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Apple's T2 Chip May Be Causing Issues In iMac Pro, 2018 MacBook Pros (digitaltrends.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the another-day-another-MacBook-Pro-controversy dept.

According to Digital Trends, the T2 chip that enables things like secure boot, better encrypted storage, and "Hey Siri" support may be causing problems in MacBook Pro and iMac Pro computers. From the report: Many iMac Pro owners have reportedly suffered numerous kernel panics -- the MacOS version of the dreaded Blue Screen of Death in Windows -- since they hit the market at the end of 2017. You can find a handful of threads on Apple's community forums, including this one, detailing the trials and tribulations customers are experiencing with their expensive iMac Pros and Apple support. The problems apparently reside in the new MacBook Pro laptops, too. Of all the error messages uploaded to these threads, there is one detail they seem to share: Bridge OS. This is an embedded operating system used by Apple's stand-alone T2 security chip, which provides the iMac Pro with a secure boot, encrypted storage, live "Hey Siri" commands, and so on. It's now included in the new 2018 models of the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. But whether the T2 chip is behind all the kernel panics is up in the air. The symptoms and solutions are varied across complaints, such as iMac Pro owners daisy-chaining storage devices seeing crashes along with those with nothing connected at all. But Apple is aware of the problems and is apparently working on the issue behind the scenes. While Apple is replacing these machines, the problems still seem to occur on the new hardware. This latest controversy comes hot on the heels of the last MacBook Pro controversy about overheating concerns.

47 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Colonel PAnick by Prince+Vegeta+SSJ4 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've had various kernel panics since Yosemite....caused by (seem to be) things such as Thunderbolt Raid, Ethernet, Sleep Wake and Raid...I wonder if I need a new machine, or to take the Macbook Pro in for service. Eventually, Apple issued an OS revision and the problem goes away (until a future OS update). It is unfortunate that it is hard to tell where the problem lies unless apple admts it.

    1. Re:Colonel PAnick by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      On my work-provided 2015 MacBook Pro, I’ve had an issue where plugging an Ethernet adapter in to one USB port when another USB port is already in use triggers a kernel panic. But, by itself, the adapter is fine.

      I should probably take it in before the warranty expires... but it never seems to happen at a time when that would be convenient.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    2. Re:Colonel PAnick by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I wonder if I need a new machine, or to take the Macbook Pro in for service.

      You know, in the automotive world, we like to say that Ford was kind enough to circle the problem. (Yeah, it's an oval, but circle can mean circumnavigate.) In the computer world, the warning label that tells you that you're looking at an overpriced, underengineered pile of shit is the Apple logo.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Colonel PAnick by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      Was that an Apple branded Ethernet adapter causing a problem? I'm curious.

      It's this one from Anker: https://www.anker.com/products...

      Note that when I referred to plugging in a second USB device, I was not referring to one of the USB ports on this hub - this adapter plus one other device were both being plugged into USB ports on my laptop.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  2. Time to go back to the drawing board by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    MacOS really needs a complete rewrite from the ground up. At this point it is a Frankenstein pastiche of this and that culled from here and there. It's architecture has long been eclipsed, a cousin to GNU Hurd, and just as ancient. Apple engineers have kept things afloat with some pretty good hacks. But they are hacks nonetheless.

    MacOS is long in the tooth, and chock full of ugliness. It is time to start over with a clean new 21st century design.

    1. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Apple has never been capable of a clean rewrite. The culture there isn't capable of 'inventing' something that big, and NIH is the holy gospel. They tried to write a new preemptive multitasking OS to replace the hoary old pascal-based MacOS when MacOS 9 was growing long in the tooth. Pink/Taligent was a disaster. They failed so badly that Jobs had to come back and take over with the Unix derived workalike from NeXT, which notably was developed OUTSIDE the Apple fogzone.

      It's really a pity they didn't go with BeOS instead. That was some fresh new design, again from people who had escaped the Apple fogzone.

    2. Re:Time to go back to the drawing board by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      MacOS really needs a complete rewrite from the ground up. At this point it is a Frankenstein pastiche of this and that culled from here and there. It's architecture has long been eclipsed, a cousin to GNU Hurd, and just as ancient. Apple engineers have kept things afloat with some pretty good hacks. But they are hacks nonetheless.

      MacOS is long in the tooth, and chock full of ugliness. It is time to start over with a clean new 21st century design.

      Name a major OS for which those same words cannot be said.

      I'll wait.

