Friday, February 8th 2019
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Apple MacBook Pro 2018 Appears to Have a Serious Design Flaw
Apple's MacBook Pro (2018) with the AMD Radeon RX Vega 20 graphics option appears to have a serious design flaw related to its video subsystem. The laptop tends to show severe screen flickering and lines crossing through the picture after waking up from extended periods of idling (after the display has turned off). The problem persists even through reboots. A reboot will make the flickering go away, however the next time the MacBook idles and decides to turn off its display, waking the machine will bring the flicker back. Most common remedies an enthusiast could think of, such as disabling the auto-switching between integrated- and discrete GPUs, and preventing the monitor from idling, don't appear to fix the problem.
The problem was discovered on a brand new $4,500 15-inch MacBook Pro (Intel Core i9, AMD Vega 20, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD). Upon its discovery, it was taken to the Apple Store, where the employees immediately replaced it without further questions when they heard "display corruption after standby". The replacement process was hassle-free, it looks like others have faced this issue with this MacBook Pro model and Apple is trying to quickly resolve it to keep the lid on it. However, after a couple of days, the problem re-surfaced on the replacement MacBook, too. Both models were running MacOS "Mojave" version 10.14.2.TechPowerUp staff member Crmaris depended on this MacBook Pro to see him through the rigors of TechPowerUp's CES 2019 coverage, which includes image editing and video rendering on the move, which requires the serious CPU and GPU power on tap with this particular MacBook Pro variant. Video rendering and transcoding tasks can run up to hours, during which the MacBook usually sits unused, plugged in. By default, the monitor times out after a certain amount of time. Perhaps this is the key to reproducing the issue: let the display time out while the machine is utilizing the discrete GPU for something other than driving the display. Crmaris is also the editor of HardwareBusters, and has described the issue on a more personal level in the video linked below.
If you have encountered a similar issue, please do let us know in the comments below, so we can get an idea how widespread this problem is.
Source:
Hardware Busters (YouTube)
The problem was discovered on a brand new $4,500 15-inch MacBook Pro (Intel Core i9, AMD Vega 20, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD). Upon its discovery, it was taken to the Apple Store, where the employees immediately replaced it without further questions when they heard "display corruption after standby". The replacement process was hassle-free, it looks like others have faced this issue with this MacBook Pro model and Apple is trying to quickly resolve it to keep the lid on it. However, after a couple of days, the problem re-surfaced on the replacement MacBook, too. Both models were running MacOS "Mojave" version 10.14.2.TechPowerUp staff member Crmaris depended on this MacBook Pro to see him through the rigors of TechPowerUp's CES 2019 coverage, which includes image editing and video rendering on the move, which requires the serious CPU and GPU power on tap with this particular MacBook Pro variant. Video rendering and transcoding tasks can run up to hours, during which the MacBook usually sits unused, plugged in. By default, the monitor times out after a certain amount of time. Perhaps this is the key to reproducing the issue: let the display time out while the machine is utilizing the discrete GPU for something other than driving the display. Crmaris is also the editor of HardwareBusters, and has described the issue on a more personal level in the video linked below.
If you have encountered a similar issue, please do let us know in the comments below, so we can get an idea how widespread this problem is.
156 Comments on Apple MacBook Pro 2018 Appears to Have a Serious Design Flaw
Edit: That's me though. I've used Macs and PCs. There really isn't much wrong with Apple and as @notb said, they typically just work. Some people really like it when their technology "just works". Not everyone has the inclination or the time to fiddle around with a laptop or something. Believe it or not, there is a market for that and it's rather large.
My point is, if you know how to use the device correctly, it's not an issue.
I know... I'm bad. :roll:
I have absolutely no use for fanboys of any kind regardless of what company they play cheerleader for. I don't care if it's Apple, nVidia, AMD, Seagate, Western Digital, Intel, ASUS, Gigabyte, Samsung... I could go on and on. Fanboys of any camp generally suck. I'll admit though that for the longest time I was an Intel fanboy, Intel or nothing at all.
Don't get me wrong, Apple products are expensive, but from the Apple products I have used, my issues have been very minimal and they tend to just work. There is value in that to the general market.
Like I said before, I love being able to tweak and build my own desktops but when it comes to my phone I quite simply need it to work when I need it to work. I need to know that my phone will function when it comes to crunch time like if I'm stuck somewhere out in the cold and for whatever reason I'm having car trouble. Yeah, I can change a flat tire if I need to but it would probably take some time to do so and when it's 19 degrees outside with a windchill I don't want to be frustrated while trying to get the car jack into place on the side of the road while contending with cars zipping by me.
The initial idea in this thread was that for the hardware you can always get a better deal elsewhere, but that got quickly derailed.
