Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The early 2013 retina MBP 15” have faulty firmware/hardware

aniggler.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 84 posts

Re: The early 2013 retina MBP 15” have faulty firmware/hardware

#5

Post by metajack »

Why worry about this when the LG panels have horrible ghosting? I had to have mine replaced, and luckily got a Samsung panel (this was on the original Retina 15" hardware, though apparently this happens elsewhere too).

I've had lots of problems with Apple hardware over the years, most of it dealt with very well by Apple, but the panel ghosting was by far the worst.

I'd open Gmail, read email for 2 minutes, then flip to my terminals on another desktop and could still read my email. Yuck.

Re: The early 2013 retina MBP 15” have faulty firmware/hardware

#6

Post by ryanwhitney »

I've been using the retina MBP 15" heavily since its release. I noticed the fan for the first time last week when I was booted into Windows.

There are other issues with the machine—notably the screen flicker and ghosting that others have had issues with—but I wouldn't worry about this.

Re: The early 2013 retina MBP 15” have faulty firmware/hardware

#7

Post by ComputerGuru »

The 2012 15" rMBP had considerable bugs in the SMC and UEFI that took half a dozen firmware updates, several dozen OS X seeds, and the better part of a year to resolve. I had a particularly nasty bug where any time I unplugged my Mac from the charger, 5 seconds later it would go to sleep though it was still open and I was actively using it. You'd have to shut the lid and re-open it for it to wake again.

I also had the infamous ghosting issues, though my LG panel was decent enough that I put up with it for a few months. Luckily, when I took it in to get the entire upper clamshell replaced, there was a new part number in stock literally the day before that had apparently resolved the problem.

I've purchased a dozen or so MacBooks since the original Unibody and countless iPhones, iPads and other minor Apple products — it is my opinion that engineering quality has gone down over the past two years considerably.

As for the issue TFA refers to - it does not plague my 2012 rMBP and I'm sure Apple will, sooner or later, issue a patch to fix it. It's just a question of whether you believe they still have their shit together or not.

(awesome song, btw!)

Re: The early 2013 retina MBP 15” have faulty firmware/hardware

#8

Post by kalleboo »

But have they fixed the problems with the previous generation? I have a couple issues with my 2012 retina MBP. These are all corroborated by others on Apple's support community:

* LG panel ghosting

* Graphical glitches in Safari

* Audio clicks, pops and stutters when using Intel graphics

* Power manager issues: Sometimes it'll drop to sleep when I unplug the magsafe, even though the laptop is in use. Sometimes it has trouble waking from regular ("closed lid") sleep - maybe every other week I have to go as far as holding down the power button to force a power off to get it back.

I haven't been to an Apple store because I can't be without my machine for a week or however long it'll take to fix, and it sounds from the discussions forum that many of these problems have no fix, or it's random if you'll get a new part that works right or not.

Re: The early 2013 retina MBP 15” have faulty firmware/hardware

#9

Post by rkuykendall-com »

TigrouMeow wrote: post #3

I was supposed to buy one this week. Now I'm scared...

You're scared that one model has a bug where you play a specific song in a specific media player, the fans spin more than they should? and it can be fixed with a firmware update?

You scare easily.

Re: The early 2013 retina MBP 15” have faulty firmware/hardware

#10

Post by irollboozers »

I just spent 1 hour today at the Apple store and talking to Apple care getting my brand new (2 days old) 15 Retina MBP replaced. It kernel panicked on me and bricked itself. The only sign of life is a slight hum of a fan when I try to power it on.

It's the first Apple product I've bought but I can't shake the feeling that this frequency of bad hardware is becoming normal.

Post reply on HN