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Intel Admits A Chip Error - Shares Halted - is it Sandy Bridge!
- Thread starter OzExige
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Yea, I saw and read that article as well. good find. Within, one analyst states that the delay could only mean a few weeks. No one knows when apple plans/planned to release new products. In theory, the delay could be months or weeks. Just hope brighter news comes forth towards the mid-end of feb.
anyway, this leads me to my situation. Buy now if you need it, wait if your comp isn't dead, etc..
well my 2008 macbook unibody isnt broken at all, works great, the gpu, 13" screen size, hhd and 2.4ghz speed with no hyper threading or turbo boost is really getting to me. In you guys, as being mac faithful or critics, in light of the "macbook air, future of macbook" will the next refresh aside from newer chips, likely be so drastic and amazing with quarter or doubled battery life, 1gig GPU, etc.. to make a buyer like me and others regret purchase now, or would modest approach of sandy bridge, maybe a quad core, built in flash, maybe tad slimmer be all that happens.
I'd be perfectly happy with 2.8ghz 15" high res, SSD and 8GB ram right now if consensus helps to point to modest changes/ and or april being the likely date now or even later.
thoughts?
thanks
anyway, this leads me to my situation. Buy now if you need it, wait if your comp isn't dead, etc..
well my 2008 macbook unibody isnt broken at all, works great, the gpu, 13" screen size, hhd and 2.4ghz speed with no hyper threading or turbo boost is really getting to me. In you guys, as being mac faithful or critics, in light of the "macbook air, future of macbook" will the next refresh aside from newer chips, likely be so drastic and amazing with quarter or doubled battery life, 1gig GPU, etc.. to make a buyer like me and others regret purchase now, or would modest approach of sandy bridge, maybe a quad core, built in flash, maybe tad slimmer be all that happens.
I'd be perfectly happy with 2.8ghz 15" high res, SSD and 8GB ram right now if consensus helps to point to modest changes/ and or april being the likely date now or even later.
thoughts?
thanks
So if everyone will have to wait until April for a new MPB anyway, then why not wait until June and have it shipped with Lion?
Quit telling people Lion will shipping in June when you have no idea. Summer is about 3 months long; it does not equate to June.
Hope restored!
Anandtech said:
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If it's later than March, it's more than just annoying...
Since I'm getting the new MBP in Australia, the Back to School offer ends at the end of March, that's mean I'm going to lose my FREE iPod Touch if it really comes out in April.
Not to mention the ridiculous exchange rate, the high end 15" MPB is about US1999+TAX vs AUD2449, when the exchange rate is approaching USD1:AUD1
by the way, does anyone knows IF the chipset is already being soldered on to the board, will apple simply take it out and put a new chip back in, or do thay have to redo the whole board again?
I'm just a little worried that the re-solder version is not going to be as robust.
I'm just a little worried that the re-solder version is not going to be as robust.
Compare this responsible behavior with Apple's dumping of defective Nvidia GPUs on its customers, making them jump through hoops in the hope of getting a replacement laptop -- and worse (such as sticking them with units with very poor resale value, mind games with "geniuses" over repair costs, data/time/work loss, et cetera).anandtech said:
And sycophantic people praise the company for not issuing a recall. It's fascinating to see a company known as an abusive monopolist like Intel behave responsibly toward its customers while Apple on the other hand...
All the boards use SM technology (Surface Mount) while being multi-layered so its not really as easy to just swap them out and put the board back in the machine. Its probably just cheaper to scrap the boards and move on. The amount of money Intel will loose is just a drop in the bucket for them in the long run.
The real issue for them is credibility in the mind's of the consumers. They remember the Pentium math bug PR disaster and they won't make that mistake again. Its why they came forward right away to show they made a mistake but will take care of everyone who has a defective chip.
I would like to know how many computer with SB were made by Toshiba, Dell, Apple, etc sitting in warehouses waiting to be deployed?
Sager is currently giving RMAs to their customers and Alienware/Dell is expected to do the same tomorrow. I believe ASUS is supposed to start by the end of the week.
-P
I agree with you somewhat but I believe that nVidia tried to hide it from everyone. I do not believe Apple knew about the GPU issue until well into production (like many other companies).
I think nVidia tried to cover it up and then got caught. Intel was very smart to just come forward, take a few lumps, but earn trust with honesty.
If you put yourself in Apple's place what would you have done? You can't just swap GPUs since its not only SM but the system is designed around nVidia. You can't just give everyone a new computer because I think Apple acted in good faith.
That was a disaster that I think most OEMs were not happy with. There is a class action suit against nVidia but the lawyers will eat up most of the money there so the consumer will get very little in return.
The blame clearly falls on nVidia but people have short memories and they will move on and buy another nVidia product.
-P
The suit is absurd because consumers bought defective products from Apple and other companies, not from Nvidia. Apple and other companies have a beef with Nvidia and it's up to them to sue Nvidia or do whatever to deal with the damage Nvidia caused.
However, it's totally inappropriate to drop the ball on their customers. We didn't purchase Nvidia laptops. We purchased Apple laptops. Those laptops had defective GPUs, GPUs that Apple refused to replace with non-defective GPUs. Apple's difficulties with Nvidia are totally irrelevant to us as customers. It's a supplier issue.
Apple had the responsibility to do what Intel is doing right now -- get the machines recalled and replaced with non-defective parts. The schemes that transpired were designed to do one thing: shift the problem, and the cost for it, onto consumers.
Apple chose to use Nvidia tech, and with that choice comes the risk and responsibility. We as customers do not have the responsibility to shoulder the burden, just as with the case of Intel and its Sandy Bridge recall.
Intel did the right thing. Apple didn't. Whether or not Nvidia itself should have issued the recall is a matter of trivia from a users' standpoint. Apple sold us the machines and should have taken responsibility for them.
If Ford sells a car with a faulty gas tank, people expect Ford to recall the car, not the Chinese OEM that made the tank.
Since you asked me what I would have done...
Apple could have designed the GPU to be removable so the entire board wouldn't have had to be replaced due to the defect, but that would -- gasp -- perhaps allow customers to buy 3rd-party upgrades in the future. Apple under Jobs has long been a disposable upgrade-weak company -- starting with the original Mac with its non-expandable 128k RAM marketed with an unavailable 512k machine.
We're all Woz with the Breakout money... over and over again.
That intro generated a frenzy of positive publicity, according to another report. It guess it helps to cheat... unless you're the sucker who gets stuck with the actual product.
Replaceable GPUs or not, since Apple made the decision to solder the GPU in, it took the risk of having to replace the entire board, which is what should have happened.
Apple could have designed the GPU to be removable so the entire board wouldn't have had to be replaced due to the defect, but that would -- gasp -- perhaps allow customers to buy 3rd-party upgrades in the future. Apple under Jobs has long been a disposable upgrade-weak company -- starting with the original Mac with its non-expandable 128k RAM marketed with an unavailable 512k machine.
We're all Woz with the Breakout money... over and over again.
Hertzfeld said:
That intro generated a frenzy of positive publicity, according to another report. It guess it helps to cheat... unless you're the sucker who gets stuck with the actual product.
Replaceable GPUs or not, since Apple made the decision to solder the GPU in, it took the risk of having to replace the entire board, which is what should have happened.
"Well into production" didn't stop Intel from doing the right thing. Whether or not Nvidia is a bad company or a good company is totally irrelevant to us as Apple customers.anandtech said:
For everything that you just said, your last line is ironic. Is that not what Apple did? Any machine with the faulty 8600 gets replaced. How is your Ford example different from what Apple is doing?
You can't upgrade the 128k? The irony (again) is that you quoted folklore.org but the wrong article. The 128k is upgradable to 512k. Don't believe me? You should read more articles there.
I don't disagree with you about computers being built as throwaway devices. However, its much more complicated than just saying we add some sockets and the computer is expandable.
