  
  "Sure sounds like an engineering oversight on Intel's part to me."
  You are still assuming that the part does not meet the TDP specified, rather than Apple failing to load the correct V-F curves for that SKU via firmware.
  V-F curves?
  Voltage/Frequency???
  Well, whatever it was, the Patch seems to have pretty much fixed the issue:
  https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
87. Re:Amazing by AmiMoJo · 2018-07-25 04:14 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds like Apple didn't read the docs properly... Based on the time frame for developing the laptop and the timeframe for the i9, they probably did most of the work using older CPUs and then swapped out near the end without remembering to check for the increased turbo mode heat dissipation.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
88. Re:Amazing by TheFakeTimCook · 2018-07-25 05:45 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds like Apple didn't read the docs properly... Based on the time frame for developing the laptop and the timeframe for the i9, they probably did most of the work using older CPUs and then swapped out near the end without remembering to check for the increased turbo mode heat dissipation.
  That's entirely possible, depending when they had access to Development Samples of the i9 variant used, and when the Datasheet was updated.
  But it still sounds like Intel was trying to hit a particular TDP and gamed the specs to paint a prettier picture than was likely encountered in real-world use.
89. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-25 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  Seems like we didn't have to wait for long for an answer:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
  
  Again, if you can prove that this software fix actually resolves the problem and doesn't merely mitigate it, then I'll retract the above.
  ... ?
90. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-25 07:10 · Score: 0
  
  Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro.
  How is this not noticed during initial testing?
  Stressing a system is hardly difficult or involving.
91. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-25 07:12 · Score: 0
  
  It was actually Intel's fault.
  BS.
  Either Apple is too incompetent/cheap to test their laptops these days, or they didnt care about the throttling.
92. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-25 08:59 · Score: 1
  
  Ya like when apple said it was not throttling iphones
  Ya like when a YouTuber discovered that Apple's new laptop was throttling excessively and then Apple said they'd fix it in a patch and then a day later they did?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
93. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-26 04:16 · Score: 1
  
  Seriously, Apple has a long history of arguing stuff is "by design" which rationally shouldn't be. It's an argument that's nearly unfalsifiable.
  Except they didn't claim it was by design, they admitted it was a bug, and they already fixed it:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
94. Re:Amazing by avandesande · 2018-07-26 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  They got busted last year for hiding iphone 6 battery issues by throttling the cpu... I believe there was a class action lawsuit and they were giving people a real cheap price to replace their batteries.
  
  --
  love is just extroverted narcissism
95. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-26 18:11 · Score: 0
  
  Literally in the same video: the MacBook Pro is the slowest i9 of a group of laptops seemingly because they chose to be very conservative on their fan spinning up and the thermal solution is simply no better than the other laptops. That sounds amazingly like a "by design". Either that or it's gross incompetence running at 67% the speed of the top laptop.
  Now, admittedly three of the laptops are rather thin and they all run closer to the 2.9Ghz base clock; but that just seems to further double down the "by design" aspect of it. So now it's thermal throttling, just not below base clock. For a lot of people, that may well be acceptable. But to me it still demonstrates insufficient cooling.
  PS - Seriously, they tout up to 4.8GHz* for the i9 model. So, either way they're wrong. You can see another video on throttling that does a fan override with relatively little effect. And then an update with the fix is underwhelming. The fix the bug that makes it go below base clock. Wooo..
  * Yes, that's only on one core but as the other video shows as long as they're not being throttled cores can average up to 4.3GHz.
96. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-27 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  The OP claimed they'd never fix the thermal throttling issue which is the topic of this thread. They did, the next day.
  If you have other beefs about it's performance characteristics, leave me out of it. I said nothing about that.
97. Re:Amazing by BronsCon · 2018-07-27 09:16 · Score: 1
  
  If Intel were smart, they'd have specified that the on-die VRMs were secondary and required that the motherboard always provide functional VRMs. For several reasons, not the least of which is that VRMs get HOT HOT HOT. On every desktop motherboard I've ever had, the VRMs had more surface area than the CPU die, precisely for this reason.
  
