I had this issue and just had my logic board replaced on my 2011 MBP a couple of months ago (thankfully I still have AppleCare). And then, a week or so ago, the glitches started showing up again.
My MBP ran without issue without the glitches until early 2013. I don't know if it's a driver issue or what, but the GPU glitches didn't occur until after I installed Mountain Lion.
In my case, I was living in Brazil, and even if it was in guarantee (bought it in Europe, so 2 years) and in the extended replacement period (until late 2012), there's no fixing the problem for free in Brazil so... had to let the laptop go :-(
In your case... I'd say this new logic board could also be failing because of the extra strain ML does to the GPU. Who knows though.
Wait a minute. I thought the narrative was that Apple moved away from nvidia in their notebooks supposedly because of video chipset failure. Now AMDs are failing?
Maybe that's why they moved back to NVidia. The 2012 Macs run much cooler with the new NVidia chips:
"We took a look at performance over time, and as expected, Ivy Bridge and Kepler do a really good job of minimizing heat buildup over time and the corresponding amount of throttling that occurs. Through 40 runs of our Half-Life 2 test (at native res with maxed out settings), I ended up with nearly identical numbers the entire way through, with a very slight downward trend emerging (the delta between the average of runs 2 through 10 was a bit under 1% better than the average of runs 32 through 40). It's pretty much a flat line all the way across, the new chips really let the MBP run at significantly lower temperatures. Using it versus a Core 2 or SNB MacBook Pro, it noticeably doesn't get anywhere near as hot to the touch in day to day use."
Still, integrated graphics are by far the most reliable. Mac Mini and Macbook Air failures aren't as common. If Apple moves the MBP line to Iris Pro, I imagine this sort of thing would become much less common. The chips in the likes of the Mac Pro get the benefit of much better cooling systems.
Told you guys. Lead free solder + thermal cycling = failure. It's not just ATI, nVidia or Microsoft, it's an industry-wide problem.
You mean an industry-wide solution to the problem of how computer manufacturers get people to keep buying new computers. It's bad for consumers that machines break but good business for the people who sell them. Customers lose trust if it happens within a short time but after 5-6 years, it forces people to upgrade.
Damn,
I have this model and probably will start to see this failure soon.
Don't wait for it to happen, sell it when the new ones are out and either get a 2012 refurb or a 2013 model. It doesn't cost all that much more money to upgrade regularly and you get the benefit of having a new machine.
Even though Mac failures are considerably less than those of PCs (which is obvious), it still bugs me to see people paying twice as much money to get some peace of mind, but end up with such things. This added to the fact that Mac repairs are becoming increasingly expensive, just makes me hope that Apple take quality very seriously.
AppleCare for a MBP is $349, it still isn't a good deal. In fact it is a terrible deal considering it only provide 3 years of warranty protection.
Funny that. I had my dead keyboard backlight replaced a few months back and I got my logic board replaced for this exact problem just last week. Total cost? About $600. That's a bit more than $350. Seems like you don't really understand economics. AppleCare is a MUST on MacBooks because parts are very expensive for them.
Funny that. I had my dead keyboard backlight replaced a few months back and I got my logic board replaced for this exact problem just last week. Total cost? About $600. That's a bit more than $350. Seems like you don't really understand economics. AppleCare is a MUST on MacBooks because parts are very expensive for them.
Keep the receipts, if apple decide its a widespread problem and offer to fix all effected machines they will refund you.
What the article describes is _exactly_ what happened to my 17" 2011 early macbook pro one week ago. The glitches and then later blackout.
The macbook pro is about 2,5 years old and therefore not covered by the 2 year reclamation anymore you have in EU...I have an appointment in the local applestore this week to hear their take on it.
I am quite disappointed and worried wondering what will happen with the other laptops we have in the studio (late 2011 models).
I wish Apple would considergiving the pro line 3 years applecare included as a proof-of-quility-and-care protecting you against bad runs of components.
I wish Apple would considergiving the pro line 3 years applecare included as a proof-of-quility-and-care protecting you against bad runs of components.
According to their 10K filing in 2012, they made $3.4b from software, services and other, which mostly likely includes AppleCare but also repair revenue. This is listed separate from iTunes but it does include 3rd party software sales and will include sales of OS X. They sold 18.1 million Macs that year so deducting sales of OS X Mountain Lion, which would be 28 million copies x $20 = $560m, that's $2.84b or $157 per Mac and there's still 3rd party software to deduct.
If they increased the price of every Mac by say $50, they might be able to offer 3 year warranties on everything. I'd actually rather that they did warranties per person than per product as well as additional coverage for accidental damage and this can be offered to a company based on the number of machines covered.
