Apple isn't inspiring much confidence in their quietly refreshed 2018 MacBook Pro. Its 6-core Intel CPU variant has performance issues related to aggressive thermal throttling, which forces low clock speeds and disappointing results in certain multi-core tasks. In some cases its 2017 predecessor with less CPU cores outperforms it. Then there's that drama over its 3rd-generation butterfly keyboard. But new information has come to light illustrating what could be a deal breaker for some users: if the laptop's logic board breaks, recovering data from the internal storage drive is seemingly impossible. Apple Beginning with the major overhaul to Apple's MacBook Pro line in 2016, the system's SSD was soldered directly to the logic board. That means the average user couldn't simply yank out the drive and restore the data on a different system. Not the end of the world, and Apple of course had a solution for that: a recovery port on the logic board itself, which a Genius Bar representative could use alongside a propriety "Customer Data Migration Tool" to recover data from the drive. However, noted teardown site iFixit first observed the removal of that recovery port in this year's model. Its absence is likely due to the (admittedly welcome) inclusion of Apple's T2 chip which facilitates hardware-level storage encryption. (Then again, that same T2 chip is causing the latest MacBook Pro to crash periodically; yet another issue Apple needs to solve with this launch.) Once that was discovered, MacRumors went on a quest to learn about the ramifications of system failure with the 2018 MacBook Pro. In speaking to multiple people at Apple Authorized Service Providers, the site came away with a clear conclusion. If the logic board fails and the system is inoperable, data recovery by Apple is not possible. MacRumors also notes that the aforementioned Migration Tool has not been updated to function with this year's model. MacRumors went a step further and obtained Apple's 2018 MacBook Pro Service Readiness Guide, which allegedly instructs the company's technicians to urge customers to frequently back up their data using Time Machine. That's sound advice, and I can't imagine any creative professionals not regularly archiving their files externally. But not everyone is disciplined, and those who are may not be conducting daily backups. Beyond that, not everyone is near a backup solution 24/7. I have to imagine there are scenarios where things can go disastrously wrong that aren't solved by scheduled Time Machine or cloud backups. For example, if your 2018 MacBook Pro decides to give up the ghost during a lengthy rendering job or other data-intensive task. Unless you're doing concurrent live backups, that data is gone. For some folks this could result in losing a few hours of time or creative work. For others the ramifications could be more severe. Look, I use a 2016 MacBook Pro regularly for music production, so I'm not on some quest to repeatedly bash Apple. I don't take issue with Apple's direction here. The inclusion of the custom T2 chip and hardware-level storage encryption was necessary (ok, and "Hey Siri" was long overdue). I do take issue with the company not making this discrete change (the removal of the data recovery port) abundantly clear to its customers. Dedicated Apple users may be blindsided by this. Especially customers who've understood that data recovery was possible with the two previous MacBook Pro generations. This may not end up affecting many people, but that's not the point. The issue is Apple's philosophy of remaining silent on changes like this until external forces bring them to light. Or, you know, by saying stuff like "You're holding it wrong." UPDATE: Today Apple issued a MacOS patch to address the thermal throttling mentioned in the beginning of this article, but it's an issue that shouldn't have surfaced in the first place. Read This Next: 5 Reasons To Switch From Windows To Linux<doc-sep>Apple has been catching heat over the performance of its new MacBook Pro laptops, but the company is hoping its new software update will help cool off outraged power users. After reports of heat issues leading to throttled performance, Apple has determined that a simple software bug was to blame, and has released what it hopes is a quick fix. In our initial testing, the MacOS update appears to correct the up-and-down CPU throttling, and we're continuing to run additional tests. Now playing: Watch this: Apple promises to fix MacBook Pro CPU throttling bug "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," an Apple spokesperson tells CNET. "A bug fix is included in today's MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. "We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70 percent faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2x faster, as shown in the performance results on our website." Instructions for how to install the MacOS 10.13.6 update are available here. The issue affects all of Apple's new MacBook Pro models, both 13- and 15-inch. The entry level 13-inch MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar isn't affected, as it has not been updated this year. The surprise midsummer update to the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro line, announced July 12, includes new eighth-gen Intel CPUs, up to the high-end, six-core Core i9 in the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Also new are bigger solid-state storage drives, an updated T2 security chip and a True Tone screen that adjusts color temperature based on the available light. But while that makes for a substantially updated product, much of that had been overshadowed by the early performance issues. Heat throttling during intense workloads The biggest initial buzz about the new MacBooks -- aside from an ongoing controversy over how much its keyboard did or didn't change -- came from some early adopters who claimed the premium Core i9 versions, which cost a minimum of $2,799, were prone to heat-related throttling. That means the laptops dropped their CPU clock speed when internal temperatures spiked, leading to slower performance than older models with less-advanced Core i7 processors. YouTube tech personality Dave Lee first brought the issue to public attention with a video in which he demonstrated the heat and throttling issues. These results were soon replicated by others, including a weekend demo session from Leo Laporte on The New Screen Savers. The problems only became evident when running long, intense processes, such as encoding longer 4K videos. Here in the CNET Labs, where we're testing a $4,699, 15-inch, Core i9 configuration of the new MacBook Pro, the new model showed performance improvements over last year's Core i7 MacBook in our initial tests, which were short enough so as not to trigger the heat-related throttling. When setting