  --
  APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
98. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-27 09:30 · Score: 0
  
  The OP claimed they'd never fix the thermal throttling issue which is the topic of this thread. They did, the next day.
  For certain definitions of "fix" which is precisely what I brought up. Yes, I'm that guy presuming the OP you're refering to is the post starting with "Non-sequitur bullshit." as that's the first post specifically bringing up thermal throttling.
  
  If you have other beefs about it's performance characteristics, leave me out of it. I said nothing about that.
  Like I said: "I'll retract the above if it can be shown the new update will reach max rated boost speed without throttle outside of Intel's specs (which nominally can't run boost speed on all cores simultaneously and is the sort of throttling expected)." What's max boost speed? 4.8GHz. Is there any evidence the thing can actual EVER reach that? I haven't see any evidence it can actually reach 4.8GHz. But presuming it can for even a fraction of a second, will it then immediately thermal throttle? All the evidence I've seen is it can't stay at anything close to max boost speeds except for fractions of a second and the average clock rate is very clos to base clock.
  You say you said nothing about the performance characteristics, but "And this is extremely minor as it exhibits itself under very specific scenarios and in most cases artificial workloads and the end result is a slightly slower CPU and nothing else." which is clearly a statement of performance characteristics. Well, averaging 2.9GHz vs 4.3GHz isn't "slightly slower" and the various examples have not been "in most cases artificial workloads". So, again, woo that they fixed the even more egregious problem of thermal throttling below even base clock.
  Honestly, you can't have it both ways: either this thermal throttling is by design and not a bug so they by design made it run slower (which goes against their marketing bullshit) or it's a bug and they didn't fix it. Or are you going to pretend it's not thermal throttling?
99. Re:Amazing by farble1670 · 2018-07-27 11:07 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, you don't get to change your criteria in the middle of the conversation. We both know what were were talking about. It's topic of this article if you get confused go back and read it. We're talking about a specific thermal throttling bug, as reported by the YoutTuber.
  You're trying to change the criteria to "can Apple make the Macbook Pro conform to my personal definition of satisfactory performance". I'm willing to bet the answer to that is no. Sleep tight knowing you're victorious.
100. Re:Amazing by Agripa · 2018-07-27 12:11 · Score: 1
  
  How is this not noticed during initial testing?
  Stressing a system is hardly difficult or involving.
  It is not noticed when you do not bother to test the system in its final configuration.
101. Re: Amazing by Agripa · 2018-07-27 12:15 · Score: 1
  
  A laptop is a relativel closed system. I guarantee you the CPU is thermally coupled to the chassis.
  Coupling the heatpipe and heatsink assembly to the case on something as large as a laptop is quite hard to do with any kind of decent transfer coefficient. You cant use highly conductive thermal epoxy or not even the manufacturer can disassemble it, and the flex in such a large frame prevents use of thin film solutions like thermal paste or the foil/paste thermal pads used in high power density servers.
  If you take a look at iFixIt's teardowns you'll see little to no coupling between the expensively produced metal case and the heatpipe assembly.
  How do I make a claim for the guarantee you've offered? I would like my money back if possible. Please transfer 0 bitcoin to my wallet address.
  One way it has been done in the past in high performance desktop replacement laptops is to use a very large area flat heap pipe to couple to the case. This is not an option for Apple due to their quest for thinness at any cost and they do not make desktop replacement laptops anyway.
  If they coupled just the CPU and I assume GPU, it would create an uncomfortable hot spot.
102. Re:Amazing by Agripa · 2018-07-27 12:20 · Score: 1
  
  It was actually Intel's fault. They didn't change the TDP for the 6-core CPUs.
  Fortunately, it didn't require a hardware rev. to fix...
  I suspect Apple did the design around the promised performance of Intel's very late 10nm processors and finally got tired of waiting and had to make do with what is available.
103. Re:Amazing by Agripa · 2018-07-27 12:29 · Score: 1
  
  It still confounds me that people don't understand the idea that these projects don't have unlimited time and budget to fix every issue imaginable before release.
  They had plenty of time since the last MacBook Pro.
104. Re:Amazing by Agripa · 2018-07-27 12:30 · Score: 1
  
  So, you think that this fiasco is not because of Apple management panicking and forcing a impossibly short timeframe on engineering, so best practices practices were tossed to the wind? See, everybody else who offers Intel's 8 core part puts it in a realistic enclosure. Apple management seemed to think they could wave a magic wand and change physics.
  They might have been waiting for and relying on Intel's very late 10nm processors.
105. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-27 14:44 · Score: 0
  
  Sorry, you don't get to change your criteria in the middle of the conversation.
  As I literally quoted myself, I didn't change *my* criteria in the middle of the conversation.
  
