On TWiT[0]. They had the keyboard up to 115f sometimes, some other videos on youtube have gone much higher.
I've also seen a couple of youtubers and the number is growing, returning their macbooks [1], [2], due to the performance and the number is growing daily.
I really think this issue is down to a few things.
1) The need from Apple to be thinner each iteration, is really costing them the ability to have better thermals and fans.
2) Putting an 14nm chip where a 10nm should be. Unfortunately Intel is having issues with that.
3) No vents at the sides or the back, only where the screen is. Poor design considerations when it comes to heat.
I'm going to be keeping onto my MBPr 2012 for another year. I want to see some of these issues being resolved.
I would not be surprised if this spurs on Apple to phase in Arm processors in 2020.
Similarly, my 2012 Air (8gb RAM, 500gb SSD) is working just fine, and I could probably get quite a few more years out of it.
It astonishes me how well that old laptop does what I need, considering any laptop from 2006 or 2004 would have been slow as molasses in 2012, and total garbage today.
>considering any laptop from 2006 or 2004 would have been slow as molasses in 2012, and total garbage today.
Not if you put an SSD in it. Core 2 Duo is an acceptable processor. People seem quite surprised to learn that their slow pc is caused by disk io saturation.
Apple statement: Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we've identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro.
That is much more embarrassing than simple thermal throttling of the CPU. The thermal overload on PMIC chips are designed to handle malfunctions not regular usage.
If the voltage regulator is overheating at high CPU load, it must be getting very hot at just normal load. That will seriously reduce it's life span, not to mention a hot voltage regulator means you're pissing away battery unnecessarily.
Seems crazy to spend so much on a machine, just have to do something that apparently can void your warranty if something goes amiss, to take advantage of the extra power you paid for.
I don't understand how this happened. Apple is a company that built it's empire on paying a premium for reliability and ease of use.
There have been mistakes in the past, but this is something that should have been caught immediately, which suggests that they were aware of it at release.
Is it just nostalgia goggles telling me that Jobs would not have let these out the door?
While Apple's not blameless in the matter, this seems to be more of an Intel issue no?
It appears the i9 isn't a good fit for thin and light laptops (Apple's also not the only one using the i9 in this form factor). Of course, a laptop using this i9 and properly cooling it is not going to be small or pretty[1].
Getting back to Apple, there are a couple of ways of looking at this.
For people who are bursting (as opposed to doing long running sustained loads) the i9 is probably the fastest Macbook Pro you can get. For people who are using optimized media apps like FCP, this is also not necessarily a bad buy, since you'll likely reap the benefits of the faster CPU.
For people who are doing sustained loads and/or running non-optimized apps like Premiere, this is probably not a good Macbook Pro to buy. For people who care a lot about getting advertised baseline clock rates, irrespective of bottom line performance gains, this is also not the Macbook Pro to buy.
For some, it's an easy choice, and for others, it's complicated.
Thermal properties of the chip and any issues arising from those are pieces that the engineers should have sussed out in the beginning though. If I don't put a heatsink and fan on my desktop CPU, then is that Intel's fault? Of course not.
Hopefully the firmware can take care of the issue for those impacted.
Intel had to scramble to effectively increase processor density in laptops by 2x and 3x almost overnight when Ryzen came out. They have been resting on their laurels for a better part of a decade. They are also working on the same TDP constraints as before. A considerable feat in such a short time, 2x more cores and 700MHz more turbo.
Looking at the Macbook Pro design, it is suppose to be able to cool the Radeon 560X which has a TDP of 75W with a similar set of fin sizes and fans on the opposing side. This should mean in theory be able to handle even a grossly overpowered CPU. I think they can fix it.
I got my 15" 2.6Ghz i7 model yesterday and I love it.
Obviously there are issues as many have reported but I am using this for iOS and Android development and this thing is a good 30-45% faster for builds compared to my top-spec 2017 model. The Android emulator starts up (cold boot not from save state) faster as well (just measured it at 9 seconds to boot a Nexus 5X API 28 AVD vs 16 seconds on my 2017 i7).
Once things have settled down a bit I will look into things again but I am in no rush to start modifying firmware values when, for my needs, everything is great.
For those interested the new keyboard is a little "softer" and quieter. My wife commented on how different it sounds. I would say it sound similar to a Dell XPS 15 or ThinkPad T480 in terms of how loud it is.
The TrueTone option for the display is lovely for programming imho. Really nice little new feature. Other than that not much has changed externally though. It is still a very nice machine and I hope Apple tweaks things to address the thermal throttling people are seeing. For development though it is a dream.
Have you used Butterfly v.1 to compare it to? I absolutely hated v.1 with a passion (it's like typing on a flat desk), I absolutely LOVED v.2 with a passion. I'm wondering how I will like v.3...
Yes I have used all 3 butterfly keyboards. I agree the first gen was awful. 2nd felt great but was quite loud[0] and had the issues with dust obviously. This is very much like 2nd gen with just a very very subtle softness to it. It feels really to me. I think if you love 2nd you will love 3rd even more.
[0] The whole "omg it is so loud!!!" thing kind of made me laugh as everyone that I knew who made such a complaint had a mech keyboard with some obnoxiously loud cherry mx switch in it. I mean yes I did feel the 1st and 2nd gen butterfly keyboards were too loud but they were still quieter than any mech keyboard I have used!
Such delays in shipping and yet the hardware designs are rushed. I'm switching to Linux laptop with 64GB RAM. There might be some pain for a bit, but IMO totally worth it for Apple to have viable competition in the 'pro' space.
Insisting on using the same chassis design for i9, dGPU packin' models is like a person not having a summer wardrobe and inappropriately wearing winter clothes all year round.
oy. now i'm really torn. i canceled my i9 order and placed an i7 order instead. i will relatively rarely need peak performance but when i do, it's in work stretches long enough that i want absolute best performance. it has to be on the same laptop -- i cannot offload to a desktop or another machine.
now, do i cancel the i7 and re-order the i9? argh.
it's painful to just delay my order for a month, knowing a much higher performing laptop is available now.
i'm inclined to keep the i7 as i understand from one of the many vids that the "normal" operating temperature is much lower. even on my older i5, i am very sensitive to the keyboard getting hot.
An update from the Reddit comment that's not on the first page of the macrumors thread:
[Edited to add note: From messages others have sent me, it seems that this MSR is actually not Intel's default, but rather this is what Apple has been setting the MSR value to on all intel chips in Macbook Pro and Macbook Air for a number of years ... This is just the first chip to actually be capable of drawing enough power for this to matter. Previous chips just couldn't draw that much power, so they never hit the VRM limit before]
I think it's the other way around - MacRumors post was July 22nd at 4:57pm while the Reddit post was July 22nd at 4:36pm GMT-7. (I can't tell if I'm being messed up by time zones though as that doesn't appear on mouseover for MacRumors)
I've also seen a couple of youtubers and the number is growing, returning their macbooks [1], [2], due to the performance and the number is growing daily.
I really think this issue is down to a few things.
1) The need from Apple to be thinner each iteration, is really costing them the ability to have better thermals and fans.
2) Putting an 14nm chip where a 10nm should be. Unfortunately Intel is having issues with that.
3) No vents at the sides or the back, only where the screen is. Poor design considerations when it comes to heat.
I'm going to be keeping onto my MBPr 2012 for another year. I want to see some of these issues being resolved.
I would not be surprised if this spurs on Apple to phase in Arm processors in 2020.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DcIP6FtuRk
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZfXBN6kqu8
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_K1rpYz6ug