No, there was not a hardware design error, but a very stupid bug in the Apple firmware.
There was some user who reported on reddit the exact error made by Apple.
The Intel processors have a MSR (model-specific register) which must be intialized by the BIOS/EFI with the power limit for the processor. Due to some program bug, Apple initialized the"MSR_PLATFORM_POWER_LIMIT" register with the values correct for a desktop processor (with 95 W TDP) instead of the values correct for a laptop processor (with 45 W TDP).
As the reddit user verified, with values even slightly larger than the correct laptop values recommended by Intel, all works OK.
The Apple press release contains some mumbo-jumbo nonsense language like all such press releases.
In fact their updated firmware just replaces the wrong desktop value for that MSR with the correct laptop value.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
