Apple offers free repairs for 2013 Mac Pros with defective video cards
Apple has launched a free repair program for 2013 Mac Pros dealing with faulty video cards, in some cases believed to be responsible for problems like distorted or non-existent graphics, as well as freezing, reboots, sudden shutdowns, or even a system failing to start.
Affected Pros were manufactured between Feb. 8 and April 11 last year, MacRumors noted, and are equipped with AMD FirePro D500 or D700 cards. Configurations with D300s aren't included in the program.
People who believe they've been impacted must make an appointment at an Apple Store Genius Bar -- or else see an Apple-authorized service provider -- in order to determine if their system is indeed eligible for repairs. Service should take about 3 to 5 days.
The program is active from today through May 30, 2018.
A number of Mac Pro owners have been complaining about graphics-related issues since February last year. While some have already managed to get free repairs through Apple, until now there was no formal scheme.
Affected Pros were manufactured between Feb. 8 and April 11 last year, MacRumors noted, and are equipped with AMD FirePro D500 or D700 cards. Configurations with D300s aren't included in the program.
People who believe they've been impacted must make an appointment at an Apple Store Genius Bar -- or else see an Apple-authorized service provider -- in order to determine if their system is indeed eligible for repairs. Service should take about 3 to 5 days.
The program is active from today through May 30, 2018.
A number of Mac Pro owners have been complaining about graphics-related issues since February last year. While some have already managed to get free repairs through Apple, until now there was no formal scheme.
Comments
There is a site that sells custom PCs and they sell around 2000 GPUs per year. They do in-house testing before putting the GPUs out and their failure rates are shown on the following page:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Failure-Rates-by-Generation-563/
The numbers in the field are what matter for customers: NVidia was 0.64%, AMD was 1.92%. So this kind of thing might affect 1 in 50 Mac Pro buyers. The number of Mac Pro units sold is about 50-100,000 per quarter so 1-2000 people every 3 months worldwide. It wouldn't be a huge expense to offer a substitute Mac Pro during repair.
The in-house failure rate that the company noticed there was pretty high for AMD at more than 1 in 10. AMD had that 2011 MBP issue too. They currently have liabilities more than their assets amounting to $336m. They have $1b in current assets once you deduct current liabilities and they have been losing $100-200m per quarter. I'm not sure how long they can keep doing this but they'll be in trouble if their current assets go below their current liabilities, potentially next year. Their R9 GPUs didn't help their finances much but perhaps their new Polaris GPUs will help and these will come mid-2016:
A Mac Pro (and 15" MBP) update likely won't arrive before this as it's a big improvement. In the event that AMD goes under, Apple would have no option but to either buy them out and have them make in-house GPUs for them or switch to NVidia across the whole lineup. NVidia is switching to a new process this year too so the Mac updates this year should be really worthwhile. These will support Displayport 1.3 so 5K at 60Hz and 4K h.265 encode and decode.
It doesn't "purport to address" the "Pro" market.
"Pro" has never meant FOR professionals or the "pro market." It's just a marketing designation to distinguish a more powerful model from its less powerfully equipped sibling. MacBook vs. MacBook Pro, for instance. And the Mac Pro simply being Apple's most powerful Mac, so it'll naturally get a "Pro" designation. While it might incidentally serve the "Pro" market pretty well, it's the same in terms of service and support as any other Mac.
You're reading way too much into it and it's influencing your expectations.
The word "PRO" in Mac Pro currently stands for "excessive pricing" alone. I wish it wasn't so, but it is. It's very sad. The really sad part is that so few apps are GPU optimized. If most apps could be accelerated via GPU, the Mac Pro with its dual, super-speedy GPUs could and should blow lesser machines away in most tests. Apple hasn't done much on that, which casts a dark shadow over the future, especially with Intel coming out with lackluster CPU updates (relative to 5 or 10 years ago). The only way to keep Moore's Law going is on the GPU front. There's your "Pro" feature.
Ok. And? That's incidental. The designation is there, but comparative real-world performance depends on on the timing of refreshes and spec-bumps.
Last refresh was December 19, 2013.
Apple has not abandoned the Pro market. Blanket statements do not help anyone. There are plenty of professionals that use these machines and Apples software to build films, production tv, education / science software, CI servers, and render intense models. Just because Intel has not had a valid CPU update, does not mean Apple has abandoned these machines. These machines do not sell in high numbers, nor are they meant to. They are meant for very specific audiences. When Intel stops playing around with energy efficient CPU architectures and goes back to server CPU updates, we'll get a refresh.
I will agree that the GPUs have fallen behind from where they should be, but I'm sure Apple will come up with an update this year. Especially now that Thunderbolt 3 is here and a single bus can support a 5K display.
Who are you trying to fool? Apple's love affair with defective AMD graphics has been plaguing the Mac community for years now. In our office MacBook Pros and iMacs with AMD graphics are all dying off. Add to that, the weak storage solutions that Apple has adopted for the Mac Pro and iMac line, and you discover that Apple is ACTIVELY driving away power users to the Windows platform. You can build an 8 core, 16 thread monster High End Desktop PC for half the price of a comparable Mac Pro. And if that PC has a video card problem, you can replace or upgrade the devices yourself. Plus, you can return to the happy days of expanding storage internally - the way God intended. Apple's Mac Pro is a worthless piece of trash, and the iMac line isn't far behind. Here's hoping Tim Cook wakes up before the Mac dies...they are already seeing sales drop off. That will continue if they insist on perusing their current dumb strategy. Even the MacBooks are starting to look bad now, with Dell shipping quad-core Core i7 (Skylake) laptops (XPS 15) with thunderbolt 3 over USB type-C ports. Apple just got passed by Dell! Tim Cook isn't looking so great these days. He's Apple's version of Steve Balmer.
None of this has any basis in reality.
Apple keeps selling between 3.5 - 5.5 million Macs per quarter, at substantial profit, with annual consumer satisfaction reports from all angles that bear out the continued success of the platform.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-15-2016-9550-InfinityEdge-Notebook-Review.156354.0.html
The new 2016 GPUs will be coming with high bandwidth video memory and both manufacturers say double the performance in the same power so about 33% faster than the 960M while using no more power than the current MBP.
Intel has to release the v4 Xeon chips for a Mac Pro update and the GPU refreshes will come mid-2016. The top CPU model will be the 18-core E5-2697v4 (they use v2 just now):
http://wccftech.com/intel-broadwellep-xeon-e52600-v4-skus-leaked/
The range might go 4-core, 8-core (previously 6), 12-core (previously 8), 18-core (previously 12).
The top option (with base storage/memory) would be something like:
18-core E5-2697 v4
12GB DDR4, expandable to 512GB
256GB SSD, expandable to 1.5TB, up to 3GB/s
dual AMD x700 whatever identifier with 12GB of high-bandwidth memory, equivalent to dual 980ti
TB3 for 5K display support
$7500
A quad-core with 12GB, 256GB, dual 980ti equivalent would be $4k. The 27" iMac GPU will become equivalent to a single 980ti.
With external storage, current Mac Pro owners simply unplug it, sell the old Mac, buy the new one and plug it back in, very little data copying required to upgrade machines, just migrate the small internal at SSD speeds.