  We both know what were were talking about. It's topic of this article if you get confused go back and read it. We're talking about a specific thermal throttling bug, as reported by the YoutTuber.
  And as I said originally, "Non-sequitur bullshit." Yes, that may be what the YouTuber was originally complaining about and his only concern was the i9 being faster than the i7, but that's not what I joined the conversation with nor did I put conditions upon my retraction the discussion to merely meet the YouTuber's expectation.
  
  You're trying to change the criteria to "can Apple make the Macbook Pro conform to my personal definition of satisfactory performance". I'm willing to bet the answer to that is no. Sleep tight knowing you're victorious.
  Yep, I am. Perhaps next time you won't call for me to retract things when I'm vindicated in the specific claims I make. Perhaps you'll even expand your thinking to realize that on Slashdot the discussion will often, even in the same thread, get sidelined on related issues not directly related to the article. In fact, most the time the discussion is not a direct discussion of the article precisely because the article only manifests a small part of what is considered the perceived issue.
  If people want to buy Macbook Pros with the knowledge it by design exchanges extreme thinness and relatively quiet for substantially less performance than the CPU can deliver, good for them. But to me it's bullshit when Apple sells a $4,000+ high end laptop, advertises 4.8GHz boost speed, and can't deliver much about base clock. Maybe if Apple spent some of that cost on diamonds or nano-scale materials to better convey out the heat they could have actually not designed a machine that constantly thermal throttles. Perhaps if they did actual testing they would have spotted that the TDP was higher than Intel claimed and built in a better cooling solution.
  But yea, you're victorious because you presume my response was merely about a software glitch being patched that does nothing but make the Macbook Pro less shitty is good enough for you and the Youtube. Things like this make me believe it was more Apple (like you) who didn't bother to read all the way to the end and that's where their/your confusion and problems began.
  Like you said at the start, they're not just going to delay things because the fucked stuff up, right? Better to just ship out shitty hardware and try to fix it later in software!
In other news by Fly+Swatter · 2018-07-24 05:30 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Battery life is now less than before.
1. Re: In other news by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 11:22 · Score: 0
  
  In other news, now the fan noise resembles a jet engine at full thrust.
Story claims opposite by SuperKendall · 2018-07-24 05:37 · Score: 2

Why would it be less? Apple's reported battery life is with the CPU at full performance, not throttled down - remember they said they had not seen that case. So it means Apple's battery life figures (usually very realistic) are based on the CPU operating at normal speed.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Re:Story claims opposite by omnichad · 2018-07-24 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  Somebody got wooshed.
2. Re:Story claims opposite by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2018-07-24 05:44 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed. I've had a number of Apple laptops over the past 15 years, and frankly they've all exhibited *better* battery life than Apple claimed.
  That hasn't been my experience with other brands... okay, I mean "Dell".
  
  --
  #DeleteChrome
3. Re:Story claims opposite by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 05:45 · Score: 0
  
  SuperKendall is our special boy.
4. Re:Story claims opposite by SuperKendall · 2018-07-24 05:55 · Score: 0
  
  Shouldn't you save posting news about your own day to Twitter? Slashdot isn't really the place for that son.
  
  --
  "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
5. Re:Story claims opposite by omnichad · 2018-07-24 06:06 · Score: 1
  
  Still don't get it?
6. Re:Story claims opposite by farble1670 · 2018-07-24 07:47 · Score: 1
  
  The woosh can sting something terrible. I recommend a salve.
7. Re:Story claims opposite by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 08:31 · Score: 0
  
  That's racist!
  
