Apple pushes out 2018 MacBook Pro update to fix throttling issue
So it was a bug after all.
Almost as soon Apple debuted its new MacBook Pro for 2018 — which greatly boosts performance over last year's model and marks the first time an Intel Core i9 machine has been in the lineup — it was plagued with a performance problem.
YouTuber Dave Lee was the first to identify it: When you push the MacBook Pro to the limit, and it gets hot, it's not nearly as fast as Apple claims. Lee tried a processor-intensive task in Adobe Premiere and got way better performance when he put his brand-new Pro in the freezer.
If only we could all simply relocate to Antarctica to do our video editing. But it turns out this isn't a design flaw, as some have suspected. After working with Lee to replicate the results, Apple says it's found a bug in the software of the new MacBook Pros (all of them, not just the Core i9 model) that throttles the performance — unnecessarily — when under heavy thermal loads.
An Apple spokesperson sent Mashable the following statement via email:
Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we've identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro. A bug fix is included in today's macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended.
We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70% faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster, as shown in the performance results on our website.
Those stats — 70 percent better performance on the 15-inch and 30 percent for the 13-inch — are what Apple promised when the machine was first announced. Apple says, for whatever reason, the bug didn't affect its own performance testing, so it didn't have to adjust those figures. Presumably, when Apple performed its tests the software was near final but not final final, and perhaps the bug was somehow introduced at the very last stage.
The bug only affects the new, 2018 models of MacBook Pro, Apple says.
For MacBook Pro owners and potential buyers, this is obviously good news. The growing conventional wisdom surrounding the performance issue was that buyers "shouldn't bother" with the Core i9 model since the performance will likely be throttled anyway. With the bug fix, owners of the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro should be able to unleash the full power of their machines.
Apple is posting the bug fix today at 10 a.m. PT. If you have one of the new MacBook Pros, you can find the update by visiting the Mac App Store and clicking on the Updates tab. Here's a direct link.
Pete Pachal was Mashable’s Tech Editor and had been at the company from 2011 to 2019. He covered the technology industry, from self-driving cars to self-destructing smartphones.Pete has covered consumer technology in print and online for more than a decade. Originally from Edmonton, Canada, Pete first uploaded himself into technology journalism at Sound & Vision magazine in 1999. Pete also served as Technology Editor at Syfy, creating the channel's technology site, DVICE (now Blastr), out of some rusty HTML code and a decompiled coat hanger. He then moved on to PCMag, where he served as the site's News Director.Pete has been featured on Fox News, the Today Show, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC and CBC.Pete holds degrees in journalism from the University of King's College in Halifax and engineering from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. His favorite Doctor Who monsters are the Cybermen.