    3. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      Apple has never been capable of a clean rewrite. The culture there isn't capable of 'inventing' something that big, and NIH is the holy gospel. They tried to write a new preemptive multitasking OS to replace the hoary old pascal-based MacOS when MacOS 9 was growing long in the tooth. Pink/Taligent was a disaster. They failed so badly that Jobs had to come back and take over with the Unix derived workalike from NeXT, which notably was developed OUTSIDE the Apple fogzone.

      It's really a pity they didn't go with BeOS instead. That was some fresh new design, again from people who had escaped the Apple fogzone.

      Pink/Taligent, like Copeland, was a cluster because it was trying to half-ass the rewrite.

      And BeOS had its problems, too.

    4. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      AFAICT the only problem with BeOS was the lack of multiuser support, but frankly that is really not that difficult to solve. I mean, we honestly got pretty good multiuser support for goddamned AmigaOS, and that was a teeny tiny little thing. You could have a complete multiuser system with TCP/IP in under 20MB. I know, because I did. It was a nice place to run UUCP.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by blindseer · · Score: 1

      It's really a pity they didn't go with BeOS instead. That was some fresh new design, again from people who had escaped the Apple fogzone.

      Maybe they would have if the asking price wasn't so high. At least that's how I recall the story from news reports at the time. Be Inc had a nice OS but it was far from a finished product even at the R5 stage of development. Sure, it booted and ran but that's not a complete product. BeOS may have been a complete operating system but without development tools, libraries to build on, and so forth, it was not something valuable to developers.

      Near the end they started to add in open source software to make it appeal to some of the Linux and BSD types but at that point it just started to look like any other *nix clone, except it had an untested kernel, a non-X11 window system, and a funny file system. As I recall the multi-user capability on BeOS was incomplete or absent. Having that in the days of MacOS 7 and Windows 98 might have been acceptable but people were demanding multi-user systems, especially in education and corporate environments where BeOS was (supposedly) competing.

      Of course a lot of things were going on at the time that made things difficult for BeOS to get adopted. Microsoft was playing games with licensing for end users and computer manufacturers, where they'd have to pay for a Windows license even if the computer shipped with BeOS. There was the "browser wars" that left BeOS in a spot with their browser being limited by the lack of web standards and no one willing to put much effort in porting a browser. Apple licensed their design to others, allowing BeOS a platform to run on, and then Apple pulling the licensing.

      I played with BeOS quite a bit for a while. Used it to play some games, write some code, but it became clear that the hardware developers weren't interested (again likely because of games Apple and Microsoft were playing), and the software people didn't come without a base of users and hardware.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    6. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      What problems did BeOS have?

      1. Lack of applications
      2. Lack of users
      3. Lack of a compelling reason to use it

    7. Re:Time to go back to the drawing board by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      There are really only 2 major OSes: Windows and Android. Both have more than 80% market share. All other OSes are, in fact, bit/minor players.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    8. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Your fifth sentence contradicts the first two. As does Apple's adoption of or compatibility with Intel/PCI/SATA/SDRAM/USB/Samba/FAT/NTFS(ro)/OpenGL....you know, most of the things.

    9. Re:Time to go back to the drawing board by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      There are really only 2 major OSes: Windows and Android. Both have more than 80% market share. All other OSes are, in fact, bit/minor players.

      And what does that have to do with my statement?

      We all know that Windows could use a ground-up rewrite. And even Google thinks Android should be abandoned at the earliest opportunity in favor of Fuschia, or whatever it's called...

    10. Re:Time to go back to the drawing board by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      You asked about major OSes, and implied that MacOS was a major OS. It is not.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    11. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by dromgodis · · Score: 1

      Also, Taligent was/turned into a joint venture together with IBM. That can delay, half-ass and grow-to-unusable-proportions anything.

      Ahhh, fond memories of an intensive Taligent programming course at IBM in Austin, where a GUI Hello World program took ~10 min to build on a then pretty-much-state-of-the-art Pentium 100MHz. That course turned out to be a not so good investment for my employer. :)

    12. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      1. Lack of applications

      NeXTStep had the same problem — by the time Apple adopted it, most devs had long-since abandoned it.

      2. Lack of users

      NeXTStep had the same problem — by the time Apple adopted it, most users had long-since abandoned it.

