The tool Apple uses to determine whether or not a defective Nvidia GPU is responsible for your MacBook Pro’s problems might not be accurate in a number of cases, according to Mobile Magazine. Apple evaluates machines for the problem using a USB stick running Nvidia’s diagnostic software. Once the drive is inserted, it runs tests and provides printed reports on the nature of the problem. However, the test may not be returning accurate reports in every instance.

In some cases, according to Mobile Magazine, the faulty GPUs can overheat, leading to a short in your logic board when heat-transfer material ends up on parts of your computer’s internals where it shouldn’t be. That would lead to a diagnostic result indicating the logic board had failed, not the GPU. Logic board failures entail a non-warranty repair that can cost more than $1,000.

Mobile Magazine describes one specific case in detail where this occurred, but a call to Hi-Tech Electronics, the shop which performed the diagnostic and repair in question (it replaced the faulty GPU and cleaned the logic board for $260 including shipping, instead of the $1,000 Apple was asking) confirmed it has seen many similar cases, and continues to repair multiple MacBook Pros with problems stemming from the same issue each week.

Apple couldn’t be reached for comment as of this writing. If these reports are accurate, a simple fix would be to open up and inspect the internals of any MacBook Pros potentially affected by faulty Nvidia GPUs, rather than simply performing a software diagnostic test using a USB drive. It would be more costly and time-consuming, but also probably better for customer loyalty in the long run.

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Poor NVIDIA — it looks like your honeymoon with Apple is over. There hasn’t been an official announcement from Cupertino yet, but a glance at the customization options for high-end iMacs (the ones that use discrete graphics) and Mac Pros reveals that ATI Radeon HD 4000-series cards are already available as new configurable alternatives to NVIDIA products.

ATI was shown the door at Apple when the computer maker introduced notebooks and desktops that feature integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics cards. Many suspect that things turned rocky between Apple and NVIDIA, thanks to the faulty GeForce 8600M GT cards that resulted in the Mac maker offering customers an unprecedented warranty extension for problems related to that component.

We didn’t see the effects right away, because Apple’s supply chain is likely structured in such a way that its product line was probably in place long before any of the hardware problems began to surface. Adding the Radeon HD 4850 to the iMac line and HD 4870 to the Mac Pro as configurable options may not seem like much in the way of retaliation, but it was probably the first option available to Apple short of overhauling its product line.

Both new ATI options are easy single component swap-outs. If Apple intends to get rid of the integrated GeForce 9400M cards, it will have to wait until the computers themselves receive a major update.

ATI is touting the ability of the new cards to fully utilize and benefit from Apple’s implementation of Open CL Version 1.0 in Snow Leopard, which developers can incorporate into their software to allow a sharing of processor load between CPU and GPU. The HD 4850 is a $50 upgrade, available on the 2.93GHz and 3.06GHz 24-inch iMac models, and the HD 4870 is a $200 upgrade for the Mac Pro.

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In an interview with CNET News on Sunday, Gupta discussed general purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU for short), and how Snow Leopard, and Windows 7, would take special advantage of this growing trend to more efficiently share the overall computing workload between CPU and GPU. Apple’s upcoming Snow Leopard OS X installment will use OpenCL to take advantage of the combined power of CPU and GPU using “heterogeneous” computing, meaning, the computer can use all processors at its disposal to get the job done.

Gupta points out that the technology is truly revolutionary, because for the first time, your computer will see your computer as having two processors as it will recognize the GPU as one as well. For an example of what this will mean in practice, he cites Google imaging software, Picasa. In Snow Leopard, the CPU will handle the running of Picasa in general, because it makes the most sense for it to do so, but as soon as you apply a filter to an image, the filter will be picked up and run by the GPU, because that’s a task which it can handle far more efficiently.

Apple products in particular will benefit from the new technology, since OS X and native applications for the Mac present such a visually rich environment. Of course, don’t expect all of your favorite programs to support GPGPU as soon as you boot up Snow Leopard for the first time. Applications need to be specially programmed to take advantage of the new tech, and not everyone is on board yet. In the past, the graphics language developers needed to use to program for the GPU has been a barrier because of its increased difficulty.

NVIDIA has revised the programming architecture to try to make it more familiar for devs used to coding in C-based languages, and they think they’ve succeeded. We won’t have to wait long to see how that pans out, with many predicting a summer launch of Snow Leopard’s final retail release.

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Clayton’s ‘Book fell victim to what evidently is a not uncommon defect in the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT graphics processor units in May 2007 and Early 2008 revisions of the MacBook Pro, combined with a simultaneous hard disk issue which rendered the machine unbootable. The good news is that Apple came through with a repair that involved replacing the entire logic board under a recently announced extended service program for these models even though Clayton’s computer was out of warranty. The bad news is that it seems many owners of these MacBook Pro models are experiencing similar difficulties to such a degree of frequency that Apple announced in October:

“In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within two years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.”

Apple and NVIDIA stepping up and taking some responsibility for this defect is a good thing as far as it goes, but it almost certainly does not go far enough. There seems not much probable cause to believe that (a) this problem will not eventually afflict most examples of those MacBook Pro models if they are used long enough, and (b) that once repaired there’s any guarantee of the issue not repeating itself after the two-year extended service eligibility or even three years of maximum AppleCare extended warranty coverage.

I expect my computers to provide reliable service much longer than two or three years. My present main workhorse Mac is a model originally debuting in September 2003, and I have a couple of more than eight year old Pismo PowerBooks in daily service as well, none of which have ever been troubled with hardware defects. With devices costing as much as Apple notebooks do, one should expect nothing less.