I think the issue is that Intel doesn't want to ship these defective chipsets
^ I agree. The only chipsets that are going to stay out there are the consumers who don't know/care that their products are defectives or the ODMs/OEMs who decide to use them anyway. I expect the latter to be nil given it should be free to them from Intel to replenish their inventory with functional chipsets.
And yet the primary point I made about Apple under Jobs remains upheld by your citation:
Nice try. I suppose Jobs has very little power at Apple today, eh?folklore said:
Absolutely not.
What Apple did is akin to Ford replacing defective gas tanks with defective gas tanks.
Just so it's clear... Here is the situation:
1. All the GPUs are defective.
2. Apple refused to recall the Macs with the defective GPUs.
(I'm typing this message on one right now. It could fail at any time. I have resorted to not doing any 3D gaming on it and sitting the computer on a cast iron pan to act as a giant heatsink -- because I simply don't have the time to spend on Apple lotteries at the moment.)
3. Apple replaced some defective GPUs, with other defective GPUs.
4. If people are "lucky" enough to have multiple failures within a specific time frame, then they may receive a replacement laptop. This is the lottery aspect of the "solution", that is supposed to make Apple look good when it fact, in the big picture, it was designed to push the problem more onto customers than Apple.
If it would have cost Apple less money to issue a recall, then that's what would have happened. The reason it has been handled in the lottery manner is to try to push as many of the defective parts onto customers as possible.
5. The failure of these parts happens due to use -- heating and cooling cycles. Because of this, customers have been manipulated into accepting "solutions" that pass the cost/burden onto them.
This is similar to the problem with Sandy Bridge. The ports will fail over time due to use and the problem is not extremely obvious, at least at first. The key difference is that Intel did the right thing and took responsibility for all the faulty products by issuing a recall.
Apple has gotten away with not doing the right thing, by making customers play lottery-style games and hold onto time bombs. Time bombs tend to cause trouble for their bearers, you know. They rarely have good resale value or efficiency, unless you're into making a mess.
1. All the GPUs are defective.
2. Apple refused to recall the Macs with the defective GPUs.
(I'm typing this message on one right now. It could fail at any time. I have resorted to not doing any 3D gaming on it and sitting the computer on a cast iron pan to act as a giant heatsink -- because I simply don't have the time to spend on Apple lotteries at the moment.)
3. Apple replaced some defective GPUs, with other defective GPUs.
4. If people are "lucky" enough to have multiple failures within a specific time frame, then they may receive a replacement laptop. This is the lottery aspect of the "solution", that is supposed to make Apple look good when it fact, in the big picture, it was designed to push the problem more onto customers than Apple.
If it would have cost Apple less money to issue a recall, then that's what would have happened. The reason it has been handled in the lottery manner is to try to push as many of the defective parts onto customers as possible.
5. The failure of these parts happens due to use -- heating and cooling cycles. Because of this, customers have been manipulated into accepting "solutions" that pass the cost/burden onto them.
This is similar to the problem with Sandy Bridge. The ports will fail over time due to use and the problem is not extremely obvious, at least at first. The key difference is that Intel did the right thing and took responsibility for all the faulty products by issuing a recall.
Apple has gotten away with not doing the right thing, by making customers play lottery-style games and hold onto time bombs. Time bombs tend to cause trouble for their bearers, you know. They rarely have good resale value or efficiency, unless you're into making a mess.
How is it Apple's fault? If anything, it's NVIDIA. I had my motherboard replaced to fix my 8600M GT, the process was easy and free, and my new one is working fine.
If NVIDIA doesn't supply Apple with fixed 8600 chips, then what else was Apple supposed to do?
Apple sold us the laptops with the faulty chips in them. It's Apple's product from our standpoint.
I've explained this in plenty of detail and provided useful analogies, like the Ford one.
If you have a rebuttal that's one thing, but simply repeating an answered question doesn't fly.
As for your replacement, it's still defective and may fail. Apple did not choose to replace the chips with chips with different solder.
So you really think it's worth it to wake up a nearly 4-month old debate? While it is not against the forum rules, it's not probably the best way to do it. That debate is dead so it's better to leave it so. Nobody likes zombies