Marvin

macmaniac said:

Thanks for your response, Marvin. I have a 13 inch. In safe mode it was OK but it came back upon next normal boot-up. It stops when display is rotated or cursor is moved, then returns.

Safe mode disables the GPU. Since it's ok in safe mode, that would suggest the GPU over the display connection but there are a few videos about the 2017 model to do with the display cable and the description sounds similar to this:



There was a repair program for the issue but this has ended:

https://www.ifixit.com/News/16943/macbook-pro-flexgate-repair-program

Getting it repaired at a store would be an option but there are a couple of alternatives. One would be to use an external display. If it needs to be portable, there are portable displays:

https://www.amazon.com/Intehill-Portable-13-3-inch-Response-External/dp/B0C65SJ1NZ
https://www.amazon.com/VILVA-Portable-Monitor-Laptop-Portable-Speakers/dp/B0BTSFVMLV

A new laptop would be best, the new Apple Silicon ones are much better than the Intel ones. A brand new Macbook Air 13" 16GB/512GB would be $1399-1499 but some old refurbs are less:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235640617007 (M1 $695)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/285848592697 (M1 $769)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/226170782516 (M1 $879)

The model you have can be replaced for under $400 but these models have the same defects with the cables so it would be best getting a newer model:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256481877767
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186514879745

CaptainQ said:

This one doesn't have all the privacy features I guess...   why installing this one instead of waiting the one that's gonna be part of Apple Intelligence? 

I don't quite get why Open Ai is launching this. 

"The desktop app is only available for macOS 14+ with Apple Silicon (M1 or better). "... same thing.

OpenAI makes money with their own product when users upgrade to the premium licenses:

https://openai.com/chatgpt/pricing/

The free standalone version and the one that's part of Apple Intelligence will make some people want more features. The premium one can do image generation and there are enterprise tiers for businesses that make it easier to integrate across a company.

OpenAI yearly revenue is $3.4b. This is equivalent to 14m paid users on $20/month.

Apple's install base is over 1 billion, on Mac it's over 100 million. Every 4m users that upgrade to premium is worth $1b.

neoncat said:

foregoneconclusion said:

IMO, it looks like a portion of the blame can go to the developers themselves. The iPhone versions of many of these ports sound like they were fairly lazy with marginal frame rates and bare minimum approaches to graphic fidelity. 

Or maybe Apple overstated the performance of its products.

The iPhone runs close to expected, these AAA titles are next-gen games and really heavy for mobile. The iPhone 15 Pro is somewhere around 2TFLOPs, close to PS4 and an Nvidia 1050. These games are designed for 10TFLOPs+ (M1 Max) next-gen consoles.

This is how a 1050 runs, RE4 gets 30FPS 1080p low:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1050-Notebook.178614.0.html

There aren't many new games on that page in green but a few that performed well include Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Forza 5, Far Cry 6, Mass Effect, Doom Eternal, Jedi Fallen Order, Modern Warfare 2019 and there are quite a few further down the page. It's best suited for 2019 or older games.

iPhone gets 30FPS in RE4 too and it looks ok:



Apple also hasn't integrated frame-generation in MetalFX yet, which is in AMD FSR 3. This can boost framerate 1.5-2x.

These ports are well made with native Metal renderers and MetalFX support but there's only so much they can do with mobile computer power. The iPhone is only around 2-3x the Nintendo Switch. It's a good baseline performance to have though, every iPhone going forward will be capable of running titles like this and the userbase will exceed consoles in a year (not all gamers but it's a good sized audience).

The need for a controller also hinders sales of these kind of titles on mobile because there isn't a model that is well promoted, most people wouldn't know where to start. Consoles all ship with good controllers. I always felt Apple should ship a minimal controller that just has shoulder bumpers but uses the touch screen for movement and aim and they can help promote 3rd party controllers inside the game pages on the App Store.

macmaniac said:

Hi folks,
Please help. The display on my 2017 MBP(13.6.7) is dimming and brightening(10-15%) every 1 to 2 seconds when an app is active, sometimes with noticeable vertical lines. Just prior to this happening I removed two pics which were alternating/rotating as desktop background wallpaper; related? It does not do this while cursor is moving or when only the desktop is on screen. Thank you.

Sometimes visuals can mess up like this if the graphics chip goes bad. If you have a 15" model, they have two GPUs and one can go bad so you get artifacts when it switches to the bad GPU.

Brightness issues can be due to a bad display cable or backlight. Check if the lines change when rotating the display.

If you boot into safe mode (hold shift-key when booting), check if it does the same.

ddawson100 said:

omasou said:

Why bother posting about this, directing more people to click on it. It only encourage more of this type of garbage YouTube content.

Yeah, I kept looking for the news/insight in this.

This is an old video from January but it's interesting to see how people react to this situation. What the person did in the video is probably not the safest way to deal with it. Sometimes the phone explodes or bursts into flames and can cause serious damage to someone's hand if they are carrying it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZvCV_Eom8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmoQdqGZhCU
https://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/mobile-phones/lawsuits-filed-against-apple-after-iphone-and-smartwatch-overheat-and-catch-fire/news-story/9a5762148e913e0f13ec005271ba8be1

At the same time, someone in that situation would feel like they should get the device out of the way of other people quickly and to try and avoid a fire starting.

There should really be some official public safety measures to handle this in the most appropriate way, the same way there is for oil fires. On planes they have fireproof bags to put devices in if they catch fire but the official guidelines say to first cool the device with water or other liquid to prevent further thermal runaway:

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC_120-80B.pdf

Although water reacts strongly with lithium, there's a small amount in the batteries and the cooling effect can stop more cells going into thermal runaway. Once the thermal runaway has stopped, the device can be put in a fireproof bag, which can contain some of the smoke. A safe procedure would be something like:

- stay clear of the device, out of the way of smoke inhalation and explosion
- cool it down with liquid
- put it in a container e.g metal pot and keep it covered

Hopefully solid state batteries aren't far off and these kind of measures won't be needed.