  Or maybe I'm dyslexic
8. Re:Story claims opposite by AmiMoJo · 2018-07-24 19:37 · Score: 1
  
  Can't be. The 2018 model has a 58Wh battery, so to get the claimed 10 hours of battery life it needs to average 5.8W. That includes the screen, WiFi radio, and all the other components like DRAM and chipset.
  I'll make it easy for you though, let's say the rest of the laptop is powered by magic. Show me an Intel CPU that runs at "full performance" on only 5.8W.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yeah, Right by mschwanke97402 · 2018-07-24 05:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

QUOTE: "representatives said that the throttling was only exhibited under fairly specific, highly intense workloads" Sure, exporting video from Adobe Premiere Pro. Clearly an unusual workload.
1. Re:Yeah, Right by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 05:49 · Score: 0
  
  edge case scenario. there is no throttling when rendering emojis in apple messenger
2. Re:Yeah, Right by Tsolias · 2018-07-24 06:12 · Score: 1
  
  I am sure that it's OK after 40 years of building PCs, Apple doesn't have a complete benchmark suite for their testing.
3. Re:Yeah, Right by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 06:31 · Score: 0
  
  Sure, exporting video from Adobe Premiere Pro. Clearly an unusual workload.
  For the vast majority, that is unusual.
4. Re:Yeah, Right by Raistlin77 · 2018-07-24 08:48 · Score: 0
  
  QUOTE: "representatives said that the throttling was only exhibited under fairly specific, highly intense workloads" Sure, exporting video from Adobe Premiere Pro. Clearly an unusual workload.
  For the vast majority, that is unusual.
  And fairly specific.
5. Re:Yeah, Right by dwywit · 2018-07-24 09:53 · Score: 1
  
  But that's who/what the laptop is aimed at.
  So, specific, but not unusual.
  
  --
  They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
6. Re: Yeah, Right by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 10:41 · Score: 1
  
  And I find it incredibly unlikely that, based on their product brag page that shows all of the wide and varied benchmarks and exciting rendering times from various applications, Apple never once encountered these supposedly rare and unique circumstances that caused the throttling. They had to have hit it, particularly when the YouTube video showed nearly the same kind of software use triggering it that Apple indicated as some of their performance examples.
  Just seems like poor, omitted QA testing (incompetence), or calculated omission (malfeasance). Neither is great for a company which once prided itself on selling products that "just work". (And, no, these laptops were not just working if they couldn't properly perform at a task that they are directly advertised to handle.)
7. Re: Yeah, Right by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 11:28 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah. Let's just test web browsing and MS Office, that's what people use 6 core computers for. All the rest are weirdo corner cases... not worth verifying.
8. Re:Yeah, Right by thegarbz · 2018-07-24 21:07 · Score: 1
  
  And only one example. Actually you'll hit it anytime you peg the CPU for more than 15-20seconds. Mind you you won't hit it editing a word document or posting crap on the internet, but then you didn't buy a Core i9 for that either did you.
9. Re:Yeah, Right by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-25 17:41 · Score: 0
  
  Usual for a lot of creative pros that still use apple products*.
  I export many videos per day, I have a team that do the same.
  432,000 HOURS of video are uploaded to youtube per day. ... so exporting video is fairly common these days man.
  *I mean I'm pretty agnostic these days as I think all available OS's seem shite.
  I've ditched the trainwreck that is FinalCutX, clawed my way out of the leaking dumpster fire that is Adobe Premiere and finally ended up on davinci resolve.
  I may try to go the linux route with it on my next round of hardware.
10. Re:Yeah, Right by Agripa · 2018-07-27 12:31 · Score: 1
  
  QUOTE: "representatives said that the throttling was only exhibited under fairly specific, highly intense workloads"
  Sure, exporting video from Adobe Premiere Pro. Clearly an unusual workload.
  You are workloading it wrong.
Missing digital key by omnichad · 2018-07-24 05:45 · Score: 0, Flamebait

we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system
Are they just making stuff up now?
1. Re:Missing digital key by bobbied · 2018-07-24 06:03 · Score: 1
  
  we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system
  Are they just making stuff up now?
  Unless you hold the key, there is no way to know now is there....
  