      3. Lack of a compelling reason to use it

      NeXTStep had that problem, but BeOS did not. NeXTStep is just BSD with ObjC (which statistically nobody was using at the time) and a Microkernel being used as a HAL (since all process management is done by the BSD kernel, not the Mach kernel.) and with Display Postscript providing display-independent rendering. BeOS, on the other hand, was astoundingly fast even on limited hardware. Its multitasking and multiprocessing performance was the best around. It was enormously popular with developers even before x86 support, at least given how little hardware there was in the wild. There were far more compelling reasons (by number) to adopt BeOS than to adopt NeXTStep. The most compelling reason to adopt NeXTStep is that it came with a Steve Jobs. But he died of a cancer which was highly treatable with standard means, and they did not really get their money's worth.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re:Time to go back to the drawing board by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      You asked about major OSes, and implied that MacOS was a major OS. It is not.

      It is to over ONE HUNDRED MILLION Active Mac owners worldwide:

      https://www.theverge.com/2017/...

      Now, something like AmigaOS, ReactOS or BeOS, now THOSE are decidedly NOT "Major" OSes.

      And Mobile OSes don't count, sorry. That's more akin to Embedded Firmware than a proper OS, even if it plays one on TV, and has pieces-parts of a real OS included.

    14. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      Also, Taligent was/turned into a joint venture together with IBM. That can delay, half-ass and grow-to-unusable-proportions anything.

      Ahhh, fond memories of an intensive Taligent programming course at IBM in Austin, where a GUI Hello World program took ~10 min to build on a then pretty-much-state-of-the-art Pentium 100MHz. That course turned out to be a not so good investment for my employer. :)

      Interesting anecdote!

    15. Re:Time to go back to the drawing board by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      No, it's not. It has less than 9% market share. Not even double digits. Windows has ten times that amount, owning nearly 90% of the entire market. There is, in fact, only a single major OS in desktop - all others are small, specialty offerings.

      And if you want to discount mobile, that's fine - then it's just Windows as the only major OS in the world. If you want to include mobile, then it's a duopoly - Windows and Android (which also has a Windows-like market penetration with iOS a vastly far behind 2nd place).

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    16. Re: Time to go back to the drawing board by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Didn't get their money's worth?

      They went from 60 days from bankruptcy and just about having their official name changed to "beleaguered Apple Computer" to one of the most valuable companies there ever has been, a brand that is more recognized and respected than practically any other (except here) and revenues that, if they were a country, would rank them around Finland.

      I think they did just fine after all is said and done.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  3. Another perspective by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

    ”This is an embedded operating system used by Apple's stand-alone T2 security chip, which provides the iMac Pro with a secure boot, encrypted storage, live "Hey Siri" commands, and so on.”

    Perhaps the T2 chips intentionally trigger kernel panics because they find Siri as aggravating as the rest of us do.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Another perspective by I75BJC · · Score: 1

      LOL!!! (Sorry, no mode points or you would have one from me!)

  4. A pattern is emerging by slashmydots · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Back in 2006 all the iMacs I saw with that tiny little vent overheated constantly in any ambient temp above 75F. Then there was the iphones and their death hold, touch death, sapphire lens purple flare, bending, battery issues, artificial performance degradation, purposeful bricking due to 3rd party hardware. Then there's the macbook that can't run at the speed they claim under any circumstances other than inside a freezer because they made it too thin. Now their rushed-out unnecessary feature chip is failing. It's almost like Apple never has made good products and never will. Why can't anyone else see this pattern?

    1. Re:A pattern is emerging by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      It's almost like Apple never has made good products and never will.

      No way, man. The Macintosh IIci was a triumph of engineering. That was one of the best machines ever made, IMO. Granted, it was overpriced AF — paying five grand for a 68030@25 was some Sun Microsystems level shit. But still, it was a fantastic, durable machine that was trivial to work on. You could swap the power supply without any tools, for example.

      Since then, though, it's all been downhill, starting with the Macintosh IIfx with its nonstandard SCSI termination...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re: A pattern is emerging by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I have a Max IIci in my collection. It's also chock full of National Instruments data acq. cards and the original version of LabView.

    3. Re:A pattern is emerging by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      It's almost like Apple never has made good products and never will.

      No way, man. The Macintosh IIci was a triumph of engineering. That was one of the best machines ever made, IMO. Granted, it was overpriced AF — paying five grand for a 68030@25 was some Sun Microsystems level shit. But still, it was a fantastic, durable machine that was trivial to work on. You could swap the power supply without any tools, for example.

      Since then, though, it's all been downhill, starting with the Macintosh IIfx with its nonstandard SCSI termination...

      Let it go, will ya?you just use the Black terminator and all is golden.

    4. Re: A pattern is emerging by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      I have a Max IIci in my collection. It's also chock full of National Instruments data acq. cards and the original version of LabView.

