OS X Lion Ships With Faulty NVidia Drivers 284
TeaCurran writes with this mildly ranty objection to the most recent Mac OS X update; several friends who have made the leap on their MacBook Pros have various other complaints, too, including system slowdowns that resemble crashes (except that their pointers still work) and recurring black screens for some configurations (with or without the kernel panics TeaCurran mentions) — what's been your experience? "Apple OS X Lion shipped with new NVidia video drivers that are causing anyone with a mid 2010 Macbook Pro to get a kernel panic every 5-10 minutes. Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.' NVidia has responded that the drivers are the responsibility of Apple so they won't deal with the issue. How a major hardware manufacturer can ship such a faulty product without getting much press about it is completely beyond me."
Again (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't the first time this has happened.
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You're lucky if it's just an annoyance and doesn't destroy your hardware. I had two ATI video cards burn out on me on my first mac desktop before switching over to their lower-end nivida card.
Was it the X1900XT by any chance? I went through two in my 2006 Mac Pro (the second being a warranty replacement). Those cards just died, period. The second one croaked even though I used SMCFanControl to force the PCI/HDD bay fan to run faster the entire time I had it installed. It just took a little longer to die...
It wasn't Apple's fault, it was a bad generation of chips from ATI. A friend of mine had his PC X1900XT card die in a very similar fashion, and I found at least anecdotal Internet support
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reaping what he's sown?
his reality distortion field only works if he's there to steer all the yes-men out of the fire.
you can't micro-manage such a big company.
Apple have always been greedy fuckers though. i'm not at all surprised that the standard tech support response is "replace the logic board", even though it's been demonstrated to be ineffective. Apple are a hardware company.
Re:Again (Score:5, Insightful)
And is yet more proof that without Jobs at the reins the company is going to shit. They burnt the pros with FCPx, aka iMovie Pro, by yanking all previous versions off the shelves and refusing to sell it to those that need to expand their business and need features that iMovie pro doesn't have,
You have absolutely no clue at all, do you?
Just how long do you think the development cycle was for FCPX? Given that Jobs himself mentioned it in at least one Keynote, I would venture to say that he had some real input on its feature-set.
Second, You do realize, of course, that Apple responded to their pro users, and allowed companies with "site licenses" (can't remember the exact term Apple uses) to continue to purchases licenses for the previous version of FCP, thus completely eliminating the "What if we hire more people?" objection to FCPX.
they did it again with the "don't say the M word (malware) and whatever you do do NOT admit it or help the customers!" bullshit
Interesting that there hasn't been another word in the press or the street about the MacDefender or any other "malware". I agree that the "don't admit it" stuff was some middle-manager's dumbass mistake; but what really matters is that Apple got on it, and got on it promptly, and evidently, quite effectively, too...
ey are sending out OSes with total shit drivers
Gimme a break! HOW many drivers do you think OS X ships with? Can you name a SINGLE OS that hasn't shipped with a bad driver or two? I can't. Not one.
This should be proof to most that without Jobs sitting in his chair ready to lay the smackdown on the fuckups that the company is in serious trouble. Like him or hate him you have to give the man credit for always running a tight ship and cutting through the bullshit, and I have a feeling without the big man in charge shit is only gonna get worse.
I notice this is your latest tactic, hairyfeet. You damn Apple with faint praise of Jobs, and spread this FUD regarding "Apple slipping in the absence of Jobs." Fact is, every single thing that has recently shipped, or will ship in the next year or so, was done under the auspices of Steve Jobs. R&D cycles for this stuff are measured in calendar YEARS, not weeks or months. And Apple is a large enough corporation (and has been for quite some time) that Stevie doesn't have to stamp his approval on every little initiative, initial every memo, or plan every project on a day to day, or even month to month, basis.
He really should have set up a solid line of succession after the first health scare and been putting someone in the spotlight that shared his drive and vision for the company.
I guess you don't keep up on Apple news (and yet still feel compelled to comment on it).
Ever heard of Tim Cook? He is as close to Steve Jobs ver. 2.0 as it gets. And he has run the company TWICE now (and I think is actually doing so right now). So, SJ and Apple HAVE been grooming an heir-apparent for over two years now. As you (rightly) note, they are big shoes to fill; but Tim seems to be up to the challenge, and the public and the press seem content with Tim's abilities in that regard.
But, I sincerely thank you on behalf of Steve Jobs for wishing him better health and a long life. He can use all the positive energy the Multiverse can send his way, and that is in very short supply here on Slashdot...
