Sleek new Macs violate fanbois' Retinas with display garbage Buyers of Apple's "jaw-dropping" Retina display MacBooks are indeed picking their chins off the floor - in reaction to bizarre on-screen glitches blighting the expensive lap-warmers. Two fanboi-support forum topics have sprung up to detail problems encountered when the shiny kit runs Mac OS X Lion and is woken up from sleep. …
Intel video driver on Linux in some of the 3.2 kernels had a similar bug which got fixed. IIRC It was the kernel / direct rendering manager portion not xorg.
These pics look almost the same as my Intel based Lenovo used to look quite often for a few months back. It stopped doing it after the most recent 3.2 kernel update.
So let's not blame the RDF prematurely. You have some well known graphics stalwarts at work so my default assumption would be to point the blame at them first.
Clearly as the article mentions it's some kind of driver issue. Frankly it's really odd that Apple didn't release the new OS alongside the new machines anyway. Everyone is going to be upgrading in a few weeks (Apple are offering free OS upgrades to the owners of the new machine).
Looks like the Retina support has been hacked onto Lion. One would assume in Mountain Lion things will work properly.
Apple should clearly have waited. That way they could have built up stocks of the machines (mine was ordered over a week ago and isn't due until 2nd week of August) as well as had the new OS on the machines!
Not the first time they've been screwed by NVidia. The drivers for iMacs locked up and lets not forget the Macbook Pros that needed logic board replacements as NVidia's GPU chips were badly packaged and the solder failed (Nvidia admitted liability in the end).
I really wish Apple would consider using both Intel and AMD processors.
@David
The i3/i5/i7 processors come with Intel HD graphics built in and it appears the bug is related to switching between the inbuilt (processor supported) and card based graphics, a different choice (i.e. AMD APU/inbuilt graphics) *may* affect how the bug is exhibted?
As the main reason Apple give for being so restrictive on hardware and not allowing anyone else to run OSX is to prevent exactly this kind of thing. They claim it gives them better quality control but given it is on such a limited range of hardware they obviously skipped over the testing this time round.
Personally, and I'm a Mac fan, I don't think they can hide behind a third party code defence.
After all one of the big advantages claimed to justify the initial price of a Mac is is that they're a fusion of hard and software developed as a package, so regardless of who wrote the video driver it should have been tested better. Shipping with video driver issues isn't on in a "premium" product.
Mac's like Stella Artois should be reassuringly expensive... ;-)
Pah, a proper fanboi will tell you that any problem with an Apple product is your own fault because you're doing it wrong...and I say this as someone who owns and enjoys a number of Apple products.
Judging by the number of EFI updates associated with Thunderbolt on my last-gen MBP, Apple is running a bit ahead of itself with display tech.
Suspend/resume behaviour has been a weakspot of every laptop I've ever owned. Ubuntu on a Thinkpad made me want to poke my own eyes out.
AFAIK suspend/resume is shitty when you're not using Windows because the ACPI writers mainly target Windows machines and couldn't give a f**k about the rest. Not sure if Apple do their own ACPI implementation.
(ACPI is a interpreted language that runs in kernel mode that tell the OS about the hardware capabilities of the machine. They are invariably very poorly written).
"El Reg asked Apple whether this is an issue they are investigating, and how they intend to patch it, but have as yet received no reply."
*sigh* You'll crack Apple one day El Reg. Shame they've put you in their spam filter though. You may want to register th3regist3r.co.uk and try that. *sniggers*
What's in it for Apple? They've got enough money and power to make Solomon blush, and there's no shortage of tech publications that don't say nasty, hurtful, mean things about them.
Mind you, its probably institutional now; I doubt anyone even remembers the whole Jagwire thing, and its just taken as read that the names of the Forsaken carved into Steve's Big Stone Slab of Shame are not to be forgotten or erased under any circumstances.
Funny how they remembered El Reg for this story though...
Apple will only reinstate mute kids' app if makers win patent case
"Apple are making no official comment on the case, but we were given an off-the-record briefing."
I can only assume most of the readers here don't remember what The Register originally looked like.
"Biting the hand that feeds IT" has always been up there in the masthead, but El Reg also had another slogan: "Integrity? We've heard of it!" This seems to have faded out of use in recent years, which is a shame as it made it clear exactly where the site stood. There was also a truly laser-like focus on IT matters.
Sadly, the British concept of the 'Red-Top' tabloids doesn't really exist on the other side of The Pond, so that element has also faded away. All that's left is the attempts at Sun-like sub-headings.
I preferred the site when it was more focused on its core subject matter, its satire more biting, and a heavier load of irony and wit. Most of all, it the content selection and writing style is all over the place now. We might get solid, serious, reviews, while the next piece might be a bit from the Out-Law folks, followed by some biting bit of irony-laden satire, a retrospective on some old microcomputer, and a Special Projects Bureau update on the best cure for the morning after the night before. And on top of all that, there's a random sprinkling of Climateballs pieces.
