high temperature problems with macbook pro 13", pls help.
Hi everyone.
This is my apple story:
On Nov 2012, after saving money, I purchased in the US a 13” Macbook pro (mid 12). My first and only mac. I was like a small child, looking forward to have my new and so cold wonderful “outstanding” laptop.
Since it was my firs mac, at first I thought that what I see is how it is suppose to work slow, lets say that I thought macs work more slow than a pc laptop since they use better graphics. That was stupide of me. I was naïve, I know.
Than I started no see that the mac was getting hot…. very hot.
And my best friend became the little color circle that appears every time the comp’ is “thinking”…it simply was there almost in every “order” I gave the mac.
For example: in word, a simple one line text , copy-paste order took 2 min’ !! etc…
A simple text saving operation would take more than 5 min (2-3 min until the dialogue box will open!).
When I open the mac, from a standby status, it will take it around 5 min until it is possible to work it and move the mouse (smartpad).
I measured temperatures that went higher than 41 C (this is higher than 107 F!! ), practically it is almost impossible to write or use the keyboard.
That I started filming these issues and taking measurement of time for different apps to get open.
I started writing to apple,
Since I leave in Argentina and the lows in this country is that there are no import of any kind (all merchandize), in a non official apple care store I got the diagnostic that the heard drive should be replaced and it will take a year to get the part (one year!).
So I started talking with different technical help representative, until I got to a senior level which never managed to thing “out of the box” in order to find solution for my problem.
Bare in mind that from my point of view I got a damaged goods that is bad from fabric. This so col computer never worked ok, even one day. Hell while I am writing no my hands are burning from the heat. (the computer already burned me a usb mouse – apple don’t relay care).
After a year of back and forth communication with apple care I had to extend my warranty service, so I paid more money…for nothing really.
Than I managed to send the mac to an apple store in NY. I put on the desktop a movie and text explaining all problems…
No one did anything with the material,
They just formatted the mac and that was it.
Naturally nothing changed, same problems, same hit same shit.
In the mean time apple clamed that the temperature I get on the mac is “normal”, no real responsibility was taken.
A few moths ago, apple riches an agreement with some mac point of service in Buenos Aires, and they send me to check the mac there, the diagnostic was the need to change the heardrive and the connector AC part. I should say the service was very nice and after 10 days I got the mac back.
But look at that
Once again the mac works slow, the mac gets to 41 C deg’ and it takes more than 5 min to start from standby mode.
What do you think I should do???????
Throw it away?
Reclame my money back?
Cry??
I have movies I have images I have all documents…what I don’t have is the apple attention although I am an apple care extended client!
From my point of view I have never bought a wors computer in my life, altohoug it is very sexy and I understand that if it works smoothly and fast and no temp issues it should be a nice user expiriance, but my nerves are a reck by now…I don’t believe not even one word of apple. And that is a shame.
What should I do?
Look at the problems I documented:
1. Worming: the laptop gets worm up to the point it is almost burning the palm of my hands. It is almost impossible to write sometimes, (Around the mouse pad, at the power cable connection magnet point and keyboard). When not connected to the AC the temperature go a bit low. These temperatures get very high after 2 hours work and fwd. and while charging the computer. It is necessary to suspend work every few hours in order to let it get colder a bit before resuming work.
Temp go high as 104.54 F (40.3 C), and even more.
2. Many times the screen is getting worm as well (u can see why).
3. Copy paste operation (example: plane text from “notes” to “word” can take 8-12 seconds).
4. Mac programs:
Mail: when mail is open the entire computer slows down. It will take a plane text mail as much as 42 seconds to be sent. When sending a mail with an attachment (a 300 kb image lets say), it will take the mail between 5-8 minutes!! to be sent. – Therefore it is impossible to work with “mail” program.
IPhoto: When iPhoto is open almost all the computer get stuck for entire minutes sometimes, images don’t pass, in the few times I tried to manipulate (crop, color etc.) images on iPhoto it took the program more than a 2 minutes only to open the task dialogue for it. Regarding opening images, manipulating or sending them by mail - it is an impossible task. It impossible to work with this program, and I am a user that almost all my work is with images. Sadly I turned to work with alternative programs such as Picasa.
5. Program opening timing measured:
Skype 1:13 min/ chrome 1:48 min/ system preferences 13 seconds.
Office word for mac 36 second/ Excel. 48 seconds/ iTunes 24 seconds/ contacts 52 seconds/ calendar 8 seconds/ Photoshop 34 seconds/ face time 48 seconds
** Almost all programs will open in a few second (within reasonable time frame) if I close it and reopen a second after!
6. When pointing the mouse curs on the menu it will delay in opening the menus 4-5 seconds, after doing that, going to the same menu order it will work fine.
7. A lot of times while typing the letters will appear on the screen a few seconds after typing them, there for you can’t see what you are writing in real time.