      Back when LabView was Mac only. Back when it was good.

    5. Re:A pattern is emerging by AmazingRuss · · Score: 1

      They had a good run with the macbook pros and mac pros... up until the trash cans anyhow. Now, we enter the shitshow....

    6. Re:A pattern is emerging by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Let it go, will ya?you just use the Black terminator and all is golden.

      Golden? I thought you said it was black.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:A pattern is emerging by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Back in 2006 all the iMacs I saw with that tiny little vent overheated constantly in any ambient temp above 75F. Then there was the iphones and their death hold, touch death, sapphire lens purple flare, bending, battery issues, artificial performance degradation, purposeful bricking due to 3rd party hardware. Then there's the macbook that can't run at the speed they claim under any circumstances other than inside a freezer because they made it too thin. Now their rushed-out unnecessary feature chip is failing. It's almost like Apple never has made good products and never will. Why can't anyone else see this pattern?

      There is a pattern of nothing else on the market being consistently better...

    8. Re:A pattern is emerging by tsa · · Score: 2

      My 2011 MBP is the best laptop Apple has ever made.

      --

      -- Cheers!

    9. Re:A pattern is emerging by jsepeta · · Score: 1

      Same here, agreed.

      Jonny Ive is an idiot, pushing form over function. New Macs are more of a pain in the ass than old Macs.

      --
      Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
    10. Re:A pattern is emerging by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      Let it go, will ya?you just use the Black terminator and all is golden.

      Golden? I thought you said it was black.

      Ha ha. That's very logical.

    11. Re:A pattern is emerging by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Around 2006 was when Apple was applying 5x too much thermal paste to CPUs. You could dramatically improve cooling performance by replacing it with the correct amount.

      As I recall those were also the first generation of the plastic, glued together hinge clips where the glue would be heated by the exhaust heat and eventually fail.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    12. Re:A pattern is emerging by sad_ · · Score: 1

      Let it go, will ya?you just use the Black terminator and all is golden.

      Golden? I thought you said it was black.

      the gold part is refering to the price.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
    13. Re:A pattern is emerging by organgtool · · Score: 1

      I find it funny that everyone has their own opinion of which year was the best MBP. Back in the days of Jobs, the best MBP was always the latest but now that's rarely the case. It's not surprising given that Apple's latest laptops make more headlines for the features they've removed rather than the features they've added.

    14. Re:A pattern is emerging by tsa · · Score: 1

      No, the best one is still the latest. The latest that Jobs supervised the construction of.

      --

      -- Cheers!

  5. next mac pro needs to have storage that is not loc by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    next mac pro needs to have storage that is not locked to the MB or locked into apples choices.
    Forced raid 0 is an no go even more so 2 pci-e cards stuck behide an X4 pci-e link.

  6. I was expecting a Skynet joke... by waspleg · · Score: 1

    maybe along the lines of trying to save Steve Jobs via time travel, etc.

  7. Re:next mac pro needs to have storage that is not by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

    next mac pro needs to have storage that is not locked to the MB or locked into apples choices.
    Forced raid 0 is an no go even more so 2 pci-e cards stuck behide an X4 pci-e link.

    No one using a Mac Pro or an iMac Pro is going to be storing data files on the internal storage; the files they typically work on are entirely too huge. Those users typically use SANs or big external RAIDs.

    So an internal RAID is a pretty silly thing on Pro machines.

  8. The shark has been jumped... by AmazingRuss · · Score: 2

    ... it just keeps getting worse. My 2017 macbook pro likes to turn of the magical touch strip. Comes back on if you reboot, but...

    I really don't want to go back to windows... maybe I'll have another run at linux. It's been 10 years, and it was almost tolerable on the desktop back then.

    Gonna miss this sexy lookin package though.

  9. Re:next mac pro needs to have storage that is not by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    internal RAID 1 better then raid 0 or even
    multi disk setup with

    OS Disk
    Archive Storage / Backup disk
    scratch disk / temp work disk.

  10. User base is too small to matter by Gabest · · Score: 1

    I have yet to see a Macbook Pro in my vicinity.

  11. Same thing happened with 2011 MBP by ayesnymous · · Score: 1

    The GPU overheated, and their logic board replacement program used logic boards that had the same problem, so eventually the replacements would have damaged GPUs too.

  12. Well of course! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

    After seeing all the trouble the T2 caused to John Connor, it doesn't surprise me.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  13. Re: A pattern...of Hatorade by Uberbah · · Score: 1

    Both. But thank's for helping prove my point on confirmation bias and anecdotes. ;)