I bought my Air to surf, email, word processing, spreadsheets and keynote presentations - its now on my lap burning my fricken lap more than any other laptop I've ever had....
I had the CORE shut downs with the Air when watching videos and using some Flash-based sites. This rarely caused issues and the Air became my most used machine in the house.
With the latest patch, the Air now works perfectly. I no longer have any CORE shutdowns. Everything works.
It has been may experience with Dell and Toshiba laptops to have the machines slowdown in case of overheating situations. I haven't had this issue with the Air. I do notice that the fans do run at higher speeds when doing intense computing.
I wonder if many reported issues are from people inadvertently blocking the air vents in the bottom rear of the machine. I use the machine on my lap and I just make sure that the vents are completely blocked when I use the machine. The old Dell latitudes had the fan on the bottom and it was subject to overheating. The Toshibas were a little better in that the fans were on the sides.
Apple's are usually designed to be much quieter so they tend to run a little hotter. Metal cases tend to run warmer, but they also seem to dissipate the heat faster.
for those still having problems after applying the update, i recommend installing the coolbook app. it gives you complete control over processor speed and voltage. i've used it on mba and mbp and it is truly a lifesaver.
??? WTF?? And I guess you think the Sony Vaio TZ is copying the 12" Powerbook.
You are kidding about its "it's power and speed."? As compared to what- the old toilet seat iBook? A Texas instrument calculator? You must mean - lack of power and lack of speed.
Boy are you in denial. You obviously never read the MacWorld article I sent to you. Here it is again.
3 1/2 mice "CONS
Slow processor; slow and small hard drive; limited configuration options; unswappable battery."
Your reading comprehension is so off. What part of "it is more popular than i would have thought it would be for its power and speed." is confusing to you. I clearly state that I'm surprised by it's popularity because the the price is very high for the amount of performance you get so attack me because I think it's more popular than I thought this niche machine would be?
Yes, they did copy Apple on this one. Before the Air came along there wasn't a single OEM using the small form factor package and ultraportables all had a smaller display with a smaller footprint (usually with a stunted keyboard) and didn't use single layer 1.8" HDDs and similar sized 1.8" SSDs because they are all thick enough to hold thicker drives.
I had no issues before the update but just blindly applied it since it appeared in my software update list.
However now that I have applied the update system performance has dropped significantly. I used some software to check the core speed and ran the good old yes > /dev/null test in terminal and it shows my cores dropping to 0.8 ghz, wtf?
I ordered a 1.6ghz dual core MacBook Air, not a dual 800mhz machine. Seriously what is the point of have dual 1.6ghz processors when you actually want to use the power it just under-clocks them!
Cant remember the update process whether it was a software or firmware update. If a software update only I am going to try and roll back.
All you idiots out there who think I am a whiner and that I should just be happy with my machine as it is needs to pull your head out of Apples PR arse.
Why do we put up with this practice from Apple but if it was Dell or M$ or somebody else doing something similar we would hang them out to dry. I have been an Apple user since the Apple IIe and have increasingly seen this behaviour from Apple of late. I certainly believe now mre than ever that Apple and Google = Next generation M$
I so DON'T want to agree with you, but I DO AGREE 100%. Been an Apple person since my first Apple IIc. Makes me want to cry...or at least be able to install OS X on a different laptop.
What surprises me here is that Apple takes so long to take this problem seriously I think they are totally occupied with their iPhone development and they don't do anything serious about this issue. My macbook air is also one that suffers serious slowdowns when doing anything with video. This goes from using iChat, after 5 min the ichat conversation stalls completely, skype video it last like 10 min and then everything freezes. I'm MacOS user since 1986 and I use my Mac to write software on it, so I tried myself to debug the issue using some low level debugging tools and I realize that this just a hardware issue. The processor gets overloaded,... this is something that Apple Engineers could figure it out too. I Just think this product is wrongly designed the whole unit is not designed well enough and the cooling that the fans provide is just not adequate enough. The processor runs constantly at 160 Fahrenheit same thing for the airport card... I'm thinking seriously to take some legal action on Apple for this inadequate behavior. Apple shame on you...
Many folks gave those Japanese engineers a hard time....remember them? The guys who said they could reengineer the system at a lower cost with a better design. Maybe we should contact them and see what their suggestions are!!!
Like most people, I want a 12" or even an 11" Air that is 1" thick. There is no excuse for Apple not to trim 1" off the width and .75" off the depth of the Air.
