I’m writing this on a 2015 MacBook Pro. It’s an i5 with 8GB of RAM. It’s adequate for most of what I do, but, as I’ve mentioned in the past, it’s been kind of a lemon since I picked it up. It’s out of Apple Care now, and that’s a concern. I am not made of money. Sooner or later, I’ll wind up buying a new laptop.
For the past year, I’ve been considering moving entirely over to Windows as Apple’s been doing some weird stuff: keyboards that break down if you get dust in them, processors that are antiques even when the Macs they’re in are brand new. Oh, and dongles, so many dongles.
When I saw that they were doing something about the keyboards baked into their MacBooks and have begun to spring hardware with the latest chip sets in them, I was hopeful: I’ve used Macs for close to two decades. I have so much cash sunk into software, I don’t want to switch platforms if I can help it. Then I saw that the high end iterations of this year’s MacBooks are being throttled–slowed down–because they can’t handle the heat generated by their gloriously speedy internals.
Sigh.
From Apple Insider:
Technology-centric YouTuber Dave Lee claims the thermal design of Apple’s latest 15-inch MacBook Pro does not provide sufficient cooling for Intel’s Core i9 processor, causing the chip to throttle down performance to prevent serious damage.
Intel’s 2.9GHz six-core Core i9 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.8GHz is offered as a premium $300 option on Apple’s 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, but according to Lee, the chip is unable to reach its full potential due to the laptop’s design.
In a video posted to his YouTube channel on Tuesday, Lee shows the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro running Adobe Premiere Pro at surprisingly low clock speeds. Tests conducted put the average clock on load at around 2.2GHz, well below the advertised 2.9GHz.
Lee suggests MacBook’s cooling solution, an Apple-designed heatsink and fan module, is insufficient for the beefy Intel silicon.
If you’re interested in taking a peek at the video Lee posted, you’ll find it here.
When I think of a laptop that can’t maintain it’s own base clock speed, the first thing that comes to mind is the $300 Acer netbook I picked up at Walmart back in 2008. You could make a sandwhich in the time it took for Windows to start on it. To think that this would be an issue on a computer that costs thousands of dollars–an investment that should take care of your computing needs for years, is beyond disappointing: It’s a crime.
I keep rooting for Apple. I keep hoping that the company will get it’s second (third?) wind and return to a time when their expensive, beautifully designed slabs just worked, right out of the box.
I’m beginning to sense that I may be waiting for a while.
Image via Wikipedia
