The appearance of the Apple firmware upgrades released yesterday for late 2008 MacBooks, MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs was welcome news to me and other owners and many applied the upgrades immediately. I was one of those in that crowd and my experiences with trying to run my MacBook with 4 GB of memory were followed by many who also reported problems. Last night I grabbed the updates and applied them to my MacBook hoping I would be able to run with the 4 GB of memory I had purchased.
I left the MacBook running all night after popping 4 GB of memory in at 4 pm my time yesterday and it ran fine all night which gave me hope that the firmware patches had indeed fixed the problem. Prior to the firmware update my MacBook, like many are reporting, would get system freezes frequently every time 4 GB was installed. It would run fine with either 2 GB or 3 GB of memory installed, even using one of the RAM sticks that compromise the 4 GB loadout that fails.
This morning the MacBook was still running fine with no freezes and I was starting to feel pretty good about the fixes but that didn’t last long. Just a while ago my MacBook froze up while sitting idle, exhibiting the same errant behavior that plagued me before the update and that has been reported by many in the Apple support forums. It appears that Apple still has some work to do to fix these system hangs which I have proven with my own testing only occurs when >3 GB of memory is installed. I hope they get this nailed, there are many of us who would like to run 4 GB in our MacBooks and MacBook Pros. It’s important to note that failures are being reported whether Apple-supplied memory or third-party memory is used. The consistent factor is that the new Macs often cannot handle 4 GB of memory. Note that I haven’t seen any MacBook Air owners complaining of this problem but then I haven’t really looked for any.
It’s important to note that Apple never said these firmware updates would address this 4 GB problem. They didn’t say much of anything about what they fix but there are quite a few owners that were seriously hoping the patch would address this problem. I’m sorry to disappoint those of you affected.
Was this test done with the SMC 1.2 or 1.3 update applied? The 1.3 update came out about 8 hours later so if it was done with 1.2 could you test after updating to 1.3.
Both updates were applied for the test.
You need to send the memory back and get another set. I had the EXACT same problem with OWC memory and they switched it and it worked perfect and has not froze since. At the very least, try reeseating it.
I have reseated the memory countless times. I do not believe the memory is the problem, too many people are reporting the same issues. I believe that there is a problem with the new Macs and Apple will have to fix it.
If some folks can run 3GB or 4GB of memory on otherwise identical hardware with the same firmware, the variable here is the RAM itself. Folks are switching RAM out and having the issue go away as well. Perhaps this isn’t an Apple problem.
there were 3 updates though… EFI 1.3 and SMC 1.2 which came out at the same time… then about 8 hours later SMC 1.3 came out.. SMC 1.3 updates it to .B06
Doesn’t the air only support 2gb anyway, that would account for them not having the same issues
These posts are getting stupid James. I bought my RAM from Apple which brings me to 4GB which I have NO PROBLEMS! Maybe if you buy RAM that isn’t the cheapest you might get something that works.
YOU PAY FOR WHAT YOU GET!
It’s an apple issue.. they’ve admitted it.. even computers with apple installed memory have the problem.. the good thing is that it doesn’t occur in Windows so it likely can be fixed in OSX with an update…
who knows maybe today’s 1.3 SMC update helped with this issue…
Geoff: I agree.