  --
  "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
2. Re:Missing digital key by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 15:06 · Score: 0
  
  Maybe it was the Escape key
3. Re:Missing digital key by zwarte+piet · 2018-07-25 07:12 · Score: 1
  
  Well obviously you need cryptographic protection involved when addressing hardware, otherwise everyone would be making drivers for it. You don't want people to go & run linux on it and have actual good performance.
A software fix for a thermal issue? by ArhcAngel · 2018-07-24 05:45 · Score: 0

CPU throttling is designed to address thermal issues in mobile devices. If the CPU is throttling so much it goes below the lower threshold and is STILL too hot then there is a hardware design issue. I'm extremely curious what software could be causing the CPU to be hot even when it is throttled.

--
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
1. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 05:53 · Score: 0
  
  CPU throttling is designed to address thermal issues in mobile devices. If the CPU is throttling so much it goes below the lower threshold and is STILL too hot then there is a hardware design issue. I'm extremely curious what software could be causing the CPU to be hot even when it is throttled.
  MacOS
2. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by HornWumpus · 2018-07-24 05:55 · Score: 1
  
  They could have been leaving the CPU at boost speed for too long. Then it has too really slow while the system dumps heat.
  
  --
  John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
3. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by tlhIngan · 2018-07-24 06:11 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  CPU throttling is designed to address thermal issues in mobile devices. If the CPU is throttling so much it goes below the lower threshold and is STILL too hot then there is a hardware design issue. I'm extremely curious what software could be causing the CPU to be hot even when it is throttled.
  Except, the CPU was not overheating. The throttling did not happen because of the CPU
  The CPU is powered by a Voltage Regulator Module (power delivery module). It turns out it is this chip that is overheating - when the CPU is going full tilt, it's demanding 125W from the VRM. This causes the VRMs to heat up and when they get close to their maximum thermal limits, they send a signal to the motherboard telling it to throttle the CPUs so they draw less power so the VRMs can cool down.
  Part of thermal tuning is to adjust the CPU boost speeds such that it can boost to full speed, then throttle down slightly as the VRM and CPU heat up to a new max steady-state condition where the heat generated can be dissipated.
  This is in part due to a documentation error in Intel's docs regarding max thermal power dissipation values.
  The good news is if you tweak the throttle settings properly, you can keep the regulators from overheating, but the CPU still performing. This is what Apple did - they optimized the settings so the VRMs will not overheat and force a sudden throttling of the system. Doing this gives you a good 20% speed boost over the old models.
  The bad news is if this was caught earlier so Apple could heatsink the VRMs to the CPU like they do with the GPU, you could get up to another 10-20% in performance because you can run the boosts longer since the VRMs would heat up slower.
4. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 06:12 · Score: 0
  
  The new software is encoded to emphasize zeros over ones. The lower charges result in a lower thermal load and, with any luck, longer battery life too. Hooray!
5. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 06:42 · Score: 0
  
  We all know that MacBooks are for showing off, not for actually using. Otherwise they wouldn't be so uselessly thin.
6. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 06:55 · Score: 0
  
  Here we have the idiot, in his natural habitat.
7. Re: A software fix for a thermal issue? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 07:33 · Score: 0
  
  The thermal management firmware.
8. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 08:56 · Score: 0
  
  It's one thing to be ignorant having not read the fucking article. It's another thing entirely to be ignorant having not read the fucking comment you are quoting. Seriously, get the fuck out.
9. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by ArhcAngel · 2018-07-24 09:20 · Score: 4
  
  Thank you for providing a detailed explanation. I appreciate being educated instead of berated.
  