You have a survey showing that this is what most people want? It's what you want, and there are other people who share that opinion.
On the other hand, there are lots of people absolutely enamored with the MBA form factor, who love the 13 inch screen and would have hated something smaller.
Apple can not address every niche and every preference. I'm quite happy this time around, because they addressed my niche. You get to be unhappy and wish they'd addressed your niche instead. That's fair.
But saying "there is no excuse for Apple not to [do it my way]" is silly.
If they'd produced a laptop that didn't appeal to anyone, you might be right. As it is, you're not. A ton of people are absolutely fascinated by the thing.
I had one of the first MacBook Airs in March. Core shutdown on a constant basis, worst with connected monitor and USB disk attached.
Even after changing the motherboard the problems did not go away. The MacBook was just not usable (and forget about VMWare or Parallels). Fan was almost always on, very annoying.
Sold it last week on ebay and bought a "real" MacBook Pro. No fan, lots of speed, fantastic screen. But much, much heavier...
For the folks who keep telling us that we are expecting too much from the Air, you have to look outside the little box that is Apple.
I had an MSI Wind with a puny 1.6GHz Atom CPU, and it did everything that the Air could do but did not shut down any of its cores or run over 70C when viewing BASIC 800kbps MLB.TV feeds. Let me repeat: what I was doing with the Air was not exceed the expectations of a machine with a Core 2 1.6GHz CPU. I was watching BASIC videos online. Just because the Air can play your low bit-rate AVI rips of DVDS does not mean that it is a great machine when it can't even handle high quality Youtube videos.
You people who are not experiencing problems with your Air likely stress it less than you would a simple PDA.
What is wrong with expecting a 1.6GHz Core 2 computer to run like one? I don't even care about the heat. Just let me have the advertised 1.6GHz Core 2.
Apple should have released the ULV 1.2GHz version, which would perform consistently at duo 1.2, which would easily allow it to handle basic 800kbps MLB.TV feeds (which, as I stated earlier, use only like 25% of the CPU's processes).
For the folks who keep telling us that we are expecting too much from the Air, you have to look outside the little box that is Apple.
I had an MSI Wind with a puny 1.6GHz Atom CPU, and it did everything that the Air could do but did not shut down any of its cores or run over 70C when viewing BASIC 800kbps MLB.TV feeds. Let me repeat: what I was doing with the Air was not exceed the expectations of a machine with a Core 2 1.6GHz CPU. I was watching BASIC videos online. Just because the Air can play your low bit-rate AVI rips of DVDS does not mean that it is a great machine when it can't even handle high quality Youtube videos.
You people who are not experiencing problems with your Air likely stress it less than you would a simple PDA.
What is wrong with expecting a 1.6GHz Core 2 computer to run like one? I don't even care about the heat. Just let me have the advertised 1.6GHz Core 2.
Apple should have released the ULV 1.2GHz version, which would perform consistently at duo 1.2, which would easily allow it to handle basic 800kbps MLB.TV feeds (which, as I stated earlier, use only like 25% of the CPU's processes).
Agree. I purchased a 1.6ghz machine and thats what I want. You dont go out and purchase a 4 cylinder car and be happy when it runs on 2 cylinders now do we?
Sounds more like placebo effect to me. You never checked the performance before the update, how can you be sure that its not just the suggestion that something has changed that is making you think you're noticing a difference?
Did an erase and install just now back to factory. Applied all updates (except MacBook Air update) and installed everything. Running in terminal yes > /dev/null in 4 terminal windows and the lowest I can get the machine to drop to during full load after running for 15 minutes was 1.2ghz with most of the time switching between 1.2ghz and 1.4ghz .
With the update applied they dropped immediately to 800mhz so there you go!
I wonder if there's something else going on here [edit: different plants maybe? I dunno]. While MBAs are relatively rare where I'm at, those of us that do use them don't experience problems.
I do use it for business stuff (iWork, Filemaker) I also use it for light photo stuff (aperture/photoshop) and some development, so I don't think I necessarily baby it, yet it runs very cool. I also have never noticed the slow-down problem.
The only problem I have with the machine is the absurd time that it takes to charge the thing.
I wonder if there's something else going on here [edit: different plants maybe? I dunno]. While MBAs are relatively rare where I'm at, those of us that do use them don't experience problems.
I do use it for business stuff (iWork, Filemaker) I also use it for light photo stuff (aperture/photoshop) and some development, so I don't think I necessarily baby it, yet it runs very cool. I also have never noticed the slow-down problem.
