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13" and 15" MacBook Pros Have a Slower SATA Interface
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Not the way I see it. Everyone has a free will.
Since I see Apple as a serious company, I hold it for granted that they already have figured out there's more money in making the iMacs than a tower alternative of the kind you mentioned. And the reason for that is not that they would eventually get less profits from the sales of iMacs and... iTowers... than if they never released the iTowers in the first place, but because they would lose sales in the Mac Pro segment where the profit margins are even bigger. I suspect that this is the very same reason why they unexpectedly discontinued the production of uMBs - Apple didn't get to sell as many MBPs as they would have done if the Oct-08 MB had been made of plastic instead of aluminium.
Oh yeah.... that's a great analogy. The guy that just spent $3650 on a MBP just bought the equivalent of a Kia???? ~sigh
God... what a nightmare.
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System Profiler
Doesn't the System Profiler give the speed of the SATA interface?
i.e. This is the info displayed for my MacBook under SATA in System Profiler:
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH7-M AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported
Why is it necessary to benchmark to find the interface speed? It shouldn't be a secret. Someone who has a new MBP 13" or 15" can you confirm that the System Profiler accurately lists the speed of the SATA interface?
Doesn't the System Profiler give the speed of the SATA interface?
i.e. This is the info displayed for my MacBook under SATA in System Profiler:
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH7-M AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported
Why is it necessary to benchmark to find the interface speed? It shouldn't be a secret. Someone who has a new MBP 13" or 15" can you confirm that the System Profiler accurately lists the speed of the SATA interface?
Why? This isn't anything to get stress over, I mean really. Especially if the 13 and 15 inch have the same hardware as the 17 inch. Then probably all Apple needs to do is send a firmware update to the 13 and 15 inch computers. Then your HORRIFIC problem will be solved.
Does anybody know if the SD card reader is connected to the SATA bus or a USB channel? I know I've seen card readers in PCs that jack in to the SATA bus.
I wonder if the card reader could be the culprit. Perhaps the SD card reader is on the SATA bus, but is incapable of operating at 3.0Gb. A SATA controller would usually step down it's speed to support the slowest device on the bus, as it's not possible for a single controller to operate at different bus speeds on different channels AFAIK. PATA controllers also had this limitation.
If this is the case, Apple may have made a terrible oversight in their partsourcing for the SD card reader.
This is just speculation, of course. But if this is the case, opening the thing up and disconnecting the card reader from the MB should allow the controller to operate at 3.0Gb.
Just thinking out loud...
I wonder if the card reader could be the culprit. Perhaps the SD card reader is on the SATA bus, but is incapable of operating at 3.0Gb. A SATA controller would usually step down it's speed to support the slowest device on the bus, as it's not possible for a single controller to operate at different bus speeds on different channels AFAIK. PATA controllers also had this limitation.
If this is the case, Apple may have made a terrible oversight in their partsourcing for the SD card reader.
This is just speculation, of course. But if this is the case, opening the thing up and disconnecting the card reader from the MB should allow the controller to operate at 3.0Gb.
Just thinking out loud...
This would be easy to find in the system profiler, If you find the SD reader under the USP host controller, just like the Isight camera, bluetooth, keyboard and trackpad are found there.
I never said the problem was HORRIFIC or anything similar. It's just the matter of nudging Apple into creating and releasing the firmware update in a timely manner. If it takes Apple 5 months, it defeats the purpose. We'll see if they address the problem in the next few days. The call center apparently knows about the issue.
I have a hard time believing that Apple will "let this one go" and only cater to the people that don't know about the issue (or people not affected by it), which is a majority of users. It's the minority however that happens to be Apple's "base," and they'd be wise not to alienate them for such a simple and relatively inexpensive issue.
For me personally, I'd like the piece of mind that they're going to fix the problem. I bought my MBP trying to future proof as much as possible, and the SATA I was a very surprising characteristic of the new MBP.