  --
  "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
10. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 10:12 · Score: 2
  
  What was the chain of missteps that enabled what can only be called an engineering fiasco?
  * AMD's high performing 8 core Ryzen's selling like hotcakes, Intel gets envy.
  * i9 rushed to market
  * The reason Intel didn't release an 8 core desktop processor in the first place: sucky thermal envelope, and no time to fix the process
  * Marketing solution: lie about the power envelope in the spec sheet
  * Apple getting shade for obsolete laptop lineup just as PC market showing signs of life
  * Apple rushes Macbook refresh to market
  * Apple engineers believe Intel's specs, design the VRM too small.
  * Apple project manager telescopes the project by cutting out the QA stage
  * First production units show significant issues
  * QA fudges the problem resolutions for team player reasons
  * Product already shipped to retail, just got to cross fingers and hope for the best
  * Unhappy customers are not fooled
  * Oops.
  See, it starts with Intel's well known process issues then envy and hubris take it from there. Apple should pull this product and re-engineer it. Dump the remaining stock for a discount as befits the low performance. Apologize for the mistake. Next one should be AMD.
  Apple isn't going to do any of that. "You're holding it wrong."
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
11. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 10:18 · Score: 1
  
  The VRM bit is an important part of the story, but it's not the only important part. We also learn that i9 does not operate inside its published thermal envelope, otherwise no competent engineer would have wiffed the thermal design so badly. Intel lied, Apple didn't verify, marketing jumped the gun on both sides. It's a circus.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
12. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by drinkypoo · 2018-07-24 17:50 · Score: 1
  
  Apple is trying to get their own chip to market so that they don't have to give money to intel or AMD. Good luck to them, though. The number of architectures has been shrinking for a reason, and that reason is that amd64 has won. The most competition produced the best products and now there's no reason for anything else to exist but amd64 at the high end, and arm at the bottom. And so sad for intel, they have no arms. They had strongarm->xscale, but it didn't xscale down in power consumption so it got its ass whipped by arm implementations which did and now intel has nothing but some insecure-by-design antiques that it has to rehash.
  But maybe I'm wrong and apple will manage to make an arm that can compete with amd64 on highly parallel workloads. Most creative tasks are highly parallelizable, which was how Apple managed to retain their professional user base during the powerpc era. The primary processing unit in the G4 is limp even by the standards of the day, but there was a fast vector coprocessor in there, and content creation apps could be accelerated by it. It's therefore not impossible, only unlikely.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
13. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 21:46 · Score: 1
  
  Apple is trying to get their own chip to market so that they don't have to give money to intel or AMD. Good luck to them, though. The number of architectures has been shrinking for a reason, and that reason is that amd64 has won.
  X86 has won the battle but most probably not the war. Nothing technical stops ARM from invading X86 space at increasingly high performance points. When X86 tries to invade the low power space, its complex instruction set bites hard because that big chunk of die that decodes it (don't understate this, it is a good chunk of any modern x86 chip) eats battery power and takes up space that could be used for more cores or more integrated system components. In the long run ARM is going to catch up with X86 in single core throughput and clobber it in cores per dollar, thus winning the war. X86 will be relegated to a sliver or the market in a legacy role. ARM is already roughly tie with X86 in total ops/sec already shipped and ahead by an order of magnitude in units shipped.
  
  The most competition produced the best products and now there's no reason for anything else to exist but amd64 at the high end and arm at the bottom.
  Mostly agree, but IBM shows no signs of giving up on Power arch and System Z for its big iron. Also, the high high end segment keeps getting smaller and I think we will pretty quickly hit a situation where ARM and X86 are sharing it, and only legacy effects keep ARM out of the Windows sector. Most probably, my next laptop will be ARM based, maybe a repurposed Chromebook running Linux.
  
  And so sad for intel, they have no arms. They had strongarm->xscale, but it didn't xscale down in power consumption so it got its ass whipped by arm implementations which did and now intel has nothing but some insecure-by-design antiques that it has to rehash.
  But maybe I'm wrong and apple will manage to make an arm that can compete with amd64 on highly parallel workloads. Most creative tasks are highly parallelizable, which was how Apple managed to retain their professional user base during the powerpc era. The primary processing unit in the G4 is limp even by the standards of the day, but there was a fast vector coprocessor in there, and content creation apps could be accelerated by it. It's therefore not impossible, only unlikely.
  Intel's sun is starting to set, I really can't think what they should do about it. But it's setting slowly, there are still many billions to be had out of the old Wintel cartel. Intel won't get into ARMs simply because they dread cannibalizing their own x86 market. It is just not possible to command the same margin for an ARM part as Intel has become accustomed to in its monopoly segment.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
14. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-25 03:03 · Score: 0
  