And that's before you get to the likes of Matt Asay, the purpose of whom I have yet to ascertain, let alone why I'm expected to give a flying toss what the FOSSer thinks about anything.
There's no consistency. At all. Which might not be a bad thing, but then there's the poor quality control, with factual errors, typos, and whatnot.
This is the internet. You cannot hope to be first every time. What you can aim for is to be right.
Matt Assay thinks!
And, as to its purpose... it probably appeals to the same sort of people who talk meaningless management-consultancy waffle in meetings. The people that El Reg used to laugh at have become its audience, and even its writers.
Yes, I too think this is sad. In retirement, a long way away from everything that I ever worked with, it remains my sole daily link with the industry. Sometimes, though, I wonder about getting that coat...
Have seen them on every computer/OS I've ever used at one time or another, OS X windows that stall while minimising are the weirdest though, as they're usually still fully functional mid warp, forcing a screen refresh usually fixes things.
Also, how can there be no icon for "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
"I have not seen any display glitch in the in the past 20 years."
You're not looking hard enough. Types of glitches vary with era, around 20 years ago, you could point your finger to the video ram, and would probably be right. Nowadays, much more likely to be software/drivers.
I wouldn't say glitches are common, but they do happen.
Looks like Windows compatibility to me; this crap Windows XP laptop here at work does that if I actually have to use it to do real work rather than just mail and web and reading PDFs. Ie. running MATLAB and an IDE and compilations. It runs out of handles and everything goes to shit.
It's only when you've got the display settings on anything other than that which is marked "best for retina" in the System Preferences, and, in the event that it does occur, it's as simple as changing the display resolution (as mentioned in the article).
The first thing I did when I got mine was change my resolution to the largest amount of scaling (smallest text size - Apple's done away with the concept of xxxx by xxxx resolution). Then, I noticed the weirdness after coming out of sleep, and upon changing the resolution noticed it went away. For some reason, I then decided to just leave it at "Best fro retina" - perhaps, because it's name suggested that it would behave? - and then the problem hasn't come back since.
So - IMHO - "Best for retina" is "best for retina" (and isn't "huge" enough to cause me much heartache until they get the overarching problem resolved.)
that's my $.02 (or two pence if you will)
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I have had my Retina MBP for just over a month, and am waiting for my 3rd replacement to be delivered. The first had major issues with image persistance, the second has image persistance and one of the fans sounds like its catching on something. My original Retina MBP and the first replacement both had the issues mentioned in the article.
It's starting to get annoying, but I think Apple are doing their best to keep people happy... I've already had compensation for the 1st replacement.
Beta testers will be used to this kind of thing (although W8 has been pretty good in this regard). More software than a hardware issue by the look of it, and Mountain Lion is not too far away. Although prospective 'retina' MacBook buyers may feel happier waiting for the hardware upgrade to display panel coming later in the year (according to digitimes).
The more often and compulsively you search for minor problems to inflate out of proportion, to slag Apple and to be insulting to users of Apple's products (whom you call "fanbois"), the more desperate you make yourself appear to others.
Ironic that you are displaying your own anti-Apple "fanboi-ism" (or more accurately "fangoil-ism") in your attempt to label others that way.
It's also interesting to note that Apple users love the products they use, and have little interest or time to slag users of other products (unless they are responding to irrational rants like yours). But people such as yourself who seem to make it their personal crusade to slag Apple and its users, never have the same enjoyment with whatever non-Apple product they have settled on using.
One can only assume that your rants are based on jealousy. After all, if you were totally happy with what you use, you would never want to waste your time vociferating against others (and making yourself appear vacuous).
There are only two major (2) variants of the Macbook Pro line:
- The ones with Retina
- The ones without Retina
With 13" and 15", and maybe with i5 and i7 spec'ced subcategories Apple only has to test maybe 4-5 machines.
It's not like the Windows world. Hardware is tightly controlled, choice restricted.
This is a major QC screwup, on pretty expensive machines, no less.
But then you should never buy Apple's first versions of a new design. There have always been issues, for as long as I remember.
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Cue a million pre-prepared responses involving the phrases "holding it wrong", "reality distortion field" and "big of a deal", complete with circle-jerk upvoting. It's as funny as a Jim Davidson box set.
Attention commenters! If you've made the same joke in a previous comment, please refrain from repeating it. It will not become funnier.
My DP G5 ran 10.4.11 with nary a woe until I started running 10.5.8. Too many sleeps and it wakes up really grumpy -- the video is disconnected from the s/w buss. Apple's suggestion is to upgrade to a version that doesn't run on PPC. (Sigh -- at least I can ssh into the box for some work.)
Or should all discrete graphics cards come with an "ultra-low-power" software switch which takes them down to integrated-graphics level? Splitting/switching the graphics between the main cpu and off-cpu seems like an inherently poor solution. Far better just to get nvidia (or AMD) drivers to handle the whole lot.
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