But based on Apple's recent track record, it takes them months, sometimes even years to admit their faults (MBA hinge, older MBP graphics card, etc). They really can't waste time denying a problem this time because it's so apparent, however, it will make it even more interesting to see how they respond.
Well, the question you have to ask yourself is what you expect from a Hard drive? Are you trying to get in a "my benchmark is bigger than yours" pissing match? Or are you just trying to work? Because 187MB/sec is damned fast.
There were a few people that benchmarked their X-25's and they didn't come close to 187. It was closer to 110/120, which although good, is still far short of the potential speed of the intel.
Unfortunately, it is only 150MB/sec maximum due to 8b/10b encoding. Still pretty fast, though. I agree about the difference between benchmarking and using the thing in real life.
Look, in all of my posts I've readily acknowledge that what I have is working well and is magnitudes faster than the HDD, but perhaps I would have bought a cheaper SSD drive and put the difference into going form 4gb to 8gb in RAM.
There's still a good chance this problem will be fixed by Apple. The problem was discovered this weekend after all, but we'll see if they act on it.
If you went out and bought a KIA (HDD) and the Air filter was the wrong size (SATA1) the engine would be under powered just a bit at high RPM's, chances are you will never have a KIA (HDD) at high RPM as it is a city car. But what if you bought a C7 corvette (SSD), in the city you also would never notice the wrong sized air filter (SATA1), but take that car to the track for the weekend and lose the race to another C7 form the year before with a little less (slower CPU) horsepower and your going to be pissed. Just because the wrong filter (SATA1) was used in building your C7 that should have had 15 more horsepower then the C7 form last year (ie CPU
upgrade).
Nothing agains KIA's or Vetts, intended
Even better analogy. If you buy a C7 and never go to a track where you can run it flat out. You also won't see any difference. Folks are out there pretending that their normal car activity is a F1 race car when in reality to do their normal jobs all they do is ride around on local highways and city streets. It isn't a "wrong size" problem. It is a "you pragmatically don't leverage that much bandwidth/horserpower" anyway to get your work done. Unless your job is to post xbench scores, most folks are not going to see a difference.
Or if you have a HUMMER H2-H3 and you never go off road, it doesn't really
matter that you don't have a real off road chasis underneath that "hummer-ish" body styling. It is a "talking-smack" feature that the car looks like it is a military all terrain vehicle.
Maybe that's NOT only 1.5 Gbps!
Maybe that's NOT only 1.5 Gbps!
Here's my thought, after skim so many post above...
Maybe the 1.5Gbps interface and 3.0Gbps interface are the same interface, and system will show 1.5/3.0 depend on which type of hard disk connect to the interface. For instance, if you connect 1.5Gbps HD, so you will find that interface shows 1.5Gbps, and if you use 3.0Gbps HD, then you will get 3.0Gbps connection after all.
That'll explain why someone order SSD and get 3.0Gbps connection.
I don't think Apple will make two different design of SATA 1.5 / SATA 3.0. That'll costly and not easy to manage all products anyway.
So, I guess that any of you has SATA 1.5 showed in your system profile means that Apple just shipped a slower hard disk for you (the SATA 1.5 interface hard disk).
You can simply change your Hard Disk with SATA 3.0 interface one and you might find the speed goes up to 3.0 Gbps in the system profile later.
Please let me know if I am wrong.
Thanks
Maybe that's NOT only 1.5 Gbps!
Here's my thought, after skim so many post above...
Maybe the 1.5Gbps interface and 3.0Gbps interface are the same interface, and system will show 1.5/3.0 depend on which type of hard disk connect to the interface. For instance, if you connect 1.5Gbps HD, so you will find that interface shows 1.5Gbps, and if you use 3.0Gbps HD, then you will get 3.0Gbps connection after all.
That'll explain why someone order SSD and get 3.0Gbps connection.
I don't think Apple will make two different design of SATA 1.5 / SATA 3.0. That'll costly and not easy to manage all products anyway.