  Hi, could the VRM theoretically also still make the graphics card overheat or throttle?
15. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by zivc · 2018-07-25 03:06 · Score: 1
  
  Hi, could the VRM theoretically also still make the graphics card overheat or throttle?
  Apologies for being anonymous, I did this post without having an account.
16. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by drinkypoo · 2018-07-25 22:54 · Score: 1
  
  "Intel won't get into ARMs simply because they dread cannibalizing their own x86 market."
  Perhaps there is a simpler explanation: incompetence. We've already seen that even with a process advantage, they can only outperform AMD by ignoring security. Perhaps they simply can't make a decent ARM.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
17. Re:A software fix for a thermal issue? by Tough+Love · 2018-07-26 09:59 · Score: 1
  
  I have many words to describe Intel but incompetent is not one of them. I guess they could make a nice ARM chip but they are afraid to do it. To maintain their share price they need both a huge share of the market and a gross profit in the range of 60% as they still command in their monopoly Wintel business. Looking at the trend for Qualcomm isn't encouraging, their gross margin is trending down, currently around 55% and likely to go lower in the face of robust competition from the likes of Samsung. And it can get worse fast... what happens when some monster Chinese manufacturer introduces its own ARM offering, or Amazon? It's going to happen.
  AMD could move (back) into the ARM business for the counterintuitive reason that they aren't encumbered by massive profits and therefore not as beholden to shareholders, but there is this weird dynamic where Intel holds the price of X86 parts artificially high for both of them, which tips the balance in favour of staying right where they are.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Re:Nothing "Pro" about Apple products by bobbied · 2018-07-24 06:04 · Score: 1, Insightful

I disagree... The price sure is "pro" level.

--
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"fairly specific, highly intense workloads" by Tsolias · 2018-07-24 06:05 · Score: 0

if you run some different than this specific intense workload, it won't catch fire.
I am happy to see apple treating its customers the same way everyone else does... like a clueless, stupid one.
this gpu dissipates X Watt, we will place a Y Watt (YX) heatsink.
There's nothing software can't fix.
1. Re:"fairly specific, highly intense workloads" by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 07:40 · Score: 0
  
  are you polack or chinky ?
  why you write like the polack and chinky ?
Confirmation by JThundley · 2018-07-24 06:11 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Apple didn't think any of their users would put a heavy workload on their computer, what does that tell you?
1. Re:Confirmation by SeaFox · 2018-07-24 08:45 · Score: 1
  
  Apple didn't think any of their users would put a heavy workload on their computer, what does that tell you?
  That "Pro" is just a dickwaving nameplate, not an indicator of intended market.
2. Re:Confirmation by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 09:00 · Score: 0
  
  No shit - it's been that way with marketing forever. If you need that much horsepower, you should never use a laptop. Those who actually utilize their rigs to the full capacity already know this. Laptops are about svelte size, battery life, and weight. They are for CEOs and secretaries.
Re:Nothing "Pro" about Apple products by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 06:47 · Score: 0

Hmm, yes good point.
Is the fix like Sony's 4k camera fix? by snapsnap · 2018-07-24 06:50 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Instead of fixing the problem, the software update just let it overheat more before shutting off.
1. Re:Is the fix like Sony's 4k camera fix? by mwfischer · 2018-07-24 08:43 · Score: 2
  
  User: The computer is slowing down when it gets too hot
  Engineer: Yes
  User: You sold us something that is not performing as expecting
  Engineer: We told marketing about this, too. This was not a good idea.
  User: We want full power.
  Engineer: Okay, enjoy your third degree burns then.
  Marketing: Let's call it a "software fix". Fucking engineering at it again ruining our reputation
  User: Everything is melting but I gained 20 seconds on a video render! Yay thanks Apple!
No way to fix this issue by raynet · 2018-07-24 07:40 · Score: 1, Insightful

I wonder how they can fix this issue without either lowering the performance or allowing the VRM to overheat thus killing them faster.