8. After not working with a program for 30 min or more. Than going back to it (while it is still open), the computer will respond to typing, moving stuff or other orders only 10 seconds after returning to this program and “typing”, if you want to save something it will take over 30 second to get a respond from the save dialogue box to appear on screen.
9. Right click will takes around 5 seconds to respond
10. Copy-past in Photoshop could take sometimes a few minutes.
11. If two apps will open at the same time it will take them both to open completely 2-4 minutes!!. That in case it won’t jam the all computer and than a computer restart will be required.
12. Pressing the apps button on keyboard it will take 4 second to the screen to show apps.
13. On finder seeing content of achieves will take sometimes 5-10 second to respond.
14. Passing from different archives in finder is very slow.
15. Preview will open after 6-16 seconds.
16. Command T in finder – 6 second to open new tag.
17. A USB connection mouse (no cable), the cursor will loose connection and disappear, than after a few second will come back in a different location.
18. Sometimes the below screen app bar menu gets stuck when passing with the mouse in it.
19. Going to full screen will no go smooth and jump between opened programs screens when doing it.
20. When in full screen mode, pointing the mouse to the very low part of the screen – it will take 8 second to the apps menu to appear.
21. Saving Dialogue box when saving items (in all programs), will open after 8-16 seconds.
22. Keyboard light is turning off and on every now and than.
23. On finder passing from different modes of appearance (icons, columns, list etc.) will get stuck most times.
24. Pressing the eye button (quick look) in finder will open a white square instead of the image; closing it down and reopen it will show the image.
Battery time is 4 hours and 7 min
Comments
Recent revisions of OSX don't seem to do well with HDDs for whatever reason, but I've only seen things slow down to that degree with very little free HDD space or firmware issues somewhere. How much free space do you have and what else is attached? Those are the most likely causes, with the next most likely being a bad ram upgrade. With a ram problem, you would probably see kernel panics in addition to these symptoms. If it was something such as a logic board issue, one of those service calls would have caught it.
Regarding the temperature, they all get hot. That's why they told you it's normal. It is unpleasant to touch a hot keyboard, and the newest ones seem to be somewhat of an improvement. You can't do much about that issue though.
hmm hi
thanks for responding.
these symptoms i shared, are from day one, meaning that the very slow yield of the OS started when the macbook pro was brand new and relatively empty.
generally i keep a 150 GB free space (from a 500 gb HD space), no devices connected (no mouse, no BT, no external HD...nada!).
i don't think a customer of such a prestigious company such as apple should accept a brand new expensive laptop that non of its programs or OS is working as it is suppose to.
imagine that as a photographer i can not even use iphoto to sort images...it stuck all the computer. (i don't even start talking about a simple copy past on a light image in photoshop...i can take a shower between the two orders).
"mail" is something unheard of, it is impossible to send simple text mails.
imagen that every time i put the cursor to point on an order...let's say "file"- "share"-"something"....it will take my mac to show me every step more than 5 seconds.
that is not normal. and it is unacceptable.
regarding the overheating.
i used to work with some airborne military computers, once we had some overheating problems, the temp got as high as 57 C. and cards and circuits started to melt. and this is on military equipment! there is no way that apple know that a user can not even touch its own keyboard and it is fine with apple and they say the temp is inside the spectrum specs...anyone can manipulate data shown to the costumer (apple say it is ok to have 90 C !?!?). yesterday i measured 43 C. on the screen and keyboard area. why a user that payes three times more money for its mac, comparing to a 300 usd for a simple pc laptop user should suffer heat, bad or imposible user interface experience and bad service from apple care?
seriously, i bought what should have been a state of arte laptop, saved money for it, waited like a small kid to get it and this mac doesn't even work as a bad old used pc laptop.
the sad thing is that i can understand that when this apple, mac OS does work as it is suppose to do, it is the best thing ever.
i feel like a guy that seats in business class but the airplane does not leave ground and real service will never start.
apple changed my HD a month ago and nothing really changed, every thing is the same.
i can see other issues that show that this box left apple fabric in bad condition. and you know what, that happens, every X lote there are some faulty units, the world is not a perfect place, we all know that.
but if you can not fix it?...replace it. the costumer should not suffer for a faulty unit.
the fact that apple charge for apple care and does not comply and take responsibility for it, this is unacceptable.
(just imagine that while writing this text, i need to stope every few min' because it is too hot to lean my hand on the keyboard, burning sensation and red marks, this is not normal i don't care what apple say to regarding the temp range specs... ).
will be glad to hear some ideas to solve this situation (besides throwing the mac to the garbage ).
how to bring apple care to respond and not ignore?