The only problem I have with the machine is the absurd time that it takes to charge the thing.
Cheezlbub, please elaborate on your usage patterns. For instance, tell us how much CPU processes are being used in your work (use Activity Monitor) and tell us your temperatures (Use iStat Pro widget). It would help us understand much better if you could give specifics like this:
"I use Photoshop for 15 minutes, editing medium sized files, and the CPU runs at about 25-75% most of the time, with temperatures at 65C and the fan at 5000rpm. There are no Core shutdowns."
If you simply tell us that you use program A and program B, then we cannot know how long you use the programs, and how high your CPU temps are, and how much they are being taxed.
Here is my detailed report on a normal days around 4PM:
- 4PM EST: I watch the 800kbps feed of the Red Sox game on MLB.TV; browser is Safari, hooked up to my 1080p HDTV (Air display turned OFF). CPU temps are around 65C or so, fans well over 4000rpm, but everything stable for first 15 minutes.
- 4:15PM: I open up FireFox and browse the Red Sox forum, typing responses and reading threads. CPU is now over 50% at times, temps at 70C or above, fans going the full 6000rpm.
- 4:30PM: I click on the MLB.com Gameday link to see the line score and game scoring. CPU now at over 75% at times, temps around 75C, fans blazing at full speed. After a few minutes, one of the Cores apparently shuts down because the temps are rising even with the fans going full blast. Now, the video feed begins to jump 5-10 frames per second and graphics are slow in FireFox. Opening up a finder window is now several seconds slower than normal.
My unit was a coreShutdown unit....I had my system drive erased reinstallled system (at Apple Store), still 10.5.4 and did update, it was working fine for a few days.
Today don't have A/C running. 78 Farenheit/26 celcius, after doing 20min of iChat my Kernel task goes up to 130%. Of course video and audio is dropping, the video is getting slowed down.
I tried now a few times to do iChat stuff and now in less then a minute I have this issue.
Also notice that this kerneltask is spending a lot of time in pmSlaveIdleThread and
Comments
I bought my Air to surf, email, word processing, spreadsheets and keynote presentations - its now on my lap burning my fricken lap more than any other laptop I've ever had....
OUCH!!!
With the latest patch, the Air now works perfectly. I no longer have any CORE shutdowns. Everything works.
It has been may experience with Dell and Toshiba laptops to have the machines slowdown in case of overheating situations. I haven't had this issue with the Air. I do notice that the fans do run at higher speeds when doing intense computing.
I wonder if many reported issues are from people inadvertently blocking the air vents in the bottom rear of the machine. I use the machine on my lap and I just make sure that the vents are completely blocked when I use the machine. The old Dell latitudes had the fan on the bottom and it was subject to overheating. The Toshibas were a little better in that the fans were on the sides.
Apple's are usually designed to be much quieter so they tend to run a little hotter. Metal cases tend to run warmer, but they also seem to dissipate the heat faster.
I think that the Air will prove to be a complete lemon.
I'll add my story to the pile of "My MBA has never had a problem" reports.
I use it almost daily, even though it's my "travelling unit" and not my main mac.
I watch videos on it, and do many of the things mentioned here. No problems.
Sure, it gets a bit warm at times, but when you stress it you expect that.
No freezing or anything like that, even with full-length films, etc.
Mine was one of the first shipped the first week, and it's always been fine.
It's a great concept, great design, functions exactly according to why I bought it,
and I could not be happier with it.
I feel for those who have had problems, but I get the impression that it is not
so widespread that people should proclaim the whole line a "complete lemon".
http://plasmadesign.wordpress.com/20...-core-shutdown
??? WTF?? And I guess you think the Sony Vaio TZ is copying the 12" Powerbook.
You are kidding about its "it's power and speed."? As compared to what- the old toilet seat iBook? A Texas instrument calculator? You must mean - lack of power and lack of speed.
Boy are you in denial. You obviously never read the MacWorld article I sent to you. Here it is again.
3 1/2 mice "CONS
Slow processor; slow and small hard drive; limited configuration options; unswappable battery."
http://www.macworld.com/article/1318...acbookair.html
Your reading comprehension is so off. What part of "it is more popular than i would have thought it would be for its power and speed." is confusing to you. I clearly state that I'm surprised by it's popularity because the the price is very high for the amount of performance you get so attack me because I think it's more popular than I thought this niche machine would be?