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I am sure a lot of OSs ship with a few less than perfect drivers but you do have to admit this isn't a driver for a random printer or something. The vast majority of Macs shipped in the last 10 years use either Nvidia or ATI graphics cards, both companies have combined driver packages which cover their entire range of cards so it isn't like there are thousands
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You can't argue that things were better with Jobs running the show, because they weren't.
The iPhone 4 death-grip, iPad 1 curved back, early Core 2 Macbooks having far too much thermal paste on them and overheating, 16 bit screens in various laptops, the iPod Color which was replaced after being on sale for only 3 months, the various App Store and iTunes music store bullshit, the bloated crapware that is iTunes for Windows, the Mac Cube...
Not that I am necessarily blaming Jobs for all of that, my point is th
Re:Again (Score:5, Informative)
Nope.
My late 2009 27" iMac has faulty video drivers to this day, and Apple's acknowledged as much. A secondary display will display digital static every third or fourth time you wake it up. I gave detailed bug reports, and worked endlessly over a period of a year and a half with Apple engineers to track down the problem and get it fixed. I spent countless hours helping them track down the problem, going back and forth on the issue at least 10 times.
I got a notification two weeks ago that the problem was fixed, and updated drivers were released in the latest version of Snow Leopard (and Lion as well, I assume), but only if your hardware was manufactured after December 2010. They had the nerve to ask me to try it on new hardware to see if the problem is resolved.
So I spent all that time helping them, and they screwed me. This issue is a bigger problem than mine is, but I wouldn't expect anything but the very minimum possible to appease customers on anything but the absolute latest equipment.
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Nope.
My late 2009 27" iMac has faulty video drivers to this day, and Apple's acknowledged as much. A secondary display will display digital static every third or fourth time you wake it up. I gave detailed bug reports, and worked endlessly over a period of a year and a half with Apple engineers to track down the problem and get it fixed. I spent countless hours helping them track down the problem, going back and forth on the issue at least 10 times.
I got a notification two weeks ago that the problem was fixed, and updated drivers were released in the latest version of Snow Leopard (and Lion as well, I assume), but only if your hardware was manufactured after December 2010. They had the nerve to ask me to try it on new hardware to see if the problem is resolved.
So I spent all that time helping them, and they screwed me. This issue is a bigger problem than mine is, but I wouldn't expect anything but the very minimum possible to appease customers on anything but the absolute latest equipment.
A secondary display? Guess what? Nvidia's proprietary 280.13 drivers still flake out quite often with multi-displays for the Linux Platform. This is an Nvidia issue and OpenGL accelerated environments.
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Well, first, a Mac isn't Linux. Apple's in charge of making sure the drivers work with their limited hardware configurations, rather than Nvidia trying to support all hardware and all flavors of Linux.
Second, the iMacs use AMD/ATI graphics cards (mine's a Radeon HD 4850).
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Just so you know – that isn't a driver issue – I have one of the exact machines you're talking about. I use it with an external display. I have never whitenessed what you're talking about. My guess is, the reason apple haven't fixed it after you filed the reports... They can't duplicate it.
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the latest iMacs don't support secondary monitors, do they?
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iMacs have supported secondary monitors since at least 2009 when I got mine. They may have supported them prior to that, but I couldn't say for sure.
Re:Again (Score:4, Insightful)
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My post showed pretty clearly I understand, and I was simply conveying my story to illustrate it to others.
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These things happen which is why everybody will advise you to wait until the 10.7.1 release which is coming soon. Don't be an early adopter if you you can't stand the pain. For god's sake some of these people don't have sense enough to even have a backup.
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It 's not friggin' magic. While being a lot better than Windows things fail, nothing has a 100% success rate and nobody will claim that. Even iOS upgrades fail from time to time or have bugs and they are as braindead as you you can make an OS upgrade. But hey, enjoy that straw man you got there.
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It 's not friggin' magic.
As I'll remind you the next time this comes up. Macs do fail and dont always work, next we'll deal with the myth of inherent security.
It really sucks when your own propaganda is used against you.
BTW, Windows updates dont fail as badly as this. Have not done so for years. The difference is when an update with Windows or Linux buggers up the drivers, I can get the original driver from Nvidia/Inte/AMD and fix it myself.
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As I'll remind you the next time this comes up. Macs do fail and dont always work, next we'll deal with the myth of inherent security.
Again with the straw man arguments.