(sorry for the bad english).
many thanks
hmm hi
thanks for responding.
these symptoms i shared, are from day one, meaning that the very slow yield of the OS started when the macbook pro was brand new and relatively empty.
generally i keep a 150 GB free space (from a 500 gb HD space), no devices connected (no mouse, no BT, no external HD...nada!).
i don't think a customer of such a prestigious company such as apple should accept a brand new expensive laptop that non of its programs or OS is working as it is suppose to.
imagine that as a photographer i can not even use iphoto to sort images...it stuck all the computer. (i don't even start talking about a simple copy past on a light image in photoshop...i can take a shower between the two orders).
"mail" is something unheard of, it is impossible to send simple text mails.
imagen that every time i put the cursor to point on an order...let's say "file"- "share"-"something"....it will take my mac to show me every step more than 5 seconds.
that is not normal. and it is unacceptable.
regarding the overheating.
i used to work with some airborne military computers, once we had some overheating problems, the temp got as high as 57 C. and cards and circuits started to melt. and this is on military equipment! there is no way that apple know that a user can not even touch its own keyboard and it is fine with apple and they say the temp is inside the spectrum specs...anyone can manipulate data shown to the costumer (apple say it is ok to have 90 C !?!?). yesterday i measured 43 C. on the screen and keyboard area. why a user that payes three times more money for its mac, comparing to a 300 usd for a simple pc laptop user should suffer heat, bad or imposible user interface experience and bad service from apple care?
seriously, i bought what should have been a state of arte laptop, saved money for it, waited like a small kid to get it and this mac doesn't even work as a bad old used pc laptop.
the sad thing is that i can understand that when this apple, mac OS does work as it is suppose to do, it is the best thing ever.
i feel like a guy that seats in business class but the airplane does not leave ground and real service will never start.
apple changed my HD a month ago and nothing really changed, every thing is the same.
i can see other issues that show that this box left apple fabric in bad condition. and you know what, that happens, every X lote there are some faulty units, the world is not a perfect place, we all know that.
but if you can not fix it?...replace it. the costumer should not suffer for a faulty unit.
the fact that apple charge for apple care and does not comply and take responsibility for it, this is unacceptable.
(just imagine that while writing this text, i need to stope every few min' because it is too hot to lean my hand on the keyboard, burning sensation and red marks, this is not normal i don't care what apple say to regarding the temp range specs... ).
will be glad to hear some ideas to solve this situation (besides throwing the mac to the garbage ).
how to bring apple care to respond and not ignore?
(sorry for the bad english).
many thanks
Mine gets quite hot under load too, although I was never burnt by its surface. You can always look up whether any processes are hogging cpu via activity monitor. Just so you know, the Tjunction of that cpu is around 93C, so these internals can get quite hot. I am not suggesting they should be that hot all the time, and I don't know how well other components take it.
150 out of 500 is enough that it would not overwrite anything critical due to lack of space. It might be faster with more free space, but anything over 10GB free should not give you that kind of problem. Waiting on the drive will cause some spinning wheels, but it shouldn't take that kind of time. It's usually hardware or firmware, and you don't have any other devices attached. If it acts like that, I don't know why one of the service providers would send it back to you in that condition rather than investigating further.
Body temperature is 37C so 43C isn't hot and 57C isn't enough to melt circuits. You can read maximum temperatures acceptable by Intel are around 100C and at that point a chip would shut down:
http://ark.intel.com/products/76087/Intel-Core-i7-4750HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz
External temperatures of 90C aren't ok but 40-50C is ok.
Try booting up holding down the shift-key when booting to put it into safe mode. It will take a longer time to boot. Check if you still get the slowdown there. Reboot to get back into normal mode.
Check your Activity Monitor in /Applications/Utilities for memory usage to see if you are running out.
If it's just the drive that's still slow, you can replace it yourself with a solid-state drive:
http://computacion.mercadolibre.com.ar/discos-rigidos/ssd-samsung-840-pro
If it's just the drive that's still slow, you can replace it yourself with a solid-state drive:
http://computacion.mercadolibre.com.ar/discos-rigidos/ssd-samsung-840-pro
That's the thing. I looked at his quoted times, and a slow drive shouldn't cause things to take several minutes to launch. Disk Warrior might help a "little" if it takes too long to search, but other than that it still sounds unusually problematic. Recent revisions of OSX really aren't built for HDDs given the frequency of disk access, but those results are far beyond what I would expect in slowdown. If everyone who bought the old 13" experienced this with Mountain Lion or Mavericks, they would have already been discontinued.
9 months later, I just wanted to mention the site: ifixit.com who would give excellent guides for changing out your HDD to an SSD.
I have a 2009 MBP 13" going with 8GB RAM and a SSD. It runs hotter when using wifi than with ethernet. I Have been using laptop coolers and usb fans to cool it ever since leaving the beautiful 10.6.8. It was never the same after SnowLeopard. Still works decently enough.
I hope you've come to a solution with your troubled laptop .
cheers
P