Yes, they did copy Apple on this one. Before the Air came along there wasn't a single OEM using the small form factor package and ultraportables all had a smaller display with a smaller footprint (usually with a stunted keyboard) and didn't use single layer 1.8" HDDs and similar sized 1.8" SSDs because they are all thick enough to hold thicker drives.
I had no issues before the update but just blindly applied it since it appeared in my software update list.
However now that I have applied the update system performance has dropped significantly. I used some software to check the core speed and ran the good old yes > /dev/null test in terminal and it shows my cores dropping to 0.8 ghz, wtf?
I ordered a 1.6ghz dual core MacBook Air, not a dual 800mhz machine. Seriously what is the point of have dual 1.6ghz processors when you actually want to use the power it just under-clocks them!
Cant remember the update process whether it was a software or firmware update. If a software update only I am going to try and roll back.
All you idiots out there who think I am a whiner and that I should just be happy with my machine as it is needs to pull your head out of Apples PR arse.
Why do we put up with this practice from Apple but if it was Dell or M$ or somebody else doing something similar we would hang them out to dry. I have been an Apple user since the Apple IIe and have increasingly seen this behaviour from Apple of late. I certainly believe now mre than ever that Apple and Google = Next generation M$
I so DON'T want to agree with you, but I DO AGREE 100%. Been an Apple person since my first Apple IIc. Makes me want to cry...or at least be able to install OS X on a different laptop.
What surprises me here is that Apple takes so long to take this problem seriously I think they are totally occupied with their iPhone development and they don't do anything serious about this issue. My macbook air is also one that suffers serious slowdowns when doing anything with video. This goes from using iChat, after 5 min the ichat conversation stalls completely, skype video it last like 10 min and then everything freezes. I'm MacOS user since 1986 and I use my Mac to write software on it, so I tried myself to debug the issue using some low level debugging tools and I realize that this just a hardware issue. The processor gets overloaded,... this is something that Apple Engineers could figure it out too. I Just think this product is wrongly designed the whole unit is not designed well enough and the cooling that the fans provide is just not adequate enough. The processor runs constantly at 160 Fahrenheit same thing for the airport card... I'm thinking seriously to take some legal action on Apple for this inadequate behavior. Apple shame on you...
Many folks gave those Japanese engineers a hard time....remember them? The guys who said they could reengineer the system at a lower cost with a better design. Maybe we should contact them and see what their suggestions are!!!
Like most people, I want a 12" or even an 11" Air that is 1" thick. There is no excuse for Apple not to trim 1" off the width and .75" off the depth of the Air.
You have a survey showing that this is what most people want? It's what you want, and there are other people who share that opinion.
On the other hand, there are lots of people absolutely enamored with the MBA form factor, who love the 13 inch screen and would have hated something smaller.
Apple can not address every niche and every preference. I'm quite happy this time around, because they addressed my niche. You get to be unhappy and wish they'd addressed your niche instead. That's fair.
But saying "there is no excuse for Apple not to [do it my way]" is silly.
If they'd produced a laptop that didn't appeal to anyone, you might be right. As it is, you're not. A ton of people are absolutely fascinated by the thing.
I'm quite happy this time around, because they addressed my niche. You get to be unhappy and wish they'd addressed your niche instead. That's fair.
But saying "there is no excuse for Apple not to [do it my way]" is silly.
Right to the core.
Even after changing the motherboard the problems did not go away. The MacBook was just not usable (and forget about VMWare or Parallels). Fan was almost always on, very annoying.
Sold it last week on ebay and bought a "real" MacBook Pro. No fan, lots of speed, fantastic screen. But much, much heavier...
Chris
I had an MSI Wind with a puny 1.6GHz Atom CPU, and it did everything that the Air could do but did not shut down any of its cores or run over 70C when viewing BASIC 800kbps MLB.TV feeds. Let me repeat: what I was doing with the Air was not exceed the expectations of a machine with a Core 2 1.6GHz CPU. I was watching BASIC videos online. Just because the Air can play your low bit-rate AVI rips of DVDS does not mean that it is a great machine when it can't even handle high quality Youtube videos.
You people who are not experiencing problems with your Air likely stress it less than you would a simple PDA.
What is wrong with expecting a 1.6GHz Core 2 computer to run like one? I don't even care about the heat. Just let me have the advertised 1.6GHz Core 2.