It really sucks when your own propaganda is used against you.
Propaganda ? Get some perspective. Take a deep breath and repeat: we're discussing a preference for certain technical solution, not a religion. Don't project your attitudes onto me.
BTW, Windows updates dont fail as badly as this. Have not done so for years. The difference is when an update with Windows or Linux buggers up the drivers, I can get the original driver from Nvidia/Inte/AMD and fix it myself.
Well here's the driver for Snow Leopard [nvidia.com] for the GeForce GT 330M that's in that Macbook, that might work. Of course once Nvidia releases a driver for Lion you could try installing that but once they do Apple will just distribute it through an update so there'd be no point looking for it yourself.
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Let the touchy and delusional Mactard faggot who can't bear anything bad, no matter how truthful, to ever be said against his beloved corporate god come out of the closet.
gb2/g/
Does it now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, yeah? I'm posting this on a mid-2010 17-inch MacBook Pro with an Nvidia card. I've been running Lion developer previews for months, and the only time I've ever have graphics problems is when I'm playing a game and the system gets too hot because my room isn't well-ventilated. In fact, Lion could be the most stable first release of any OS X operating system. I regularly play World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead 2, and Team Fortress 2 without issue.
Nvidia isn't saying that nothing will get fixed. Apple works with Nvidia on their drivers. What Nvidia is saying is simply that they can't provide technical support. Removing posts about goofy boycotts and petitions is just clearing out nonsense posts in what is supposed to be a support forum. Apple's support forums are some of the silliest, whiniest forums on the web, and you'll rarely find useful information from the users there.
I also question the claim that "Apple knew about the issue before shipping Lion," as if there's some big conspiracy that Apple knew it was going to cause your machine to black-screen but didn't care. Give me a break.
Because the issue only affects a tiny segment of customers. If, as you claim, every single person with a mid-2010 MBP was getting kernel panics every 5-10 minutes, that would be major news. Like most customers with technical problems, you're acting like it's a bigger deal than it is and that it's affecting more people than it is. Installing a new operating system is a major procedure that can uncover previously invisible problems lurking on a person's computer. That's why, every time there's a console firmware update, you'll see a bunch of posts from people claiming the updates ruined their machines.
Re:Does it now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, one laptop makes a trend true now does it. Well I have upgraded to Lion as well and in the last week or so since I jumped my previously fine 2009 17" Macbook Pro has crashed out completely twice. One second it's running, the next it's totally powered off. This has happened once on battery power, once whilst plugged in.
So there are some problems out there, just because it hasn't affected you doesn't mean it ain't so!
Re:Does it now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly the same thing could be said to the submitter claiming every single person with a mid-2010 MBP is having kernel panics every five minutes. Do you realize how many customers that is? It would have been huge news the day Lion was released. My point is that the issue obviously only affects a small segment of customers, like most hardware and software issues.
The submitter also claimed Apple "hasn't responded to the issue," but the linked article says they have said that they are looking into it and are taking crash reports.
I see this kind of exaggeration all the time when dealing with technical support issues. Everyone thinks their issue is also affecting everyone else and that there's a conspiracy on the part of the evil company not to help them.
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Seven! is it seven customer?
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That's fine, except Apple doesn't deserve the same grace that IMO Microsoft deserves. Developing Windows is inherently challenging because there are countless combinations of motherboards, video cards, disk controllers, etc etc.
The advantage that Apple has always had is that they control the entire stack - from hardware down to software. They can choose whatever chipset they want, whatever display adapter they want, and whatever components they want.
It is quite conceivable (and I would expect them to do s
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[...] there ARE a lot of fanboys out there who will downplay any complaint no matter how legit.
You do not own a Mac/etc. I can easily tell.
Because if you had own a Mac, you would have surely browsed the Mac related forums. And by browsing any Mac related forum one quickly finds that the fanboys are actually the very same people who generate the complains. An endless stream of them at that. Some of the complains get picked by the media, some of them are real problem - most are not.
I'm more apt to believe complaints
And that's the problem with you. You *believe* complaints. While people who commented above, by virtue of owning a su
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Fanboys don't generate the complaints. Fanboys, by definition, are people who will complain/deny/scream at anyone complaining about the thing they're into, trying to shut them up at any cost and by any means necessary from pointless shouting to trying to make up intelligent-looking arguments that have no substance behind them. Because that's what fanboys are - the object of fandom can do no wrong, and when someone complains about the object of fandom, they are inherently stupid, evil and just plain need to
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I think the OP is questioning the choice of the word "anyone." There are two 2010 MacBook Pros in my house, and neither one has the issue either. Sounds to me like a bad batch rather than an epidemic.
Re:Does it now? (Score:5, Interesting)
The results are mixed, as can be expected with a brand new OS, but it's not a tragedy. You can always restore to the pre-upgrade backups that you should always make as a responsible admin.
All new OS versions have bugs, that's why we get the first 1-2 fixes quite soon after the release. Apple is already working on 10.7.2, as 10.7.1 is in QA by now.
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Oh, yeah? I'm posting this on a mid-2010 17-inch MacBook Pro with an Nvidia card. I've been running Lion developer previews for months, and the only time I've ever have graphics problems is when I'm playing a game and the system gets too hot because my room isn't well-ventilated. In fact, Lion could be the most stable first release of any OS X operating system. I regularly play World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead 2, and Team Fortress 2 without issue.
Nvidia isn't saying that nothing will get fixed. Apple works with Nvidia on their drivers. What Nvidia is saying is simply that they can't provide technical support. Removing posts about goofy boycotts and petitions is just clearing out nonsense posts in what is supposed to be a support forum. Apple's support forums are some of the silliest, whiniest forums on the web, and you'll rarely find useful information from the users there.
I also question the claim that "Apple knew about the issue before shipping Lion," as if there's some big conspiracy that Apple knew it was going to cause your machine to black-screen but didn't care. Give me a break.
Because the issue only affects a tiny segment of customers. If, as you claim, every single person with a mid-2010 MBP was getting kernel panics every 5-10 minutes, that would be major news. Like most customers with technical problems, you're acting like it's a bigger deal than it is and that it's affecting more people than it is. Installing a new operating system is a major procedure that can uncover previously invisible problems lurking on a person's computer. That's why, every time there's a console firmware update, you'll see a bunch of posts from people claiming the updates ruined their machines.
Everything you said could have been repeated for most similar reports at about Windows stability problems. People who have problems will of course complain, and get unfair attention vs all the users that don't have problems. If anything, welcome Apple to the reality of having more than a few users and system variations to care for.
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Same experience. I like Lion, it's just a ton of nice little tweaks and everything else just works. Spaces... it actually works *and* I can set different desktops. Hidden scrollbars... awesome, my monitor is bigger.
And regarding the censorship, you're absolutely right.
From TFS:
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
Yeah, because here on /., posts that are hopelessly offtopic are never modded down to death. Are you fucking kidding me, you're really whining that idiotic comments were deleted? Let's do a test, I'll go to CBS news (a typical news si
Re:Does it now? (Score:5, Funny)
Let's do a test, I'll go to CBS news (a typical news site with unmoderated comments) and click the first story I see. Yup, sure enough, the comments are completely fucking retarded. [cbsnews.com]
Those weren't the comments, they were the stories.
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While I dont' think Apple is doing anything wrong, this is incorrect:
"Yeah, because here on /., posts that are hopelessly offtopic are never modded down to death. "
I can adjust my view and see any post. This is completely different then removing a post.
"it's just a ton of nice little tweaks and everything else just works. Spaces... it actually"
so it didn't work before? You're sentence is weird.
Lion, 2010 MBP, No Problems. (Score:2)
I've been running OSX Lion with the machine on 24/7 since release day on my 2010 unibody MBP and I've experienced no crashes whatsoever. Lion is a bit slower than Snow Leopard was for some UI tasks, but the new Mission Control task/desktop switcher more than makes up for any other inconvenience.
Biggest issue I had was that my LiveScribe Desktop wasn't working, but as of today that has been fixed, so now: no complaints whatsoever.
I haven't noticed a problem either (Score:2)
I've seen SOME strange video behaviour since upgrading (usually when resizing a window) that I assumed was driver-related, but I haven't had any panics or lockups. Why do Mac users always blow issues like this way out of proportion?
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Take it for what it is: The systems generally work quite well, so when something goes wrong, people freak out and behave like it's the end of the world.
This is exacerbated by sites like Slashdot who love nothing more than to pump pageviews and revenue by getting a bunch of apple-hating and apple-loving trolls trolling each other, to the tune of hundreds of comments per article.
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Mid-2010 15" MBP here. I use it to develop and test 3D visual analytics software. Neither the kernel nor I have yet to panic...
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Try again.
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Apple's support forums are some of the silliest, whiniest forums on the web, and you'll rarely find useful information from the users there.
My God, you got that right. Over the last weekend I was loading up a MacMini with Snow Leopard and getting MySQL installed to work with PHP and Apache. It comes with Apache2. It comes with PHP but just needs a couple of text files edited. MySQL was a little more difficult-- download the package and install. (mcrypt also but that was a genuine effort with source cod
Yep, seconded! (Score:2)
I am using a 2010 Macbook Pro 17" with Lion as we speak, and so far, no sign of any graphics driver issues? The kernel panics and black screens described sound pretty typical of an overheating video chip to me, and we've certainly seen it before with a defective batch of nVidia mobile GPUs across many product lines.
Did they release some defective GPUs again in the 2010 Macbook Pros, perhaps? Or maybe some of them just have too much heatsink paste applied, causing inefficient cooling? Lots of possibilitie
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I'm pretty sure iFixit raised eyebrows about the application of thermal paste on this model. Maybe the lion drivers are a little less inclined to run fans and its catching up with them on the badly manufactured ones.
I'm baffled too (Score:2)
I am posting this from a mid-2010 MBP running Mac OS Lion. Been stable as a rock. Certainly no kernel panics. Everything Just Works(tm), just the way it is supposed to. I *did* take the precaution of re-installing from scratch -- my MacOS install dated all the way back to Tiger (been updated every year or two as new MacOS versions come out or I get a new Mac), and was starting to get a bit unstable due to accumulated cruft. Gave me an excuse to upgrade to that new 7200 rpm 750gb hard drive anyhow :).
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Oh, yeah? I'm posting this on a mid-2010 17-inch MacBook Pro with an Nvidia card. I've been running Lion developer previews for months, and the only time I've ever have graphics problems is when I'm playing a game and the system gets too hot because my room isn't well-ventilated.
How hot is your room? I'm in Shanghai, and my HP G71 - with a big 17" screen - running 3D FEA simulations (both CPU cores pegged at 100%, 7.6 GB of RAM committed, full rendering enabled) never flakes out thermally. Even while the room temperature is a relatively warm 36 deg C.
Having to worry about your room being too hot is a sure sign there's a thermal management problem with your laptop. They're supposed to be used in places beyond just a comfy air-conditioned office, after all...
In this thread...... (Score:4, Funny)
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No, but if you read the larger list of people saying the same things, you can see patterns emerging. The article is wrong. Many people here, if you haven't noticed, have the problem with 2009 Macs but not with 2010 Macs. Seems to me the author was either mistaken or got a very early 2010 batch machine.
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Engage reality distortion field (Score:2)
Falsehood (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple OS X Lion shipped with new NVidia video drivers that are causing anyone with a mid 2010 Macbook Pro to get a kernel panic every 5-10 minutes.
Uh, what? I've yet to see a MBP with Lion getting a KP. Do editors really fall for this obvious linkbaiting?
Mid 2010 MBP 15" with Nvidia (Score:2)
No kernel panics here. I did have a tooth-gnashing amount of irritation with an update needed for Adobe CS5, but aside from that misadventure (which took a couple of hours of swearing to put right), Lion has been a giant snooze. No overheating, no bashing and thrashing, no sudden power issues. In fact, "snooze" is probably the right word, since I haven't yet found anything about it to impress me, either.
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No kernel panics here. I did have a tooth-gnashing amount of irritation with an update needed for Adobe CS5, but aside from that misadventure (which took a couple of hours of swearing to put right), Lion has been a giant snooze. No overheating, no bashing and thrashing, no sudden power issues. In fact, "snooze" is probably the right word, since I haven't yet found anything about it to impress me, either.
Same, 'cept I'm rocking a 2010 13" MBP... only problem I have with Lion is that my Office 2004 won't work anymore (not a huge loss, but Pages '09 doesn't like a *some* of my Word docs). Oh, that and my SSL VPN provider is usually about 9 months late to release OSX drivers.
The really disturbing part of the story. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been using computers since the 70's. I've seen every major manufacturer have problems over the years. Despite protests to the contrary, Apple is not immune. This is not the first time they've had software issues. It won't be the last. It doesn't make them any different than any other computer supplier. That's just the way things go.
But software issues aren't the real problem. The real problem is right here:
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
Censoring technical discussions? Removing posts?
Seriously?
