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