--
- Raynet --> .
1. Re:No way to fix this issue by viperidaenz · 2018-07-24 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  As long as the VRM's last as long as AppleCare, it doesn't matter.
2. Re:No way to fix this issue by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 09:08 · Score: 0
  
  Supposedly they could make the fan work harder. Perhaps not a "fix" as such, but at least a mitigation.
3. Re:No way to fix this issue by Agripa · 2018-07-27 12:52 · Score: 1
  
  I wonder how they can fix this issue without either lowering the performance or allowing the VRM to overheat thus killing them faster.
  They could build a thicker laptop intended for the high performance desktop replacement market but that is just crazy talk.
Apple Toast by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 07:52 · Score: 0

Sure, they'll fix this issue but still refuse to issue Toast. They know that we are all the crumbs of Toast and their ignoring the including of Toast with any Apple product is insulting. We should demand better but we don't. Anyway, everyone needs to remember that we are all the crumbs of Toast. Spread the word about Toast!
The Toast Prophet (Recently promoted to Toast Acolyte, yes!!!)
1. Re:Apple Toast by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 14:27 · Score: 0
  
  Your right. Toast needs to be included with every apple product. I would pay quite a bit extra just for Toast with an iPhone. Sadly Apple is missing an opportunity here.
Re:Uh, Apple, um... question: by viperidaenz · 2018-07-24 08:10 · Score: 1

They tested watching cat videos on youtube, what else?
beyond ridiculous by slashmydots · 2018-07-24 08:59 · Score: 1

So a software update will make it not a "form over function" overly-thin disaster with an insufficient heat pipe and fan? That'd literally be magic. What I assume this does is just let it run insanely hot without down-clocking it. Wow, what a great fix. I wonder why they implemented the throttling in the first place? Also, Apple's quite implied they never ran a stress test of any kind on it? Not even a simple prime number calculation for 10 minutes? REALLY? Maybe they took one look at the heatsink and just didn't bother.
Thus apple confirms... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 09:42 · Score: 0

... apple computers are for brain dead people with "low" workloads ! HA-HA ! =D
Apple's fix by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 09:46 · Score: 0

Apple's fix: replace thermal throttling by software throttling. Result is still a slow computer. But the problem is, the design just can't handle the thermal envelope. Just don't buy this defective product.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
1. Re:Apple's fix by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 10:28 · Score: 0
  
  False. You didn't read the articles, or see the retests that confirmed it fixed the problem.
  Fuck off troll.
2. Re:Apple's fix by Tough+Love · 2018-07-24 10:48 · Score: 0
  
  OK genius, let's see your link to the benchmarks. Original problem: computer is too hot. Apple issues fix. New problem: computer is too slow.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Where are they testing? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 17:15 · Score: 0

This computer works will high up among the iClouds, however, for the rest of us living in a post US Exit Paris agreement world, not so well.
Apple should also fix ipad and iphone freeze-ups by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 21:52 · Score: 0

While they're at it, Apple should also fix the iOS bug, which causes ipads and iphones to freeze at random.
Re:Apple should also fix ipad and iphone freeze-up by Anonymous Coward · 2018-07-24 21:55 · Score: 0

The ipad and iphone bug feels like a race condition that is not being handled correctly.
The Macbook has been garbage for a while. by OwP_Fabricated · 2018-07-25 00:25 · Score: 1

Man, who would have thought cramming two more cores into a system that already was thermally insufficient would case heat and throttling issues?
I never really believe Jobs was the heart of the company but considering the trend-chasing that Tim Cook has led apple into and the garbage hardware pumped out because no one is around to tell Ives when he has stupid ideas I'm beginning to think there may have been something to that.
Apple bruised by Verification and Validation fail by ElitistWhiner · 2018-07-25 02:58 · Score: 1

What does it say? When a customer more brutally stress tests your brand-new product than your own V&V department, it says that the fruit of your labors isn't the highest quality produce, best calibre nor the embodiment you claim.
Its bad apples. It's bruised fruit on sale which AAPL should send packing and sell the next fruit off the tree. To hell with a Bandaid® patch. Its still bad fruit. Cutting out the part that's bad with a patch around and over the bad spot still leaves a bad taste!
SteveJobs would fire V&V, re-engineer and sell fresh apples with no apologies and free upgrades for those who got bad apples