This is the kind of crap that really opens up Apple for criticism. Sure, it's a problem. But you deal with it by coming out and saying "we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it". Some people will rant and rave. Some people will take the initial problem as an excuse to boycott Apple products in the future. Most likely though, people who cry "boycott" will calm down in a few minutes and accept the software upgrade push to fix the problem. After all, consumers are quick to be incensed but they're easily mollified by good customer support. That is, until Apple goes and deletes their posts. That's exactly what you want to not do. Everyone is going to see you do it. You're going to generate tons of bad publicity by yourself and you're going to drive away customers who would have otherwise accepted the fix when it's available.
This is an incredibly bad move on the part of Apple. I can't understand why in the world they would do it. That is, unless the stereotypes are true about no one being allowed to criticize Apple. And if that's the case, it's no wonder they're never able to break out of their niche.
Re:The really disturbing part of the story. (Score:4, Insightful)
And with some of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the industry, isn't it possible that perhaps Apple knows something about good customer support that you don't?
I don't know, maybe they've discovered that it's a bad idea to let your support forums turn into a whining trollfest full of threats of boycotts and lawsuits, related to an issue that has just been found, and might be a software, hardware, manufacturer or "user error" type of issue? I can't imagine how increasing the amount of unhelpful whining on customer support forums is a "good" thing for the general user base - it contributes nothing useful to help people troubleshoot, and it's just going to bog down the support forums.
Re:The really disturbing part of the story. (Score:4, Funny)
Here's a thought. You could keep your customer service forum from becoming a whining troll fest by, oh I don't know, responding to the problems quickly. It's a radical concept, I know. But it's a thought. . .
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The real problem is right here:
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
Censoring technical discussions? Removing posts?
Seriously?
This is the kind of crap that really opens up Apple for criticism. Sure, it's a problem. But you deal with it by coming out and saying "we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it".
They are indeed censoring technical discussions, removing content that has nothing to do with the technical discussion. There are other places to post rants and complaints that are non-technical. Personally, I'd think this was a good thing, except for the fact that Apple's support forums have a dearth of technical discussion at the best of times. The result? MacFixit for the technical discussion, various other places for the rants, and Apple doesn't get the lively discussion and technical feedback on th
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As for "you deal with it by coming out and saying 'we know we have a problem, we're going to fix it,'" that's exactly what the article says they've done. They're asking for any data customers can provide -- they're just not getting any; only rants and petitions.
Let me highlight the important parts.
Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
They may be responding now. And there may be no small amount of hyperbole associated with this. After all, it's Apple and the haters are often more vocal than the fanbois. Nevertheless, a company who got on top of the issue in the first place wouldn't have these kinds of problems. The fact that people are yelling "boycott" in a technical forum suggests that Apple screwed the pooch on this one.
Sure, Apple has legions of dedicated fans who will brush this off as no big
Re:The really disturbing part of the story. (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair you are quoting an article written about this issue from someone with some bias.
"Apple knew about the issue" [citation needed]
"hasn't responded to the issue" [demonstrably false - they are asking for feedback and crash logs].
The fact that people are screaming "boycott" in a technical forum is.... human nature. I saw it *all the time* in Blizzard's forums - especially back in the day when they had weekly server restarts and fortnightly maintenance that would take the servers down for a few hours, and even with update posts on restart times if they didn't come back up the *second* the estimate time was reached (along with the constant posts during the downtime) there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
I have seen it in the PSN forums (I used to moderate them as a job in college many years ago), on the BBC iPlayer forums.. pretty much anywhere there is a place for people to vent, they will do so, and they'll all talk about how "unacceptable" it all is and how "I am boycotting!". Hell, we see it on slashdot every time video games get mentioned - a flurry of posts about boycotts due to DRM/removal of LAN play/TF2 hats etc.
Now, I'm sure there are problems but I find it hard to believe there wasn't extensive testing on all manner of hardware to try to iron out bugs. It's also why there was a dev release to help catch things like this that might not show on generic systems. I think people are expecting Apple to go "oh, silly us! we forgot to close a bracket in the driver code! All fixed!" and the fact that it hasn't been instantly cured is taken as a sign that they don't care. It's obviously quite a specific bug, since it doesn't affect all models of the same generation, but does seem to be limited to a specific model type .
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censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.'
Censoring technical discussions? Removing posts?
Seriously?
It's a support forum, not 4chan. Calling for a boycot has nothing to do with technical support.
As much as I'd like to say "It just works" right now while basking in my PC glory, I personally think it's more productive for these couple of users to post crash reports and try to help Apple find a solution. Throwing a tantrum on a forum and yelling "boycott" (on their iPad2 preferably while listening to music from their iPod Touch) never got any results anyway.
Another storm in a glass of water...
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People don't just randomly show up in a technical forum and start yelling "boycott". Apple dropped the ball by not responding in a timely manner. Then, when users started getting frustrated, Apple decided to compound the problem by deleting posts rather than trying to fix the problem they created for themselves. I don't know of a better example of how not to run your customer service department.
BS story. All I see posted in comments (Score:2)
above is "2010 MBP here, with Lion, no problems" over and over again, including the same thing from myself.
Looks like the results of this straw poll are in, and they are that the story is BS and /. has been had once again.
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But the story says "all 2010 MBPs", so even if 20 slash dotters post here that their 2010 MBPs are working, the story has been proven BS, not that slashdot owns 100% of all 2010 MBPs, which no one is suggesting at all.
Nice try, though. 4/10 for effort.
Censoring (Score:3)
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Well, if you are good at it, you let people complain about it and only censor specific information. That way people whine about what censorship is instead of dealing with the missing information.
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You're holding it wrong... (Score:5, Funny)
Apple will release a video of Steve Jobs showing you how to hold the computer properly.
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Maybe it is a heat issue? (Score:2)
The same problem happened when people started upgrading their laptops to Windows Vista (and 7) and using the Aero interface. It put a much greater strain on the video cards and the increased heat pushed some people's systems over the edge and they started crashing. A lot of them were older laptops that likely had a lot of dust and grime built up in their system and fans that were starting to fail.
Is there something about Lion that would cause it to put a greater strain on the GPU during normal usage? I h
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citation?
And this isn't supposed to happen on a Mac where Apple controls what hardware goes into it.
AS opposed to Windows systems which can have all kinds of different cards in it.
Wi-Fi ain't so hot either (Score:2)
Far too many report problems when the Mac wakes from sleep where it either does not reconnect to the WiFi it knows about or connects for only a short while and loses connection after. Fix is quite simple, turn the airport off and on but it is so annoying.
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I've been noticing that with Snow Leopard with my 2007 MBP in the last month or two.
Problem predates Lion? (Score:2)
My '06 Mac Pro (with 7300GT and 8800GT cards, each driving one display) started acting up after the 10.6.8 update. It would start up and run fine, but performance would drag down after an hour or so, accompanied by various graphical and refresh glitches. After poking around a bit, I found that an error message regarding the NVidia driver was getting written to the system log file every time something on the 7300GT's portion of the desktop was updated. If anything animated was put on that display, the system
Mac users (Score:2)
how easy is it for the user to fix thins? can a user go to nvidia and simply download a different driver? or does it all have to move through Apples hands?
Can you say "ATI X1600"? (Score:2)
Not me, nope. (Score:2)
I've got a Mid 2010 i7 15" MBP, 8GB RAM and an SSD. It's got a NVIDIA GT330M card in it, and I've been running Lion full-time since the GM seed was put out on 7/1. I've also used all the DPs from another boot drive I have in it (I took out the DVD drive and installed a smaller SSD). Lion has had some issues, but never a graphics-related lockup. That's both using the built-in display and also connected to a LED Cinema Display. No graphics issues at all.
In fact, the only problems I've really had were that Pog
No issues here (Score:2)
Lots of posts, but just checking in.
2010 macbook pro running Lion and haven't seen this happen once.
3GHz iMac kernel panic (Score:2)
I loaded Lion about 5 days ago on my 3 GHz dual core iMac (with Nvidia card) and after a total of maybe 24 hours of use, tonight it generated a kernel panic, overwrote the screen with the console message, and froze up.
I strongly suspect Lion's Nvidia driver problem covers more than just MacBooks.
Re:Faulty specs? (Score:5, Insightful)
You damn well can, because they insist on writing the drivers themselves. Hell, even the bootcamp video drivers aren't the same as the official nVidia drivers, and worse - every time you update Bootcamp, it replaces whatever video driver you HAVE installed to get better performance, with the latest version that THEY want to provide you. If they just let the hardware manufacturers code the drivers, and had some sort of driver certification process, this wouldn't be such a problem, would it.
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You have yet to establish that this is "such a problem" in the first place, so it's hard to understand what problem you're thinking would be solved by letting nVidia write their own drivers.
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For starters you would get the same set of driver bugs and features as on the other platforms, because nVidia really only has one driver with different interface layers for different systems. This would reduce the pain of working around driver bugs in cross-platform products a lot.
