Apple is investigating two different issues customers are having with their new unibody Macbooks. Some digging around the Apple discussion threads shows that the issues are in fact fairly widespread.
As Macnn explains, the first issue is strictly plaguing Macbook Pros. It involves a “hard lockup”, where the screen will suddenly turn black, during games such as Call of Duty 4, World of Warcraft and Company of Heroes. An Apple support thread commenter has contacted Apple UK and explains they are aware of the issue.
Just spoke to AppleCare UK and they also confirm “Apple are aware of the issue and are investigating. At present we do not know if this is a hardware or software issue and have been advised not to offer customers exchanges until the issue is better understood.” — I’ve also read the posts suggesting this is a thermal issue but I got screen noise/distortion when just waking the machine from sleep and also monitored the fans while playing WoW and they were running at 6000+ rpm consistently.
In order to circumvent the hard lockup, some owners have gone as far as installing alternate NVIDIA drivers, and a utility for controlling fan speed manually. This is assuming that the Mac is overheating due to a driver or cooling issue. However, other Macbook Pro owners have had to swap out their logic boards, or even get a replacement system.
The second issue is more widespread, affecting both unibody Macbooks and Macbook Pros. Owners are reporting various problems with scrolling in web browsers and video playback. The issue seems to cause “scrolling distortion” while web browsing and “tearing” of HD video playback on the web. Strangely, this issue is only affecting Mac OS X and not Windows. Early speculation leads users to believe that the cause is directly related to NVIDIA drives as well as the open source WebKit browser engine, which Safari uses. The Opera browser, which doesn’t use the WebKit engine, appears unaffected. AppleInsider points out that Apple is aware of the issue and already working on a software fix.
After discovering this problem on the MacBook Pro I purchased a few weeks ago, I visited the Apple Store in Regent Street to check whether the problem was common to all the new MacBook Pro’s. I checked five MacBook Pro’s they had on display and they all had exactly the same wave distortion on the screen, when scrolling in Safari using the side bar. There was no distortion when the up/down keys were used. I showed this screen distortion to an Apple salesperson, who seemed genuinely surprised. He disappeared to the back office in the store for a discussion with a ’senior Apple Engineer’ and after five minutes he returned with the statement that this was a known problem and there will be a software fix for it sometime…
4 Comments to “Apple Is Investigating Gaming, Browser Related Graphics Errors”
I was one of the original people that had this issue and I was so glad to find that Apple thread (I’m talking about the browser distrotion). They are 100% working on this and have been looking into it. I just spoke with them, it’s a fact.
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same here, I was really glad a public thread on Apple’s official discussion forums was able to spring up identifying the problem so quickly. After some speculation regarding various Windows/Boot Camp setups, it was finally figured out that it had nothing to do with that. I’m talking about problem #1 here.
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There are very few 3-D adventures I’ve loved over the years as much as the original Banjo Kazooie on the Nintendo 64.wow goldNow that we know Microsoft is bringing the original out again on the Xbox Live Arcade service, I can now focus all of my attention on the first new Banjo title in over a decade. I’m still not sure how I’m going to like the focus on vehicles in this game, but I’ve never played a Banjo title that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy, so I guess I can rest easy knowing that at least we’re getting a new Banjo title finally. Judging from the videos, the game is shaping up quite nicely, so I’ll be picking this one up on day one and probably won’t show my face outside of my game room for some time afterwards. I’ve waited a long time for this new Banjo title, and I’ll be getting my money’s worth out of it if it’s half as good as the previous Banjo games.
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I had this problem when I first got my macbook (scrolling distortion). I deleted safari and reinstalled it using the disc provide by Apple and it fixed the scrolling distortion. Its never had that problem again.
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