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You need more power to feed a Retina display vs. a conventional one, because there are more pixel [sic] active at a time.
This doesn't make sense to me. Most of the power requirement of a display would seem to be the backlight. And even with the "retina" pixel density, it's still the same area to be switched around, just with smaller LCD pixels, so I'm skeptical that the display itself makes much difference power-wise.
 
The fan issue is there but NOTHING compared to ALL the other design flaws of this device... FANTASTIC CPU.. Performance wise... That is... if you have a machine room with 30 feet cables to feed your external monitors... If you don't... You'll need ear buds to able to sit in the same room....

Running any app will make the fans spin faster than air-molecules right after the Chnernobyl disaster..

But the biggest problem is STILL that Bluetooth WONT run concurrently with the Airport.. Unless one has a dual (2.4 & 5 GHZ) band W-LAN Router

Next to ALL Apple Mice.. The biggest design Flaw J. Ivy has EVER produced....
His obsession with looks are long past his ability to design hardware that works. Dont get me wrong... Love Apple design but J.Ive has NO CLUE outside of beauty... Apple need a second J. Ive. That has at least SOME clue about physics...


Ohh... did I mention the Retina DEAD Pixels madness... IF you get a rMBP --- per month you will loose about ONE pixel.. Mine is 8 months old... Day One = NO Dead Pixels... 8 Months later... ==== 8 Dead Pixels...

Love the rMBP but only because I have a machine room... Cant bring it to clients... The device is just too darn loud and with 8 dead pixels they'd laugh at me...

PRO is a REALLY REALLY BAAAAD name for this device !!!
 
The fan issue is there but NOTHING compared to ALL the other design flaws of this device... FANTASTIC CPU.. Performance wise... That is... if you have a machine room with 30 feet cables to feed your external monitors... If you don't... You'll need ear buds to able to sit in the same room....

Running any app will make the fans spin faster than air-molecules right after the Chnernobyl disaster..

But the biggest problem is STILL that Bluetooth WONT run concurrently with the Airport.. Unless one has a dual (2.4 & 5 GHZ) band W-LAN Router

Next to ALL Apple Mice.. The biggest design Flaw J. Ivy has EVER produced....
His obsession with looks are long past his ability to design hardware that works. Dont get me wrong... Love Apple design but J.Ive has NO CLUE outside of beauty... Apple need a second J. Ive. That has at least SOME clue about physics...


Ohh... did I mention the Retina DEAD Pixels madness... IF you get a rMBP --- per month you will loose about ONE pixel.. Mine is 8 months old... Day One = NO Dead Pixels... 8 Months later... ==== 8 Dead Pixels...

Love the rMBP but only because I have a machine room... Cant bring it to clients... The device is just too darn loud and with 8 dead pixels they'd laugh at me...

PRO is a REALLY REALLY BAAAAD name for this device !!!

TBH I think cMBP looks so darn much better than the skinny rMBP.
 
Can't confirm which SSD my 15" rMBP had, but I gave my work 15" rMBP to my co-worker when my job ordered me a 13" rMBP (since I like the smaller form factor). The fan would kick up on the 15" when I wasn't even doing anything, but when I switched to the 13", it wasn't a problem anymore.
 
ONLY Retina MBPros??

I've had my fans go crazy too -- and I don't have a retina 15" MBPRO. I have an early 2011 15" Macbook pro.

The problem was AddressBookSourceSync: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3355782?start=15&tstart=0

I found that in my macbook running Mountain Lion, it would eat up a LOT of system resources.

When I killed the process using Activity monitor, my fans went back to normal.

However, the darned process would come back later, until I found a fix:

http://www.motherboardpoint.com/lion-address-book-memory-leak-t253074.html

It really did work. After I deleted and re-synced my address book (actually called CONTACTS now) I have yet to spot that dreaded AddressBookSourceSync running in Activity Monitor.

Perhaps the people experiencing these fan problems should check that AddressbookSourceSync is NOT running. It should only run ONCE in a while, and then QUIT. That's how it's working for me now.
 
This doesn't make sense to me. Most of the power requirement of a display would seem to be the backlight. And even with the "retina" pixel density, it's still the same area to be switched around, just with smaller LCD pixels, so I'm skeptical that the display itself makes much difference power-wise.

I think he means graphical power, which is driven by the fan/heat happy Graphics Cards.
 
This doesn't make sense to me. Most of the power requirement of a display would seem to be the backlight. And even with the "retina" pixel density, it's still the same area to be switched around, just with smaller LCD pixels, so I'm skeptical that the display itself makes much difference power-wise.
If we´re talking GPU power, the area is not relevant at all, it´s the pixel amount in that very same area (the density) which the GPU needs to drive. I´m not sure why you question something like this. Additionally, the GPU needs to render everything at the native Retina resolution, like fonts, etc, which needs even more power.

Why do you think the iPad 3 got an an A5X instead of an A5? Why do you think the iPad 4 got an A6X instead of an A6? Because it needs a lot more GPU power to feed 2048x1536 vs. 1136x640 (iPhone 5). That´s over 4 times as much active pixels.

And yes, the backlight is sucking a lot more battery power, too, compared to a conventional display with lower resolution. That is because Apple is still using IPS for the iPad and Macbook Pro Retina.

iPad 2 vs. iPad 3 as an example, it´s even worse on a Macbook Pro Retina:

displaymatey2ufc.png

Taken from: http://www.displaymate.com/iPad_ShootOut_1.htm
 
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The fan issue is there but NOTHING compared to ALL the other design flaws of this device... FANTASTIC CPU.. Performance wise... That is... if you have a machine room with 30 feet cables to feed your external monitors... If you don't... You'll need ear buds to able to sit in the same room....

Running any app will make the fans spin faster than air-molecules right after the Chnernobyl disaster..

I run CS6 on my rMBP and for the most part do not have the fans spinning up that much. It is only the odd occasion under low CPU load that causes the fans to spin up to the max and having checked iStat Menus the temperatures are nominal and shouldn't cause a spin up. That's the issue in this thread.

But the biggest problem is STILL that Bluetooth WONT run concurrently with the Airport.. Unless one has a dual (2.4 & 5 GHZ) band W-LAN Router

I use a single band (2.4 GHz) router (the BT Home Hub 2.0 to be exact) and do not have this issue. My Bluetooth and WiFi work perfectly.

Next to ALL Apple Mice.. The biggest design Flaw J. Ivy has EVER produced....
His obsession with looks are long past his ability to design hardware that works. Dont get me wrong... Love Apple design but J.Ive has NO CLUE outside of beauty... Apple need a second J. Ive. That has at least SOME clue about physics...

That has sweet FA to do with this computer which has a touchpad.
Ohh... did I mention the Retina DEAD Pixels madness... IF you get a rMBP --- per month you will loose about ONE pixel.. Mine is 8 months old... Day One = NO Dead Pixels... 8 Months later... ==== 8 Dead Pixels...

I'm beginning to think you have a faulty Mac. Get on the phone to AppleCare.

Love the rMBP but only because I have a machine room... Cant bring it to clients... The device is just too darn loud and with 8 dead pixels they'd laugh at me...

PRO is a REALLY REALLY BAAAAD name for this device !!!

Again, I suffer from none of the faults you brought up.
 
You might as well wait for Haswell in June, and hopefully the numerous problems with retina models will be fixed by then too. I've lost all hope for the current models over the past weeks due to my own pre-purchase research. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or derogatory towards current owners - I really want one of these things - but you've got to be mad to buy one after seeing the shear number of problems with them reported on the web.

Have to agree with you and a few others in the thread...I don't trust Apple any more. A few years ago, it was hard to walk away empty handed from an Apple store. Now, I'm almost too nervous to buy anything from them - I've been looking at buying a rMBP since December...

It's just a shame there's no real alternative to Macs. I'm not just talking about OS, but the whole package. Some nice, high(ish)-quality hardware, with a 99% bug-free *nix OS. Slap a premium price on it, I wouldn't care - as long as it worked.

Thanks for the advice. I think you're absolutely right. Apple clearly has some design issues with the MBP-R machine. Hopefully when they bring out the Haswell update they will also address all those issues at the same time. The recent change wasn't a spec bump or anything, they just changed some of the pricing and specifications to make it look like an update which is a bit sneaky.

I agree with you on the OS. I've even been contemplating going back to windows. I hate windows with a passion but at least I could buy a laptop for considerably less money. I love my Mac but if I'm going to spend £2300 on a MBP I expect it to be perfect. I mean they could at least throw in a 3 year warranty for free given all the faults with it instead of expecting you to pay another £300 for it. When I was using windows I never bought the extended warranty because if it stopped working after 2 or 3 years I would just bin it and buy a new one with the latest OS on board.

I don't know what's going on inside Apple but they seriously need to address this issue. It's not just the MBP-R. Every product they release seems to have problems with it. I've had so many problems with iTunes 11 since I upgraded - I must fire off a problem report at least once a week to Apple about something else wrong with iTunes 11. I've never had a reply and I've no idea if they even read them or not. They are going to start losing customers if they continue like this.

I think they are too focussed on getting new products out of the door to maintain their statement that Mac sales are going up every quarter while PC sales are falling which in turn helps the share price rather than waiting until the product is fully tested leaving the early adopters as Beta testing guinea pigs.
 
Also having this issue on my 15" rMBP but WITH a Samsung SSD (512GB), bought in Nov last year.

Took it into the Apple Store last week, the "genius" I saw was pretty dismissive, told me the fans were running at a normal speed. Asked him to actually look at the fans, he told me they were dirty and that he'd cleaned them and my computer was running quietly. I then went straight from the Apple Store to college and it continued to whirr up randomly while using just Word.

Ridiculous. I didn't spend £2k+ for a computer that is this broken.
 
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Thanks for the advice. I think you're absolutely right. Apple clearly has some design issues with the MBP-R machine. Hopefully when they bring out the Haswell update they will also address all those issues at the same time. The recent change wasn't a spec bump or anything, they just changed some of the pricing and specifications to make it look like an update which is a bit sneaky.

I agree with you on the OS. I've even been contemplating going back to windows. I hate windows with a passion but at least I could buy a laptop for considerably less money. I love my Mac but if I'm going to spend £2300 on a MBP I expect it to be perfect. I mean they could at least throw in a 3 year warranty for free given all the faults with it instead of expecting you to pay another £300 for it. When I was using windows I never bought the extended warranty because if it stopped working after 2 or 3 years I would just bin it and buy a new one with the latest OS on board.

I don't know what's going on inside Apple but they seriously need to address this issue. It's not just the MBP-R. Every product they release seems to have problems with it. I've had so many problems with iTunes 11 since I upgraded - I must fire off a problem report at least once a week to Apple about something else wrong with iTunes 11. I've never had a reply and I've no idea if they even read them or not. They are going to start losing customers if they continue like this.

I think they are too focussed on getting new products out of the door to maintain their statement that Mac sales are going up every quarter while PC sales are falling which in turn helps the share price rather than waiting until the product is fully tested leaving the early adopters as Beta testing guinea pigs.

Umm, so you expect a product designed in the USA and ASSEMBLED IN CHINA to be perfect? I think the fact is that you had too much hope toward Apple's products.

I have never had serious issues with any Apple products I purchased, from iP4 to cMBP and my current 5th gen iPod Touch. However, I also agree that Apple isn't really as good as we have thought on hardware development. They focused too hard on making their software battery friendly, sacrificing more and more basic functions on their new products (such as sacrificing SuperDrive on new Mac to boost sales of movies and musics in iTunes, still cannot play blu-ray DVD properly in 10.8) and eventually few years later the new Mac would be nothing more than an giant iPad.

Apple has gone with Steve, and do you guys still think those "Specialists" in Apple Store are going to help us out on technical issues? No more, they are nothing more than salesman these days.

I am glad that I am still using a MBP with almost all Steve's approval in it, it flies everyday (Ok, CPU and GPU are not approved by Steve obviously). If my MBP finally dies four years later (let's hope it can run for that long), I would then built myself a bargain custom PC instead of spending my life on Mac again, as I cannot see anything come from Tim are going to be the future.
 
I think it's just a characteristic of the rMBP. I have friends that have them and if you so much as use iPhoto for a few minutes, the fans will be at full blast. Makes you wonder if they designed the fans to be quieter for a reason.
As a pretty heavy user of Lightroom, this comment surprises me. I barely ever have my fans spin up, not even when (horrors!) playing Flash movies, which is probably saying something. The only time I've had that happen so far is when playing Diablo III...
 
Umm, so you expect a product designed in the USA and ASSEMBLED IN CHINA to be perfect? I think the fact is that you had too much hope toward Apple's products.

I have never had serious issues with any Apple products I purchased, from iP4 to cMBP and my current 5th gen iPod Touch. However, I also agree that Apple isn't really as good as we have thought on hardware development. They focused too hard on making their software battery friendly, sacrificing more and more basic functions on their new products (such as sacrificing SuperDrive on new Mac to boost sales of movies and musics in iTunes, still cannot play blu-ray DVD properly in 10.8) and eventually few years later the new Mac would be nothing more than an giant iPad.

Apple has gone with Steve, and do you guys still think those "Specialists" in Apple Store are going to help us out on technical issues? No more, they are nothing more than salesman these days.

I am glad that I am still using a MBP with almost all Steve's approval in it, it flies everyday (Ok, CPU and GPU are not approved by Steve obviously). If my MBP finally dies four years later (let's hope it can run for that long), I would then built myself a bargain custom PC instead of spending my life on Mac again, as I cannot see anything come from Tim are going to be the future.

You can't be serious.

Are you aware that there's more than just a CEO at Apple?

Do you have any clue how a large scale business operates?
 
I just want to play devils advocate here and say that I have a Macbook Pro with Retina display that has a SanDisk SSD and has the same fan issue being discussed. I noticed it within the first few hours of using my new machine.

I do understand that there is something wrong, as many have said it's probably related to the SMC and a firmware update will be released to fix it. These machines have been out for a few weeks and everyone is up in arms, acting like it is doomsday. Seriously, if you're embarrassed that your fans ramp up for a few minutes at a time, you should probably rework your priorities in life. Engineering a computer like this isn't something Apple works on for a month and then heaves out to the public to "beta test". It's an issue that was unexpected and will take a little time for the engineers at Apple to resolve. I'm sure they have a whole flock of people working on it. Of course they aren't going to come out with some press release that acknowledges the issue until they have a resolution for it. They are a publicly traded company who are under an insane amount of scrutiny after the stock started to crumble.

They won't tell the AppleCare phone support or the in store support that there is an issue either until they are absolutely sure as to WHY it is happening and HOW to fix it. Everyone can keep calling AppleCare and taking their machines to the Genius Bar, but they won't get anywhere because its a firmware issue, not something that can be magically fixed with the snap of a finger.

It doesn't really effect the performance of the machine, it's just a little loud. Yes, it is a real issue, and yes, I AGREE, it should not have happened, but Apple will fix it. If months go by and there isn't any solution then I'll eat my words. But for now everyone needs to calm down and either return their doomsday computer that is the worst thing they have ever used, or wait for a firmware update to be released by Apple.

For everyone that thinks the company has gone down the crapper since Steve died, if you have such a huge problem with Apple and you want real change.. Stop buying Apple products. As long as the masses of people still fork over thousands of dollars, they have to figure they are doing something right.
 
Really makes me question what Apple has been doing with their notebooks lately. I'm typing this on a first generation Revision A MacBook Unibody from 2008 and the fans are sitting at 1760RPM with 7 applications running, one of which is rendering some audio right now. All of a sudden, a flagship MacBook from 2013 spools up the fans for no reason when playing lossless files in iTunes? That's kind of ridiculous. My machine is not without its faults (the screen has some pretty atrocious viewing angles and whatnot) but at least those faults were known before purchasing the machine and weren't things we as users are essentially beta testing for Apple.

I know I probably sound like the biggest hater out there right now, but Apple really needs to step it up. My experience when I had my retina 15" for a few weeks has seriously made me question their quality control (my retina had a squeaky case, a buzzing keyboard backlight, sleep issues, heating up when closed, and connectivity issues) and I returned it in spite of its speed and beauty. They can't rest on their laurels and it's really showing. As bad as it sounds, returning it and going back to my 2008 MacBook was almost freeing... I couldn't enjoy the retina purely because every time I picked it up, I felt like I'd find yet another ludicrous issue with it. At least my old workhorse was flawless, reliable and, though slow, something that wouldn't just decide not to wake from sleep or ramp up the fans for no reason... and it's a revision A product too.

TL;DR - I'll be seriously holding off my decisions on a Haswell MacBook until all the issues have been revealed. It's getting frustrating that Apple hasn't figured stuff like this out.
Looks like Haswell will be more about low power and integrated graphics, to compete with ARM in the mobile/tablet space.

'Don't expect any earth shattering increases in CPU performance over Ivy Bridge, although I've heard that gains in the low double digits are possible.' (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6248/haswell-at-idf-2012-10w-is-the-new-17w)
Am happy with my MBPR15 LG Screen and Samsung SSD
 
Can confirm same issue with 2013 retina MBPro with 256GB SanDisk.
Copy a large file from the web and fans kick on.

This is my first Mac less than one month old. How do I let Apple know? I don't think this worth an exchange, just want to log the issue with them so they can track it...
 
You probably didn´t read my whole post, because I am not talking about that specific problem people are having. I was addressing people that believe (like you do) that Apple can magically make thinner laptops dissipate heat better. And yes, that´s as ridiculous as your answer to my post.

You need more power to feed a Retina display vs. a conventional one, because there are more pixel active at a time. The Retina display on a mobile device needs a lot of power currently and that will only get better with IGZO or OLED. When Intel introduces their Haswell architecture, which is a lot more power efficient compared to Ivy Bridge, the problem will also be dealt with externally.