So, I guess that any of you has SATA 1.5 showed in your system profile means that Apple just shipped a slower hard disk for you (the SATA 1.5 interface hard disk).
You can simply change your Hard Disk with SATA 3.0 interface one and you might find the speed goes up to 3.0 Gbps in the system profile later.
Please let me know if I am wrong.
Thanks
I can completely understand people's frustrations on both sides with this one.
You have people outlaying decent amounts of cash and hoping for an improvement on your 'bang for buck'; that's natural. You also have people moaning about technology they don't even understand, just because other people are complaining about it.
I ordered a 13" MBP which is soaring through continents as we speak. I was planning to install a fast SSD into my MBP for increased performance all round.
I don't really care if that benefits me for 20 minutes every day or just for 5 seconds - Essentially I don't want what is, in my opinion, an unnecessary bottleneck in this case - and neither should anyone.
The allegations that BTO machines with Apple's choice of SSD are given the 'faster connection' is one that concerns me, if true. Where does that stop if they get away with it? 8GB RAM limits on future MacBook Pros but 16GB if you order the RAM with Apple? It may seem like an over the top thing to say but this type of artificial limiting is one I don't want to see sight of.
I personally don't see the dropping to the lower SATA speed as 'horrific', but no explanation or reason as to why it has happened would be enough to push me into returning it.
I'm hoping Apple come out, admit it's been a fault and release some sort of fix for it - or in the very least explain it to people. They may have a good reason for the latter but I imagine the former would be everyone's preferred solution at this time.
I appreciate the story being put up on MR and for the people that have contacted Apple about it - if a fuss isn't kicked up then they'll happily glaze over it like it didn't happen.
You have people outlaying decent amounts of cash and hoping for an improvement on your 'bang for buck'; that's natural. You also have people moaning about technology they don't even understand, just because other people are complaining about it.
I ordered a 13" MBP which is soaring through continents as we speak. I was planning to install a fast SSD into my MBP for increased performance all round.
I don't really care if that benefits me for 20 minutes every day or just for 5 seconds - Essentially I don't want what is, in my opinion, an unnecessary bottleneck in this case - and neither should anyone.
The allegations that BTO machines with Apple's choice of SSD are given the 'faster connection' is one that concerns me, if true. Where does that stop if they get away with it? 8GB RAM limits on future MacBook Pros but 16GB if you order the RAM with Apple? It may seem like an over the top thing to say but this type of artificial limiting is one I don't want to see sight of.
I personally don't see the dropping to the lower SATA speed as 'horrific', but no explanation or reason as to why it has happened would be enough to push me into returning it.
I'm hoping Apple come out, admit it's been a fault and release some sort of fix for it - or in the very least explain it to people. They may have a good reason for the latter but I imagine the former would be everyone's preferred solution at this time.
I appreciate the story being put up on MR and for the people that have contacted Apple about it - if a fuss isn't kicked up then they'll happily glaze over it like it didn't happen.
Isn't the write speed higher?
If what you have in memory is valuable getting it to disk faster (where it will be persistent in the event of a crash) is a better feature. This is only quirky, special case top end sequential read speed (which is partially a better match to the match to the drive's native block size thing) that is at issue. The SSD write speeds are clearly underneath the gap for all of the choices for normal block sizes.
That said. Waiting to step up to 8GB of RAM will have better bang for the buck in the future.
Wow, that's a stellar deal. I just put 4 1TB HD's in a raid 5 for a little over 300$.
Not even the same thing, your talking HDD's and we are talking SSD's
You would not be using your set up with a portable computer, that setup is for a desktop of server
well the majority of mac users won't be affected so I'm not worrying. still can't wait to get my 13" macbook pro this summer
So Apple makes a silent downgrade that won't even affect 90% of users, while allowing them to reduce the price by $300. I was honestly expecting something more dramatic, *knocks on wood*.
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