Fwiw, my main beef with Apple is their tight grip on their ecosystem. It's what makes their products work so well, but from a consumer point of view it's also what takes away your right to tinker/repair. And when you control everything from software to hardware and keep your SKUs to a minimum, your costs are lower. Yet Apple's end user prices are anything but.
As for the lack of repair-ability of Apple Mac systems it's a symptom of what people want from their systems namely they want them thin and light. Unfortunately to make them "thin and light" you have to trade something away for it, namely the ability to repair it since in order to make it thin and light you have to throw the idea of modular components out the window and make motherboards with everything built onboard. We can say the same thing about most Windows notebooks as well, you'll never be able to replace your mobile GPU in your notebook with a newer and faster one since it too is built onboard the motherboard. Yes, some notebook makers toyed with the idea of modular mobile GPUs but that idea was pretty much a flop since it too was proprietary as all hell.
Simply put, the type of people Apple is marketing towards isn't you.
90%+ of the horror stories are about 3rd party app stores. I've been on Google's app store for years and never had a security issue with that. Once in a while a rogue app will slip in there, too, but Google will take care of it rather quickly. Well, when instead of targeting hundreds of CPUs and GPUs, you only hate to target a dozen or so, I'm pretty sure your development and QA costs are a fraction of everybody else's. Sure, having an in-house language to develop everything will add to the costs, but that's what the App Store is for, right?
Like @ssdpro pointed out above, Apple doesn't have a significant percent of any market they're in. But they still top the profit charts. If that's not due to higher margins than I don't know what it is. You got that right :P
thevpn.guru/more-adware-apps-google-play-store/
blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/various-google-play-beauty-camera-apps-sends-users-pornographic-content-redirects-them-to-phishing-websites-and-collects-their-pictures/
blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/google-play-apps-drop-anubis-banking-malware-use-motion-based-evasion-tactics/
All found in the Google Play Store itself. If you ask me, if their app vetting process was better then the app wouldn't have made it to the Play Store to begin with. Much of this stems from the fact that anybody and everybody can develop and submit apps to the Google Play Store whereas with the iOS App Store you need to purchase a developer license to submit apps. A person who simply wants to infect some users won't be willing it shell out the cost to buy a developer license for the iOS App Store, they're going to go the cheap route and plaster the Google Play Store with scam apps to do that since there's no cost to do so.
But imagine you were a student or a high school kid trying to learn programming. Between Google and Apple, where would you start?
Oh and Microsoft Visual Studio is given away for free too. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that writing Android apps is better and easier to do so in Microsoft Visual Studio than Google's own Android Studio which is an unstable pile of hot garbage.
As for Microsoft Visual Studio you really have to hand it to Microsoft for that, they've made the best damn developer tool in the industry. You can make Mac apps, Windows apps, Android apps, iOS apps, even Linux apps (with Mono and .NET Core) and share code between them all. Pretty much nobody can touch the quality and abilities of Visual Studio, it's just that damn good. And to think you can get Visual Studio for free. Wow.
I think it comes down to how you use your laptop. Or rather: how you live with it.
Laptops may be getting thinner in general, but they're still big and heavy. You feel them in your backpack or bag.
The whole point of making notebooks smaller was to get them to the size and weight that we find somehow familiar and neutral. Like a normal paper notebook. And we're getting close.
And for people that tolerate heavier luggage, there will always be a potential to get something larger and cheaper / more powerful.
I had a 2.5 kg notebook when I was studying. It took half of my backpack and was heavy, but OK for commuting between home and university.
But that's not always the case, right? Sometimes you go shopping after work. Sometimes you just go for a walk. And walking around with additional 2.5kg is definitely uncomfortable.
Currently I carry an HP EliteBook 840 (physically similar to the MacBook Pro). Just 1 kg and maybe 1cm of thickness less than what I had 10 years ago, but the difference is night and day. They don't. You don't look at prices as you should.
With Apple you pay a premium for their work. Their products are really easy to use. They do many things for you.
Apple competes with other manufacturers by making their products friendly and tinker-free.
Makers of Windows laptops don't compete by making their products friendly and tinker-free. They compete by finding the cheapest way to combine the same generic parts and make them run under the same OS.
Simple fact is: if you're 100% in Apple ecosystem and use Apple-certified accessories, it's very unlikely you'll ever have any compatibility issues. No tinkering, no asking on forums, no need to learn how something works. It may not be that important for tech-savvy people, but for everyone else Apple is actually very good value. You computer or phone just works - exactly like your car, your TV, your fridge. You just use it. You don't have to think how it works. Honestly, when I got my iPhone, it took me few days to find out how to do this kind of things.
It's a touch interface. You can only touch, hold, swipe or pinch. It's not that hard to discover how things work. And thanks to very strong Apple policy, all apps work more or less the same.