Late 2013 15" rMBP commonly reported issues.

[Cattywampus_]

Hi,

Have received my new Macbook Pro (see sig), I was wondering if there are any issues or problems that have been reported by a lot of users?

I thus far have not encountered any problems; none that I have noticed at least.

The only thing I have realised (and is not a problem as such) is that because of the HiDPI screen, a lot of website images look pants now. I am sure in future more websites will include HiDPI images along side, but would imagine that will take time.

Thanks for any replies.

 

[Qaanol]

I’ve probably reported a dozen or so bugs to Apple, but they’ve pretty much all been software issues: the hardware’s been fine. I’ll check what they all are tomorrow, but some of the more annoying have been:

• Finder windows “forget” what view state I left them in.
• Preview won’t let me swipe to scroll 1-page PDFs when the window size exceeds a threhold.
• The character viewer palette won’t let me search for whitespace characters.

Also, there is an intermittent wifi issue after waking from sleep where I have to turn off wifi and turn it on again to get it to spot the network, but that seems to have cleared up since the 10.9.2 update.

 

[Cattywampus_]

Thanks.

As you say, the bullet points are software issues rather than hardware issues so not worried about them.

I did read that people were having issues with Wi-Fi. I had one tiny blip the first time I put the MBP to sleep, but since then it has woken and connected fine each time.

Any other issues I should be aware about? Thanks!

 

[accountforit]

The screens all look different and pretty much suck in one way or another.

 

[kathyricks]

I bought my late 2013 15" - sight unseen - new in box on ebay two months ago. I was worried because I read complaints on this forum about some screens that had a yellowish tint and inadequate brightness.

Turned out my ebay 15" had a snow white screen which was so bright that I have to keep it turned down to 75% or else it's just so bright it's hard on my eyes.

Lesson learned: there must be plenty of 15 inchers out there with nice bright snow screens.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I bought my late 2013 15" - sight unseen - new in box on ebay two months ago. I was worried because I read complaints on this forum about some screens that had a yellowish tint and inadequate brightness.

Turned out my ebay 15" had a snow white screen which was so bright that I have to keep it turned down to 75% or else it's just so bright it's hard on my eyes.

Lesson learned: there must be plenty of 15 inchers out there with nice bright snow screens.

I ordered an iPad mini retina on the first day of availability as a Christmas present. From reading the forums, I thought it was going to explode and then due to the wonders of image retention, I'd get to see the explosion frozen in mid-boom for 10 minutes once it had been opened. Turns out it was A-OK.

 

[stevemiller]

my screen is definitely more yellow than my old mbp side by side. i've mitigated it somewhat through calibration but it does exist. i think i can live with it though.

my bigger concern is the incredible frequency of crashing i have been experiencing. i've had after effects, text edit, pages and finder crash. and i've only had the computer 2 days. i've not restored from any backups or copied/installed a significant amount of stuff.

also, rebooting is about half as fast as my old system that had a sata II ssd. :\

 

[Cattywampus_]

my screen is definitely more yellow than my old mbp side by side. i've mitigated it somewhat through calibration but it does exist. i think i can live with it though.

my bigger concern is the incredible frequency of crashing i have been experiencing. i've had after effects, text edit, pages and finder crash. and i've only had the computer 2 days. i've not restored from any backups or copied/installed a significant amount of stuff.

also, rebooting is about half as fast as my old system that had a sata II ssd. :\

That doesn't sound too good.

My experience has been nothing but positive so far. I haven't really done anything other web browsing and bit of web coding in Coda; but nothing has crashed so far.

I don't have my old MBP to compare the screen tints side by side, but my screen certainly doesn't seem to have a yellow tint.

I guess where there is 1 customer with complains and issues with their product, there are 10,000 customers who don't.

 

[thundersteele]

Here are the most important things you can do to make sure you become unhappy with your new mac:

• Put the screen at full brightness with a white or black page in a dark room, and obsess about the tiny amounts of backlight that shines through
• Even better, do the above and take a picture of the screen with a bad cellphone camera, and post it in a new thread
• Compare your screen to some other random screen that you consider to be perfect white, and obsess about the "yellow screen"
• Check your SSD manufacturer, notice it is SanDisk and be unhappy about only having the second best superfast SSD
• Notice how your battery estimate only shows 7 hours from a full charge sometimes

The possibilities are endless. I would recommend that you avoid doing any of the above. Use your Mac as you plan to do in the future, and if nothing unusual shows up there be happy with it. For any issues you might note at a later time there is still the one year warranty.

 

[Cattywampus_]

Here are the most important things you can do to make sure you become unhappy with your new mac:

• Put the screen at full brightness with a white or black page in a dark room, and obsess about the tiny amounts of backlight that shines through
• Even better, do the above and take a picture of the screen with a bad cellphone camera, and post it in a new thread
• Compare your screen to some other random screen that you consider to be perfect white, and obsess about the "yellow screen"
• Check your SSD manufacturer, notice it is SanDisk and be unhappy about only having the second best superfast SSD
• Notice how your battery estimate only shows 7 hours from a full charge sometimes

The possibilities are endless. I would recommend that you avoid doing any of the above. Use your Mac as you plan to do in the future, and if nothing unusual shows up there be happy with it. For any issues you might note at a later time there is still the one year warranty.

I agree people can be super picky about certain things, but to be honest if you're paying £2500 for a laptop, you want it to be perfect.

 

[dmccloud]

I agree people can be super picky about certain things, but to be honest if you're paying £2500 for a laptop, you want it to be perfect.

"Perfect" and electronics are two terms that do not go hand-in-hand. That being said, I do think that Apple continues to make products that have a better build quality than most competitors. Some people get too hung up on who made their screen or SSD drive, but "Second Sourcing" - i.e., having multiple suppliers for a component such as the display or SSD - is a common practice across the industry, and it helps keep costs down because the suppliers know there's at least one other company who can produce the same items. If there was only one supplier for the retina screens and SSDs, chances are they'd charge Apple more per unit, which would translate into higher prices at retail.

 

[Qaanol]

Okay, I checked the list of bugs I’ve reported, and they are indeed all software things so I won’t mention all of them. Here are a few interesting ones though:

With retina HiDPI resolutions, the mouse cursor “leapfrogs” and can only point at every other row and every other column of pixels. Most of the time you’d never notice, but if you open Apple’s built-in DigitalColor Meter app to see color values, you’ll find you can only target a quarter of the pixels on the screen.

Font Book won’t let you preview custom text when viewing a font family, which means you can’t cycle through your fonts with custom text showing.

In Preview, if you open two pictures in the same window and zoom in on both, then switch back and forth between them, the view jumps around and you see different parts of the picture than where you left it last.

Also, Preview is extremely slow when making color adjustments such as dragging the sharpness or saturation sliders back and forth.

 

[dmccloud]

Also, Preview is extremely slow when making color adjustments such as dragging the sharpness or saturation sliders back and forth.

I haven't seen this issue at all on my machine. Adjustments happen as fast as I can move the slider. Maybe there's something else affecting that on yours?

 

[tmoerel]

I agree people can be super picky about certain things, but to be honest if you're paying £2500 for a laptop, you want it to be perfect.

Perfectionists tend to lead stressed lives and often die of heart attacks!

People who think what they have is good enough for what they need and can accept that things are not always perfect usually live less stressful and happier lives!

 

[fratey]

My issues:
* Bluetooth device keeps trying to pair with no way to shut it off. (Might be issue with the device, but has never occured with another computer)
* Computer doesn't always charge with MagSafe in.
* Sound randomly disappearing.
* One of the thunderbolt outlet not always working (garbling screen)