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So letting the vendor replicate its bugs and idiosyncrasies across all platforms in perfect sync is a good thing? Systems which are written & tested to clearly documented requirements tend to have a higher quality implementation and documentation. If the same people who write the requirement specs are the people writing the code to implement those requirements, then you open the door for all kinds of shenanigans, like "Well the spec says X, but it's so much easier to do Y, and nobody will ever notice
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Of course, your assumption is that Apple's problem is that the spec isn't good, as opposed to the problem being Apple not having developers capable of developing solid drivers for their own platform. Considering Apple devs had trouble even getting alarm clock code correct in known edge cases like daylight saving's time, I don't have a lot of faith in their devs (or their testers) these days.
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I have used the nVidia specs, and they are really good. However that was a few years ago, maybe they ahve gotten worse.
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What a shiny little world you must live in! In the real world OpenGL drivers are *massive* and extremely complex beasts. And they contain more shenanigans than you could probably imagine. And for bugs, there are hordes of them - you just have to be unlucky enough to encounter them. It is all a mix of obscure stuff in the OpenGL specification that is rarely, even never, used, weird combinations of features that should work, but maybe won't because nobody uses them and nobody cares to test them properly for t
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A) Quality
B) Consistency
C) You could roll back to a previous driver until the fix the current one.
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One of the reasons for choosing a Mac over a PC is that it is the responsibility of Apple and you do not need to worry about drivers and incompatibilities. Its in all in an integrated platform where you plug it in and work.
This issue of responsibility of hardware driver issues is why Windows sucks and also why Windows XP is still popular. People are afraid to upgrade their pc's with the OS that it came with. You are rolling dice when upgrading drivers or operating systems.
Re:Drivers are responsibility of NVidia (Score:5, Insightful)
What Nvidia is saying is that they can't provide technical support.
how tied are Nvidia / ATI hands hands? (Score:2)
Are there forced to use apple hardware vs there own test rigs?
Is the lack of good priced desktop tower makeing driver coding for fail under the windows / Linux side that has systems that start at $500-$700 that let you add in a good video card / use a PCI-E video card VS $2500 on the mac. In the past with G4 and G5 there where lot's of mac ATI and nvidia cards + card flashing.
Do they get new apple hardware before others?
Can they make chip family based drivers or does apple force them to code a driver for ea
Re:It's Apple, it just works, think different (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is intuitive, stylish, and their software just works. They think differently.
If you're claiming that Apple fans think the hardware and software is flawless, you've obviously never visited MacRumors, AppleInsider, and other Apple forums. Apple customers are the whiniest critics in existence and will complain about mismatched colors at the pixel level (granted, the guy I'm talking about was an interface designer, but still).
But yes, all the high-level qualities about Apple are true, which is why they have such a devoted fanbase and billions of dollars in the bank.
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Apple is intuitive, stylish, and their software just works. They think differently.
Are saying iTunes is either not software or not from Apple? Because it certainly is not intuitive, stylish, not just works
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iTunes on my 2011 MBP with SSD is without a doubt the slowest piece of software on my system. It is consistently the slowest to load, and slowest to run. It is not some magical experience on OSX, iTunes sucks horrbly over here too.
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"Apple is intuitive"
No, it is NOT intuitive.
"stylish" true
" their software just works"
apparently not.
"illions of dollars in the bank."
If money is an indicator, then I guess Windows makes the best OS of all.
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Apple is intuitive, stylish, and their software just works.
iTunes. Q.E.D.
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The funny thing is that his guy could change the logo to be whatever he wanted if he was using Windows...
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Boycott is a strong threat. Why would any company let its forums be used for activities that are clearly not in its interests? Apple is not censoring posts requesting assistance in a civilized manner, the respect you speak of should flow in both directions.
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ProTip:
Reload Snow Leopard. Don't upgrade again until 10.7.3. NEVER pick up the first iteration of ANYTHING Apple. Let everyone else be the beta testers unless you enjoy that sort of thing.
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So your praise is a company fixed something that was their fault? shocking.
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Yes, why not?
You can't ensure 100% perfect products in a mass production line (at least, not economically), so the speed, efficiency and cost of putting right a lemon is an important part of any business that sells consumer products.
If they do it right, then they should be praised. Far too much emphasis has been placed on companies to not only repair a product but to then be expected to bend over and ass kiss the entitlement attitude customer who says "ok, so you fixed that for free so I now have what I pur