up an intensive workload to deliberately push the system, however, we were able to easily cause the Core i9 CPU in our 2018 MacBook Pro to ping-pong its internal temperature and CPU clock speed up and down rapidly, in both a video encoding and 3D gaming test. (This was before applying Apple's newly announced patch.) In comparison, the 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro maintained a much more even temperature and CPU clock speed while performing the same tasks. Dan Ackerman/CNET So, while not all users would see their performance compromised by the heat throttling issues, the sort of power users who would be rendering long-form, high-res video would. Those are the pro users to whom Apple was targeting this round of updates -- and the exact same people who don't want to pay $6,699 for a top-line configuration, only to find out that it can't perform as well as an older version on the most intense tasks. (Imagine buying a Ferrari, only to be told you can't exceed 60 mph for more than 5 minutes at a time.) And that's why the initial excitement over the surprise MacBook Pro update quickly turned to several days of negative headlines, alarmed Mac enthusiast podcasts and disappointed Mac users sounding off in Reddit threads. But the patch, issued by Apple less than two weeks after the new laptops were announced, may well turn the tide. Promising early results from new software fix Once Apple released the update, we installed it on our Core i9 15-inch MacBook Pro and repeated some of the same tests. Now, the CPU throttling has stopped, and the clock frequency of the CPU and internal system temperature both remain fairly stable, even when running a 4K video encode or a game set to maximum detail settings. Dan Ackerman/CNET CNET Labs will continue to test the new MacBook Pro with Apple's software patch and will include updated performance results in our full review. This article was originally published at 1pm ET on July 24, 2018. It has been updated with additional test results after installing the latest Apple MacOS patch. Best laptops for 2018: CNET's top picks. 2018 MacBook Pro keyboard resists dust -- to a point: Even though Apple told us differently.<doc-sep>After the dual-controversies the MacBook Pro has been involved in — the redesigned keyboard and thermal throttling — some Apple users are on high alert for other potential problems. One that has begun cropping is the possibility that the T2 chip that enables things like secure boot, better encrypted storage, and “Hey Siri” support on the iMac Pro and the new MacBook Pros could be causing kernel panics. As spotted by Steve Troughton-Smith and a report from Digital Trends, there are several threads pointing to kernel panics: on Apple’s community discussion forums, MacRumors forums, and elsewhere. It seems that most of the problems are rooted in Bridge OS, the embedded operating system used by the T2 chip, although it’s not entirely clear whether the chip is directly causing the problems or how widespread the problems even actually are. The issue doesn’t appear to be widespread, although the company has recently released a supplemental update for Mac OS on the MacBook Pro. Going through the various forum threads, affected users have reported trying solutions like wiping their hard drives and reinstalling macOS, restoring from Time Machine backups, avoiding peripheral use, exchanging their computers, and more to no avail, which is leading to speculation that the problem is more deeply rooted in the system. Update July 25, 6:34 pm: Updated post based on additional information and clarified the scope and origin of user complaints.<doc-sep>
Just as one glitch with the 2018 MacBook Pro gets resolved, another one appears, although so far only for a very limited number of users. Some owners are reporting repeated kernel panics – as often as once or twice a day. The same issue has been experienced by a number of iMac Pro owners, with some clues suggesting it may be the fault of one component found only in these two machines … Digital Trends suggests that the T2 chip may be the problem. Many iMac Pro owners have reportedly suffered numerous kernel panics — the MacOS version of the dreaded Blue Screen of Death in Windows — since they hit the market at the end of 2017. You can find a handful of threads on Apple’s community forums, including this one, detailing the trials and tribulations customers are experiencing with their expensive iMac Pros and Apple support. The problems apparently reside in the new MacBook Pro laptops, too. Of all the error messages uploaded to these threads, there is one detail they seem to share: Bridge OS. This is an embedded operating system used by Apple’s stand-alone T2 security chip, which provides the iMac Pro with a secure boot, encrypted storage, live “Hey Siri” commands, and so on. It’s now included in the new 2018 models of the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. A kernel panic is when macOS detects an internal error from which it cannot recover, or where continuing to run would risk the loss of more data than any unsaved documents. It is generally signalled by a message telling you that you need to restart your Mac. The T2 chip handles a surprising number of tasks, including verifying the boot process during startup, and carrying out on-the-fly encryption of the SSD. Tracking down the exact circumstances in which these particular kernel panics occur hasn’t proven easy. While some users have reported that they seem to occur when daisy-chaining storage devices, others have said they had nothing connected at all when it happened. The problem doesn’t seem to be related to hardware faults specific to the machines in question, as some users report that Apple replaced their machine – sometimes twice – but the issue continued with the new ones. The list of theories expressed in threads on the topic are lengthy. According to the threads, the system crashes can be reduced if you don’t daisy-chain devices, don’t use a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter, turn off Power Nap, turn off Secure Boot, don’t unlock the device with Apple Watch, remove third-party kernel extensions, and turn off every power management option you can find. Apple says that it is investigating, and in the meantime is offering a pretty drastic fix. Apple suggests that [affected] owners wipe and reload MacOS from scratch, disable FileVault, and disable Power Nap, the latter of which worked for some iMac Pro owners. Some users report that macOS 10.13.6 resolves most of the panics, though not ones occurring when the machine is sleeping or waking from sleep. At this point, the number of reports doesn’t indicate that the problem is endemic to all 2018 MacBook Pro or iMac Pro machines, affecting a relatively small number of them. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: