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Apple Releases MacBook Pro Firmware Update to Address SATA Interface Speeds

Problem with Firmware load...

Just had the same problem as you PCMIKE and the PRAM reset instructions from Tompkinson are exactly correct.

Here is also a link to the instructions I used from Apple website:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

Here is what you will see if it works correctly:

Since the combination of keys is a bit awkward to press while trying to hit the power key with your pinkie, you may need to try a couple times. If you still get the blank gray screen, just power off the Mac and try the sequence over. It took me a couple of tries to get all the keys pressed at the same time.

Also, once you get the black screen release the keys and you should launch right into the apple logo grey screen. After that OSX will launch and you will see a notice saying your firmware has been updated.


I guess if you never boot to the OSX screen, then you may have a deeper problem than I had.

Good luck



pcmike said:
After doing this... Waiting for the second tone to release I get the same flashing logo and then finally a screen with some text (like singler user mode) then it gets an overlay with the.., "you need to restart your computer." if I restart I just get the flashing logo again and the machine never boots. Any other help??!
Click to expand...
 
Keep moving. Nothing to see here...

I can't understand the big "mystery" and the conspiracy theories being spewed forth about this. What's next?

Who or what was behind the original downgrade of the speed....?

  • It was Dick Cheney
  • It was a bunch of Liberals from UC Berkeley
  • It was Fox News.
  • This "bug" was the real WMD that Saddam was hiding all along.
  • This was an as-of-yet-unknown part of the Da Vinci Code
  • It was Jean-Louis Gasse's revenge for Apple not picking the BeOS from which to build Mac OS X.
  • It was a date-triggered time bomb planted by Gil Amelio.
  • It was a date-triggered time bomb planted by Jef Raskin.
  • They found out that Noah Wyle was going to buy a new UB-MBPro. Since Steve didn't authorize his final comment/question at the 1999 Macworld Expo (the one where Noah asked if Steve was still a virgin), this was Steve's way of "getting back" at Noah.
  • The entire debacle was organized by a bunch of Apple engineers who were working 80+ hours a week getting the new MBPro ready for launch. As if they didn't have enough to do ... one night ... while taking a 2 minute break and dining on Mountain Dew and Doritos, one of them said "Hey, why don't we cripple the SATA interface. That will REALLY annoy the guys who (no matter how awesome this new Mac is) will whine about some obscure feature or interface that is missing and only used by 0.15% of our customers".
  • A guy who works deep within Foxconn's secret manufacturing facility sabotaged the new machines right before they were to be loaded onto the aircraft and sent to the U.S. The original firmware has now made it into North Korea's latest "LongDong" missile that is pointed towards Hawaii, but will no doubt end up dropping into the ocean like 60 miles due east of its launch point.
I'll put my money on the following:

The development and testing schedule was challenging. Apple engineering knew they had the basic SATA interface working and they were running out of time. They knew that there was always the option of providing a firmware upgrade later. But at the moment, they had to get the final firmware code over to manufacturing to get the initial units built. So they released the firmware as it was. It worked, it was just hindered a bit. Once they got caught up on their sleep (in fact, just a few days after the announcement of the new models) they tweaked the firmware and sent it out via Software Update.

The bottom line:

They did what they could to hit the manufacturing deadline and product announcement dates. They provided a firmware upgrade within like 2 weeks.

If you work in Engineering or have worked on a product that had a manufacturing deadline, you can recognize that this was actually a good decision on Apple's part.

If you are looking for drama and conspiracy theories, may I suggest you tune into the old Art Bell program.

Meanwhile, I will relinquish control of this thread back to everyone else. I am sure someone is P.O.'d that an ADB port was not included ... LOL
 
nictan said:
sorry just a simple question. after downloading and installing the firmware update? can i delete it from my utilities folder? will deleting it 'undo' the update? sorry. just switched to mac, know nuts about mac system. i know its just 9MB, but yea with only 160GB plus a windows partition, i need all the space i can get. thanks in advance :)
Click to expand...

any help? thanks
 
nictan said:
any help? thanks
Click to expand...

Don't delete it. You could probably get away with it, but you never know whether future updates will require that file. As a general rule, if you do not know what will happen, do not mess with system files. If you need more space, clean up what you have in your User folder, desktop, etc.
 
rockonchen said:
The Firmware update is a timely and welcome release.
But, the statement is poorly drafted and annoying.
We give you back Sata 3.0G but we don't support it,
Click to expand...

Not supporting it makes sense if they never tested it. Nobody creditable is going to offer official support on a configuration they haven't tested.


So if there are higher than usual data integrity errors running at 3.0 Gbps than there are at 1.5 Gbps Apple has the option of saying it is your problem, not theirs. There may not be any, but if there are (perhaps if you crank up the internal temperature and run for long periods of time) you are on your own with your untested solution. Can't go to Apple and demand a motherboard replacement because the problem. (or Apple doesn't "have to" cough one up in that case. )

That is very likely different from Firewire which is likely tested with several devices on the ports ( like the other Mac platforms. )
 
Well my brand new MBP 15" WILL NOT BOOT. I'm tempted to go return this damn thing on Saturday and go back to my pre-unibody MBP that I never had any problems with.
 
Muncher said:
Don't delete it. You could probably get away with it, but you never know whether future updates will require that file. As a general rule, if you do not know what will happen, do not mess with system files. If you need more space, clean up what you have in your User folder, desktop, etc.
Click to expand...

okay great. i just did, before reading your reply. how do i get it back???
 
David29 said:
I can't understand the big "mystery" and the conspiracy theories being spewed forth about this. What's next?

Who or what was behind the original downgrade of the speed....?

  • It was Dick Cheney
Click to expand...

It was definitely Dick Cheney. :D
 
David29 said:
I'll put my money on the following:

The development and testing schedule was challenging. Apple engineering knew they had the basic SATA interface working and they were running out of time. They knew that there was always the option of providing a firmware upgrade later. But at the moment, they had to get the final firmware code over to manufacturing to get the initial units built. So they released the firmware as it was. It worked, it was just hindered a bit. Once they got caught up on their sleep (in fact, just a few days after the announcement of the new models) they tweaked the firmware and sent it out via Software Update.

The bottom line:

They did what they could to hit the manufacturing deadline and product announcement dates. They provided a firmware upgrade within like 2 weeks.

If you work in Engineering or have worked on a product that had a manufacturing deadline, you can recognize that this was actually a good decision on Apple's part.

If you are looking for drama and conspiracy theories, may I suggest you tune into the old Art Bell program.

Meanwhile, I will relinquish control of this thread back to everyone else. I am sure someone is P.O.'d that an ADB port was not included ... LOL
Click to expand...
How is this 9400M different from the previous one? :confused:
 
pcmike said:
Well my brand new MBP 15" WILL NOT BOOT. I'm tempted to go return this damn thing on Saturday and go back to my pre-unibody MBP that I never had any problems with.
Click to expand...

But, it doesn't boot so much faster with 3 Gbps SATA than it didn't boot with 1.5 Gbps SATA.

You should be happy for the performance boost.
 
Anyone else with trouble?

Before the update, my 13" w/ 160GB X25-M worked very well.

After the update, boot went from 5 to 6 "spins" to anywhere between 30 and 90 "spins".

I tested the drive in a windows box & installed Windows - the drive appears to be fine. I reinstalled Mac OS X 10.5.7. I zapped the PRAM. I reset the SMC. Nothing helped.

I turned it off, waited a while & tried again - the machine was working fine.

I figure it may be heat related.

I started up some youtube & hulu windows in safari & let them run for a while, then ran a disk intensive command like:
sudo find / 2> /dev/null | xargs cat > /dev/null 2> /dev/null

I could see all IO just freeze for 20-30 seconds at a time once it got nice and warm.

Does anyone else note performance / IO problems when the laptop gets warm?
 
pcmike said:
Well my brand new MBP 15" WILL NOT BOOT. I'm tempted to go return this damn thing on Saturday and go back to my pre-unibody MBP that I never had any problems with.
Click to expand...

I have not had this problem, so am not the right guy to advise you, but here's a few thoughts: if it was working before you applied the update, the device is almost certainly in good shape, -> just a little problem needs to be fixed. no need to return it and go back to using an older device.

if you get a chance to connect it (firewire target mode) to another mac running disk warrior -> give that a try, has worked wonders for me.

if you're thinking to "returning it" -> get the person you are intending to return it to, to take a look at it. (apple store etc)

and try searching the apple forums, post your problem there -> this is a rumour site, posters here are no experts, just users musing, exchanging and ranting.

good luck,
 
matticus008 said:
More likely that they just didn't get around to certifying the 3Gbps modes by shipping time,
Click to expand...

they aren't certifying 3Gbps now. Unless that is one weird certification. "OK it is certified, but not supported". What support organization does that?
It is turned on. It isn't certified.
 
David29 said:
I can't understand the big "mystery" and the conspiracy theories being spewed forth about this. What's next?
Click to expand...

I haven't seen that many conspiracy theories about this, but I have seen people concerned that their investment might not deliver when they want to upgrade to faster SSD in the next months or years.

For some of us a MBP costs a lot of money, one worries when facts are revealed that the product one bought might by short in some dept.

and when do conspiracy theories usually arise & thrive? when facts are missing and not provided by the company that can provide them.

David29 said:
you can recognize that this was actually a good decision on Apple's part.
Click to expand...

a good decision would have been to announce: "the product you are giving us your money for is slightly lacking in the sata dept., but there'll be a firmware update in a couple of weeks"

wouldn't have been any conspiracy theories if they'd announced this when they sold it.

on an aside: looking at a few people having problems with the update on this and other forums: might have made even more sense to actually get the product working in top form before releasing it and then putting inexperienced users through EFI firmware updates. but i guess that is dick cheney's fault.
 
Tompkinson said:
I haven't seen that many conspiracy theories about this, but I have seen people concerned that their investment might not deliver when they want to upgrade to faster SSD in the next months or years.

For some of us a MBP costs a lot of money, one worries when facts are revealed that the product one bought might by short in some dept.

and when do conspiracy theories usually arise & thrive? when facts are missing and not provided by the company that can provide them.



a good decision would have been to announce: "the product you are giving us your money for is slightly lacking in the sata dept., but there'll be a firmware update in a couple of weeks"

wouldn't have been any conspiracy theories if they'd announced this when they sold it.

on an aside: looking at a few people having problems with the update on this and other forums: might have made even more sense to actually get the product working in top form before releasing it and then putting inexperienced users through EFI firmware updates. but i guess that is dick cheney's fault.
Click to expand...
Well, at least they didn't charge $4.99 on Apple.com to turn on something which already existed, this time.
 
deconstruct60 said:
they aren't certifying 3Gbps now.
Click to expand...
Huh? It's been delivered. That means that internal development has signed off on it and it's been reviewed and approved by someone in charge. Apple doesn't ship anything they haven't certified for release. That would be the definition of a leak.
Unless that is one weird certification. "OK it is certified, but not supported". What support organization does that?
Click to expand...
It's standard Apple boilerplate for third-party components; Apple does not support them. Since they don't ship any 3Gbps hardware, they don't support any 3Gbps hardware. It has nothing to do with their level of support for their own hardware interface.
It is turned on. It isn't certified.
Click to expand...
You can't have one without the other unless it's prerelease software.
 
matticus008 said:
Huh? It's been delivered. That means that internal development has signed off on it and it's been reviewed and approved by someone in charge. Apple doesn't ship anything they haven't certified for release. That would be the definition of a leak.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about certification as a getting the signatures. Or certification as actually taking system configuration and testing with it?
Or a someone sticking a probe in and check marking ("yes reaches 3 Gbps")?


It's standard Apple boilerplate for third-party components; Apple does not support them. Since they don't ship any 3Gbps hardware, they don't support any 3Gbps hardware. It has nothing to do with their level of support for their own hardware interface.
Click to expand...

What is the need for the disjunction between 'qualified' and 'offered' then, if 'ships' is the only one that matters?

... however Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac portable computers, ...
Click to expand...

Or Apple pragmatically qualifies drives, but just doesn't tell folks because doesn't want to do it for everyone?
 
interested to know when Apple will certify and support SATA 3.0G?
- When they start using SATA 3.0G drives
- When the newly shipped MPB with SATA 3.0G enabled
- When HD manufacturers stop shipping SATA 1.5G drives
 
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