The people that use a laptop daily are not talking about the display of a GUI. They want to work with a Retina resolution and applications, the GUI alone is almost irrelevant. If you´re displaying a whole webpage though, OS X needs to upscale/render to a Retina resolution and 1600p or even 1800p is a lot more demanding than 1080p or 1200p. In the worst case (1200p vs. 1800p) that´s over 2 times more pixels.

If Apple keeps the size of the casing the same and doesn´t go overboard with TDP on the new Haswell chips, the second generation should be a lot better.
Obviously you need more power, but I don't think you realize how much you actually need compared to what it seems like you're saying it does. There's more than enough information available online to show that the HD4000 and the GT650 both have no problems displaying at such a resolution. Sure it's going to take a performance hit compared to a "normal" resolution panel, but it's not some gigantic processing requirement like you think it is. After all, 27" iMacs are already rendering at resolutions much higher than 1920x1080 without issues and the Mac Mini can easily render OS X and applications on an external display at equally high resolutions, all with an HD4000 powering it. But I agree, the second generation should be much better. I'm waiting on Haswell myself to upgrade my machine.
Dude, this is a laptop, you want to write on it and not burn your fingers. You want that heat to GET OUT of your case as fast as possible and that´s only possible with fans. And if you´re casing is smaller with less volume internally, even the best vapor chamber technology is not going to help you, a case with a bigger volume though, would easily leave you enough room with bigger and slower spinning fans or one big slow spinning fan. But since the Retinas are so thin, there´s only room for one or two very thin fans that need to be active almost all the time for the hot air to get out. And if they suddenly spin up, you´re going to hear it.

This is no iPad with minimal dissipation that can be dealt with through the casing itself, this is a professional laptop you have to work on. People are very sensitive if their casing heats up like some iPads under load do already and if laptops do that it´s extremely uncomfortable for someone to type on them. And if there´s also loud fan noise it´s going to annoy you to no end.

I cannot believe you even think that thinner = better. You must be a marketing troll.
Marketing troll? Really? So you're telling me the machines that don't have this "fan issue" are functioning at much higher temperatures than they should be? Because when I had my retina model, it was functioning at much cooler temperatures, with the fans spooling up much less frequently, than I would've expected. It's one of the coolest running MacBooks I've ever used and the cooling system is leaps and bounds better. And I don't realize if you've noticed, but this is pretty much the first unibody MacBook to feature intakes on it in a location other than the rear. It has quite an extensive side ventilation system which draws in cool air, something the last generation unibody machines did not have. In my experience, this allows the computer to be cooler overall under load. If using a 15" retina for a couple weeks (before I returned it for reasons unrelated to this issue) and noticing how much cooler it ran and how much LESS the fans actually spooled up compared to other Macs I've both used and owned makes me a "marketing troll" then sure, I'm the biggest troll in the world I guess... :rolleyes:

----------

Looks like Haswell will be more about low power and integrated graphics, to compete with ARM in the mobile/tablet space.

'Don't expect any earth shattering increases in CPU performance over Ivy Bridge, although I've heard that gains in the low double digits are possible.' (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6248/haswell-at-idf-2012-10w-is-the-new-17w)
Am happy with my MBPR15 LG Screen and Samsung SSD
The last thing that concerns me is "earth shattering CPU increases in performance." I just want a machine that isn't plagued with issues like this that revision A adopters seem to be beta testing for Apple. The upgraded GPU performance and lower power usage are a bonus for me, especially considering that a big part of Haswell as an iGPU architecture at the very least, is dealing with higher resolution displays natively, which won't hurt at all, especially considering the resolutions the retina models are dealing with.

I'm waiting it out for the bug fixes that you can't just get through a software fix (like the squeaky cases, the buzzing keyboard backlights, the image retaining screens, and other such issues which just seem to keep popping up left and right with these things). The only Rev. A product I've ever bought from Apple was my MacBook Unibody from 2008 and, luckily, it's been one of the best purchases I've ever made with regards to electronics and has been nothing but reliable. That said, I took a risk when buying my Retina 15" in January but went for it anyway. I was reminded why I don't buy Rev. A Apple products, returned it, and am just going to wait it out for the more refined product. Hopefully the Haswell refresh is just that refinement.
 
You can't be serious.

Are you aware that there's more than just a CEO at Apple?

Do you have any clue how a large scale business operates?

Are you saying that a "large scale business" operation means compromised quality control?

Do you think Apple's quality control has slipped? I do.
 
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