Apple should have released the ULV 1.2GHz version, which would perform consistently at duo 1.2, which would easily allow it to handle basic 800kbps MLB.TV feeds (which, as I stated earlier, use only like 25% of the CPU's processes).
For the folks who keep telling us that we are expecting too much from the Air, you have to look outside the little box that is Apple.
I had an MSI Wind with a puny 1.6GHz Atom CPU, and it did everything that the Air could do but did not shut down any of its cores or run over 70C when viewing BASIC 800kbps MLB.TV feeds. Let me repeat: what I was doing with the Air was not exceed the expectations of a machine with a Core 2 1.6GHz CPU. I was watching BASIC videos online. Just because the Air can play your low bit-rate AVI rips of DVDS does not mean that it is a great machine when it can't even handle high quality Youtube videos.
You people who are not experiencing problems with your Air likely stress it less than you would a simple PDA.
What is wrong with expecting a 1.6GHz Core 2 computer to run like one? I don't even care about the heat. Just let me have the advertised 1.6GHz Core 2.
Apple should have released the ULV 1.2GHz version, which would perform consistently at duo 1.2, which would easily allow it to handle basic 800kbps MLB.TV feeds (which, as I stated earlier, use only like 25% of the CPU's processes).
Agree. I purchased a 1.6ghz machine and thats what I want. You dont go out and purchase a 4 cylinder car and be happy when it runs on 2 cylinders now do we?
Sounds more like placebo effect to me. You never checked the performance before the update, how can you be sure that its not just the suggestion that something has changed that is making you think you're noticing a difference?
Did an erase and install just now back to factory. Applied all updates (except MacBook Air update) and installed everything. Running in terminal yes > /dev/null in 4 terminal windows and the lowest I can get the machine to drop to during full load after running for 15 minutes was 1.2ghz with most of the time switching between 1.2ghz and 1.4ghz .
With the update applied they dropped immediately to 800mhz so there you go!
I do use it for business stuff (iWork, Filemaker) I also use it for light photo stuff (aperture/photoshop) and some development, so I don't think I necessarily baby it, yet it runs very cool. I also have never noticed the slow-down problem.
The only problem I have with the machine is the absurd time that it takes to charge the thing.
I wonder if there's something else going on here [edit: different plants maybe? I dunno]. While MBAs are relatively rare where I'm at, those of us that do use them don't experience problems.
I do use it for business stuff (iWork, Filemaker) I also use it for light photo stuff (aperture/photoshop) and some development, so I don't think I necessarily baby it, yet it runs very cool. I also have never noticed the slow-down problem.
The only problem I have with the machine is the absurd time that it takes to charge the thing.
Cheezlbub, please elaborate on your usage patterns. For instance, tell us how much CPU processes are being used in your work (use Activity Monitor) and tell us your temperatures (Use iStat Pro widget). It would help us understand much better if you could give specifics like this:
"I use Photoshop for 15 minutes, editing medium sized files, and the CPU runs at about 25-75% most of the time, with temperatures at 65C and the fan at 5000rpm. There are no Core shutdowns."
If you simply tell us that you use program A and program B, then we cannot know how long you use the programs, and how high your CPU temps are, and how much they are being taxed.
Here is my detailed report on a normal days around 4PM:
- 4PM EST: I watch the 800kbps feed of the Red Sox game on MLB.TV; browser is Safari, hooked up to my 1080p HDTV (Air display turned OFF). CPU temps are around 65C or so, fans well over 4000rpm, but everything stable for first 15 minutes.
- 4:15PM: I open up FireFox and browse the Red Sox forum, typing responses and reading threads. CPU is now over 50% at times, temps at 70C or above, fans going the full 6000rpm.
- 4:30PM: I click on the MLB.com Gameday link to see the line score and game scoring. CPU now at over 75% at times, temps around 75C, fans blazing at full speed. After a few minutes, one of the Cores apparently shuts down because the temps are rising even with the fans going full blast. Now, the video feed begins to jump 5-10 frames per second and graphics are slow in FireFox. Opening up a finder window is now several seconds slower than normal.
This is a typical experience of my Air.
Today don't have A/C running. 78 Farenheit/26 celcius, after doing 20min of iChat my Kernel task goes up to 130%. Of course video and audio is dropping, the video is getting slowed down.
I tried now a few times to do iChat stuff and now in less then a minute I have this issue.
Also notice that this kerneltask is spending a lot of time in pmSlaveIdleThread and
AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement: