Apple Issues Firmware Upgrade For MacBook Pro

Lucas123 writes "After declining comment on an apparent downgrade to the serial ATA hard drive interface in its new MacBook Pros, from 3Gbps to 1.5Gbps, Apple today issued a firmware upgrade to fix a problem reported by 'a small number of customers' using drives based on the latest SATA specification. Apple warned that it has not shipped drives operating at the higher-speed specification, saying, 'While this update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbit/sec, Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported.'"

Really?

[LBArrettAnderson]

The SSDs that they offer don't read faster than 1.5Gbps? I know many don't, but even I (an apple hater for life who has to use one at work) thought they'd offer something closer to top of the line. Most new MLC and SLC SSDs read at 200MBps+ (1.6Gbps).

Re:We don't offer modern technology?

[ifrag]

Most Sata II drives should be able to fall back to Sata I. In fact, I've bought Sata II drives which have come configured as Sata I drives (apparently the user was expected to use the manufacturer boot utility to reconfigure the drive). My newer Hitachi drive came set as Sata II by default though so maybe Hitachi stopped doing that. Could be the difference between their consumer and enterprise series.

Great for apple

[MemoryDragon]

It would be even nicer if they fixed the 3000 USD first gen macbook airs which are plagued by broken hinge problems and overheating:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1696844&tstart=15 [apple.com]

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1387729&tstart=15 [apple.com]

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1931283&tstart=30 [apple.com]

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1893302&tstart=15 [apple.com]

elp! They still haven't fixed my problem.

[AlpineR]

My MacBook Pro has one continually annoying problem:

Missing first keypress [apple.com]

If I haven't typed anything for about fifteen minutes, then the first key I press is ignored. This happens in situations where the OS is otherwise alert because of mouse movement, such as while browsing the Web. I click a text field, start typing, and ten letters in I realize that the keyboard missed the first one.

This is particularly annoying in cases where there's a little typing lag anyway, like typing in an search box with autocomplete. There's a short delay before the letters start appearing anyway, so the only way to type error-free is to wait a second every damn time to see if the first keypress was recognized.

Apple issued a Keyboard Firmware Update [apple.com] in February 2008 but it never fixed my problem and others have reported it made their systems totally freeze.

Does anybody else still have this problem? Or did you have it before and get it fixed?

Re:Apple updates a driver!!

[Miltazar]

This is news because it points out that an expensive supposed "top of the line" laptop, and a very famous one, has downgraded their hardware performance. This is more of a confirmation that they did infact release it with Sata 1 when the system itself is capable of Sata 2. It's not just a "patch" its a part of a developing story about the new macbooks.

Also news gets posted about MS patches quite frequently, so I'd say this is about the norm.