There could be family plans too and you just pick how many devices you need in the plan. An individual plan would cover 1 Mac, 1 iPhone and 1 iPad with additional charges per device and would cover any device, even used ones that were under 3 years old. You'd never have to deal with getting AppleCare boxes, it would be a subscription service and have an online portal where you could check coverage and register serial numbers. Serial numbers would have to be registered within the first year of ownership.
An individual plan could be $5/month + $5/month optional for accidental damage or charge for additional devices.
A family plan could cover 3 Macs, 3 iPhones/iPods and 3 iPads for $10/month.
Company plans would be based on the number of units.
They can use iTunes billing for it so no new IDs or logins required.
The exact same problem happened to my 2000+ EUR iMac 27" from 2011.
As a response Apple issued a replacement program for the AMD video cards.
I went to an Authorized Apple Service Provider and I got it changed for free.
However, my iMac only worked for a couple of weeks.
After sending the iMac again to the service with the exact same issues, I got a reply back from them saying that the logic board needs to be replaced, for 700+ EUR.
Frustrated, I emailed Tim Cook and Apple Support. The following day an Executive Relations EMEIA from Ireland called me saying that the problem needs to be discussed on the phone, not on email.
He investigated the issue and came back to me after a couple of days telling me that Apple won't replace the logic board for free, or even with a discount.
I hate this happening to a very expensive machine which was only used for 18 months, and I'm bugged by the great feedback you can read on the internet about the Apple Service.
Mine was horrific and I will not buy an iMac again, I think more of us should reconsider what we're spending our money on.
From what I can see here, I can deduct that most of their Mac line is compromised
I can prove what I wrote above with the emails exchanged between me and the Apple guy.
One of the most frustrating things about this issue has been Apple's refusal to acknowledge it as a widespread problem. In conversations with Genius Bar staff, phone support, and representatives from Customer Relations and engineering, users have been repeatedly told that the graphics issues they are experiencing are uncommon. The thousands of posts on the Apple Support Communities have been readily dismissed as unreliable.
Apple is in the best position to collect data about these issues, from the repairs they have made to affected units and the feedback form that users are encouraged (by Apple as well as forums) to use to report their experiences. However, apparently whatever data they have collected has not swayed Apple's opinion that these issues are widespread or major enough to be covered under a replacement program like the one they recently announced for 2011 27" iMacs with similar 6000-series AMD Radeon GPUs.
I am still working my way through scraping information (date, model, GPU, resolution) about affected computers from the 2500+ posts in the major threads on the Apple Support Communities, to get a broader sense of the timeline and trends since these threads began soon after the early 2011 models were released. It's a pretty epic project (and the threads keep growing, so I'll never really be "done"), and I hope to share the stats from that soon. I've also been running an informal survey about affected computers since late July 2013 (that Apple's moderators quickly tried to suppress on their forums) that has received over 200 responses so far. While the data is skewed to reflect largely the most recently affected users, the quick and dirty analytics show some interesting things about the distribution of models, GPUs, and attempts at resolving the problem.
My own early 2011 MacBook Pro is on its fourth logic board, and so far (about a month after the latest replacement), it is finally operating properly. But I am deeply concerned with the issues experienced with these models, and very interested to find out what is causing them - since the first posts in March 2011, users have speculated on issues caused by the GPU chips, solder, firmware, drivers, fan control, etc. While several users over the years have proclaimed to have "solved" the issue, so far I have yet to find a solution within the relevant threads that helped every user that tried it. So I don't think we really know what's going on here, and perhaps we never will if Apple doesn't present a replacement program to resolve these issues once and for all.
@saramwrap even if they acknowledge such problems and issue replacement programs for failing video cards, it might be that the underlying issue (which I guess is heat) might cause other components to fail
hence we receive instructions to change our logic boards on our own expenses.
It's incredibly frustrating but I think it's mostly our fault - the customers - allowing this to happen.
We keep praising Apple products and they get a lot of credit from the general public regarding their incredible customer service and experience. But we never seem to nail down the bad examples.
I think a lot of bad publicity should go around the outrageous warranties that Apple offers in Europe (against the EU regulations), but we as customers only seem to see this when our expensive machines fail.
I for myself am on the market to buy a well built PC, with a normal warranty (at least 2 years), and I will exclude any product from Apple's line from my shopping list.
One of the most frustrating things about this issue has been Apple's refusal to acknowledge it as a widespread problem.
I am still working my way through scraping information (date, model, GPU, resolution) about affected computers from the 2500+ posts in the major threads on the Apple Support Communities, to get a broader sense of the timeline and trends since these threads began soon after the early 2011 models were released.
You have to remember that Apple sells 15-20 million Macs every year. One particular product line could have as many as 4 million units. If 2500 people have a fault, that's a 0.06% failure rate. It's impossible to determine the failure rates from forum comments, only Apple knows this data.
You have to remember that Apple sells 15-20 million Macs every year. One particular product line could have as many as 4 million units. If 2500 people have a fault, that's a 0.06% failure rate. It's impossible to determine the failure rates from forum comments, only Apple knows this data.
I agree that it is impossible to determine the percentage of affected units, and whether or not those numbers are statistically significant to Apple.
But many of the Apple responses have been along the lines of "we've never seen this problem before," which is nonsense even if less than 1% of machines are actually affected - their repairs, engineering tests, and feedback form responses must at least show that this is a repeatable issue across (even a relatively small) number of machines. As an affected customer, I find it insulting to see responses from Apple that deny that other users are having the same issue. They told numerous 2011 iMac users similar things until they reached some sort of tipping point where it was suddenly worth running a GPU replacement program for affected computers. One day, Apple claims that your issue is unique and unusual and you have to pay to fix it... then suddenly, that same problem is acknowledged as endemic to the affected model(s) and fixed on Apple's dime. It's like magic.
I'm also very curious about whether the 2011 MacBook Pro issues are related to the 2011 iMac issues that are being (somewhat) addressed by a replacement program - the affected computers all share GPUs from the AMD Radeon HD 6000M Series. The early 2011 MacBook Pros use the 6490M and 6750M (with users reporting similar issues with both), the late 2011 MacBook Pros use the 6750M and 6770M (thus far, I've only seen reports about issues with the 6750M among these models, but data is sparse), and the mid-2011 iMacs use the 6750M, 6770M, and 6970M (with the 6970M recognized as faulty with an active replacement program). If issues are shared among three prominent 2011 model lines, that suddenly could represent a much larger share of the 2011 units sold. In 2012, both lines switched back to using NVIDIA, which had been heavily used in MacBook Pros before 2011 (most famously, in the 2007 and 2008 models that also ended up covered under a GPU replacement program).
As this is clearly a developing fault with the hardware that has nothing to do with the consumer, no one should be paying a cent, AppleCare Warranty or not. Apple should be covering this and seeking remedy from AMD.
This is happening to my 2011 MBP...I am scheduled to take it in this weekend. The screen randomly goes blank (black) with no way to recover. Have to hard power down sometimes several times before issue is resolved.
Comments
I had this issue and just had my logic board replaced on my 2011 MBP a couple of months ago (thankfully I still have AppleCare). And then, a week or so ago, the glitches started showing up again.
My MBP ran without issue without the glitches until early 2013. I don't know if it's a driver issue or what, but the GPU glitches didn't occur until after I installed Mountain Lion.
In my case, I was living in Brazil, and even if it was in guarantee (bought it in Europe, so 2 years) and in the extended replacement period (until late 2012), there's no fixing the problem for free in Brazil so... had to let the laptop go :-(
In your case... I'd say this new logic board could also be failing because of the extra strain ML does to the GPU. Who knows though.
I have this model and probably will start to see this failure soon.
Maybe that's why they moved back to NVidia.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6037/the-2012-macbook-pro-review/2
"We took a look at performance over time, and as expected, Ivy Bridge and Kepler do a really good job of minimizing heat buildup over time and the corresponding amount of throttling that occurs. Through 40 runs of our Half-Life 2 test (at native res with maxed out settings), I ended up with nearly identical numbers the entire way through, with a very slight downward trend emerging (the delta between the average of runs 2 through 10 was a bit under 1% better than the average of runs 32 through 40). It's pretty much a flat line all the way across, the new chips really let the MBP run at significantly lower temperatures. Using it versus a Core 2 or SNB MacBook Pro, it noticeably doesn't get anywhere near as hot to the touch in day to day use."
Still, integrated graphics are by far the most reliable. Mac Mini and Macbook Air failures aren't as common. If Apple moves the MBP line to Iris Pro, I imagine this sort of thing would become much less common. The chips in the likes of the Mac Pro get the benefit of much better cooling systems.
You mean an industry-wide solution to the problem of how computer manufacturers get people to keep buying new computers. It's bad for consumers that machines break but good business for the people who sell them. Customers lose trust if it happens within a short time but after 5-6 years, it forces people to upgrade.
Don't wait for it to happen, sell it when the new ones are out and either get a 2012 refurb or a 2013 model. It doesn't cost all that much more money to upgrade regularly and you get the benefit of having a new machine.
Even though Mac failures are considerably less than those of PCs (which is obvious), it still bugs me to see people paying twice as much money to get some peace of mind, but end up with such things. This added to the fact that Mac repairs are becoming increasingly expensive, just makes me hope that Apple take quality very seriously.
Did this still occur when you switched between to the iGPU over the dGPU?
I thought warranties for items were 2 full years in the UK for electronics.
Interesting point on warranties.
EU law dictates that all sellers have to provide 2 years.
There has been several block actions against apple on this in various eu countries and apple have been heavily fined many millions of euros.
UK sellers try to ignore this, but if push comes to shove that have to honour the EU law but it will take some fighting in most cases.
Funny that. I had my dead keyboard backlight replaced a few months back and I got my logic board replaced for this exact problem just last week. Total cost? About $600. That's a bit more than $350. Seems like you don't really understand economics. AppleCare is a MUST on MacBooks because parts are very expensive for them.
Funny that. I had my dead keyboard backlight replaced a few months back and I got my logic board replaced for this exact problem just last week. Total cost? About $600. That's a bit more than $350. Seems like you don't really understand economics. AppleCare is a MUST on MacBooks because parts are very expensive for them.
Keep the receipts, if apple decide its a widespread problem and offer to fix all effected machines they will refund you.
What the article describes is _exactly_ what happened to my 17" 2011 early macbook pro one week ago. The glitches and then later blackout.
The macbook pro is about 2,5 years old and therefore not covered by the 2 year reclamation anymore you have in EU...I have an appointment in the local applestore this week to hear their take on it.
I am quite disappointed and worried wondering what will happen with the other laptops we have in the studio (late 2011 models).
I wish Apple would considergiving the pro line 3 years applecare included as a proof-of-quility-and-care protecting you against bad runs of components.
cheers
And every bit of Apple news is, well, news and click bait.
Is it just me or does this not happen with nVidia? Yes, I'm going there.
It's just you. Google 'Nvidia failure." Go ahead, I'll grab a coffee. A big one.
It seems that every single Apple product must work and last forever.
And every bit of Apple news is, well, news and click bait.
No, but it would be nice if they didn't fail in large batches due to component defects.
According to their 10K filing in 2012, they made $3.4b from software, services and other, which mostly likely includes AppleCare but also repair revenue. This is listed separate from iTunes but it does include 3rd party software sales and will include sales of OS X. They sold 18.1 million Macs that year so deducting sales of OS X Mountain Lion, which would be 28 million copies x $20 = $560m, that's $2.84b or $157 per Mac and there's still 3rd party software to deduct.
If they increased the price of every Mac by say $50, they might be able to offer 3 year warranties on everything. I'd actually rather that they did warranties per person than per product as well as additional coverage for accidental damage and this can be offered to a company based on the number of machines covered.
There could be family plans too and you just pick how many devices you need in the plan. An individual plan would cover 1 Mac, 1 iPhone and 1 iPad with additional charges per device and would cover any device, even used ones that were under 3 years old. You'd never have to deal with getting AppleCare boxes, it would be a subscription service and have an online portal where you could check coverage and register serial numbers. Serial numbers would have to be registered within the first year of ownership.
An individual plan could be $5/month + $5/month optional for accidental damage or charge for additional devices.
A family plan could cover 3 Macs, 3 iPhones/iPods and 3 iPads for $10/month.
Company plans would be based on the number of units.
They can use iTunes billing for it so no new IDs or logins required.
The exact same problem happened to my 2000+ EUR iMac 27" from 2011.
As a response Apple issued a replacement program for the AMD video cards.
I went to an Authorized Apple Service Provider and I got it changed for free.
However, my iMac only worked for a couple of weeks.
After sending the iMac again to the service with the exact same issues, I got a reply back from them saying that the logic board needs to be replaced, for 700+ EUR.
Frustrated, I emailed Tim Cook and Apple Support. The following day an Executive Relations EMEIA from Ireland called me saying that the problem needs to be discussed on the phone, not on email.
He investigated the issue and came back to me after a couple of days telling me that Apple won't replace the logic board for free, or even with a discount.
I hate this happening to a very expensive machine which was only used for 18 months, and I'm bugged by the great feedback you can read on the internet about the Apple Service.
Mine was horrific and I will not buy an iMac again, I think more of us should reconsider what we're spending our money on.
From what I can see here, I can deduct that most of their Mac line is compromised
I can prove what I wrote above with the emails exchanged between me and the Apple guy.
One of the most frustrating things about this issue has been Apple's refusal to acknowledge it as a widespread problem. In conversations with Genius Bar staff, phone support, and representatives from Customer Relations and engineering, users have been repeatedly told that the graphics issues they are experiencing are uncommon. The thousands of posts on the Apple Support Communities have been readily dismissed as unreliable.
Apple is in the best position to collect data about these issues, from the repairs they have made to affected units and the feedback form that users are encouraged (by Apple as well as forums) to use to report their experiences. However, apparently whatever data they have collected has not swayed Apple's opinion that these issues are widespread or major enough to be covered under a replacement program like the one they recently announced for 2011 27" iMacs with similar 6000-series AMD Radeon GPUs.
I am still working my way through scraping information (date, model, GPU, resolution) about affected computers from the 2500+ posts in the major threads on the Apple Support Communities, to get a broader sense of the timeline and trends since these threads began soon after the early 2011 models were released. It's a pretty epic project (and the threads keep growing, so I'll never really be "done"), and I hope to share the stats from that soon. I've also been running an informal survey about affected computers since late July 2013 (that Apple's moderators quickly tried to suppress on their forums) that has received over 200 responses so far. While the data is skewed to reflect largely the most recently affected users, the quick and dirty analytics show some interesting things about the distribution of models, GPUs, and attempts at resolving the problem.
My own early 2011 MacBook Pro is on its fourth logic board, and so far (about a month after the latest replacement), it is finally operating properly. But I am deeply concerned with the issues experienced with these models, and very interested to find out what is causing them - since the first posts in March 2011, users have speculated on issues caused by the GPU chips, solder, firmware, drivers, fan control, etc. While several users over the years have proclaimed to have "solved" the issue, so far I have yet to find a solution within the relevant threads that helped every user that tried it. So I don't think we really know what's going on here, and perhaps we never will if Apple doesn't present a replacement program to resolve these issues once and for all.
@saramwrap even if they acknowledge such problems and issue replacement programs for failing video cards, it might be that the underlying issue (which I guess is heat) might cause other components to fail
hence we receive instructions to change our logic boards on our own expenses.
It's incredibly frustrating but I think it's mostly our fault - the customers - allowing this to happen.
We keep praising Apple products and they get a lot of credit from the general public regarding their incredible customer service and experience. But we never seem to nail down the bad examples.
I think a lot of bad publicity should go around the outrageous warranties that Apple offers in Europe (against the EU regulations), but we as customers only seem to see this when our expensive machines fail.
I for myself am on the market to buy a well built PC, with a normal warranty (at least 2 years), and I will exclude any product from Apple's line from my shopping list.
You have to remember that Apple sells 15-20 million Macs every year. One particular product line could have as many as 4 million units. If 2500 people have a fault, that's a 0.06% failure rate. It's impossible to determine the failure rates from forum comments, only Apple knows this data.
You have to remember that Apple sells 15-20 million Macs every year. One particular product line could have as many as 4 million units. If 2500 people have a fault, that's a 0.06% failure rate. It's impossible to determine the failure rates from forum comments, only Apple knows this data.
I agree that it is impossible to determine the percentage of affected units, and whether or not those numbers are statistically significant to Apple.
But many of the Apple responses have been along the lines of "we've never seen this problem before," which is nonsense even if less than 1% of machines are actually affected - their repairs, engineering tests, and feedback form responses must at least show that this is a repeatable issue across (even a relatively small) number of machines. As an affected customer, I find it insulting to see responses from Apple that deny that other users are having the same issue. They told numerous 2011 iMac users similar things until they reached some sort of tipping point where it was suddenly worth running a GPU replacement program for affected computers. One day, Apple claims that your issue is unique and unusual and you have to pay to fix it... then suddenly, that same problem is acknowledged as endemic to the affected model(s) and fixed on Apple's dime. It's like magic.
I'm also very curious about whether the 2011 MacBook Pro issues are related to the 2011 iMac issues that are being (somewhat) addressed by a replacement program - the affected computers all share GPUs from the AMD Radeon HD 6000M Series. The early 2011 MacBook Pros use the 6490M and 6750M (with users reporting similar issues with both), the late 2011 MacBook Pros use the 6750M and 6770M (thus far, I've only seen reports about issues with the 6750M among these models, but data is sparse), and the mid-2011 iMacs use the 6750M, 6770M, and 6970M (with the 6970M recognized as faulty with an active replacement program). If issues are shared among three prominent 2011 model lines, that suddenly could represent a much larger share of the 2011 units sold. In 2012, both lines switched back to using NVIDIA, which had been heavily used in MacBook Pros before 2011 (most famously, in the 2007 and 2008 models that also ended up covered under a GPU replacement program).