An extended service program more along the lines of the seven-year one Apple implemented for the PowerBook 5300 and 190 models back in 1996 after that model proved plagued with a constellation of hardware and software problems including bad motherboards, power and circuitry problems, inadequate AC power adapters, enclosure issues like flimsy display screen hinges, power adapter plugs and trackpad buttons that broke, would be more in order,

In 2004, Apple announced a more modest three-year Extended Repair Program for G3 iBooks manufactured between May 2002 and April 2003, with Apple CFO Phil Schiller acknowledging that “We have determined that a small number of iBooks introduced in 2002 have a display problem caused by a component failure on the logic board.” Unfortunately, numbers weren’t all that small, and I had readers report that logic boards in their G3 iBook G3s had serially failed two, three, even four times.

Arguably, this GPU issue with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT equipped MacBook Pros is as bad or even worse than the PowerBook 5300 troubles. I bought a 5300 in late 1996. At about the 4 1/2 year mark it developed the loose power adapter jack, broken trackpad button and screen hinge issues, and the entire case plastics were replaced by Apple for free under the extended service program. I’m happy to report that the old 5300 provided eight years of useful service, the first three and a half for me and the remainder as my daughter’s high-school and university freshman year computer. We still have it and it still works. I’m wildly pessimistic that there will be very many May 2007 through September 2008 MacBook Pro’s that will still boot and run come the year 2022. People who purchased these machines deserve better.

Personally, I’m now of a mind that my next system will be a MacBook unless I can scrape up the scratch to get one of the new unibody 15″ MacBook Pros, whose NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT GPUs we hope will not be afflicted with a similar issue down the road.

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In mid 2008, amid growing evidence, NVIDIA acknowledged that a significant number of its previous-generation GPUs (graphics processing unit) and MCPs (media and communications processors) for notebooks are failing at higher-than-normal rates. For readers who are not aware of this story, TheAppleBlog covered this piece of news back in October.

Three weeks back, I was personally afflicted by this problem. One fine morning, after arriving at the office of a client, I took my mid-2007 MacBook Pro out of my bag and proceeded to fire it up. The MBP never got past the startup chime; there was only a blank, black screen. I took the usual troubleshooting steps: resetting the PRAM and the SMC, booting from the OS X installation disc and from an external hard drive, and finally, plugging in an external display…all to no avail. It was then that my suspicions turned to the NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT graphics card in the MBP, even though I had not ruled out a misbehaving hard drive.

Without a working display, there was no way to salvage my data unless I took apart the MBP and extricated the internal hard drive. Upon trying to boot the MBP’s system disk on an iMac, and diagnosing with DiskWarrior, it became clear that I was facing not one but two problems.

The system disk of the MBP was not booting up right. In addition to a dead graphics card, I was also facing an impending hard disk failure. Fortunately I was able to make a perfect clone with CarbonCopyCloner.

The next day, I took the MBP in to an Apple reseller for repairs. I told them that the most probable diagnosis was a failed graphics card, but, as a regular procedure, I had to pay a diagnostic fee of $58.

As I waited to hear from Apple, I braced myself for the possible cost of repair should the problem have turned out to not be the graphics card. No, I did not purchase AppleCare for this notebook, a decision I have come to regret after the Super Drive on the MBP began misbehaving and refusing to burn. ^[1]

A week later, I received a call from the reseller. Apple has confirmed that the NVIDIA graphics card has died, that they would be replacing the entire logic board, and that Apple will, true to its advisory article on this matter, honor the cost of repair on my out-of-warranty MacBook Pro. A couple of days later, I had my MBP back in my hands, back from the dead. I was even refunded the diagnostic fee I had paid.

If you own a mid-2007, late-2007, or early-2008 MacBook Pro of either the 15- or 17-inch model, you should brace yourself for the possibility that the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card in your notebook may suddenly fail. While you can rest assured that you will not have to pay for repairs if it fails within two years after purchase, you should prepare a fallback plan if your only machine does go down. When it does, my advice is to bring along a print-out of Apple’s support article when you send your notebook in for repairs, as the reseller I went to was, incredulously, not aware of the advisory.

And the final word I have in the wake of this affair? If you own one of these MacBook Pros, expect it to fail. Oh, and also: Buy AppleCare; it will pay for itself and then some, quite possibly when you least expect it.

_{1. Strangely, after updating to OS X Leopard 10.5.6, the SuperDrive on my MBP could burn again, without the dreaded “The device failed to calibrate the laser power level for this media” error dialog box showing up even once.}

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Apple has updated their laptop line (sans the “white MacBook”) with NVIDIA’s new GeForce graphics chips: the 9400M for the MacBook and MacBook Air, and the 9600M GT for the MacBook Pro.

The 9400M contains 16 parallel graphics cores offering 54 Gigaflops of graphics performance. This translates to, according to Jobs, a “5x faster graphics than the chips [Apple’s] been using”. The 9600M GT doubles the amount of graphics core to 32 and offers dedicated 256 / 512 MB of dedicated GDDR3 memory at the cost of only an hour of battery time (down to 4hrs from the 9400’s five). The 9600M comes in addition to the 9400M on the Pro line for a dual configuration allowing you to switch between processors depending on your needs.

Not only is this great for performance in general, but this is a also huge win for gamers as the integrated Intel chip on the MacBooks have made gaming close to non-existent, as I’m sure many would-be fans of Spore can attest to.

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The GeForce 8600M GT, specifically, is named in the article as having problems, which were used in MBP’s manufactured between May of 2007 and September of 2008. Symptoms include distorted video or no display at all on either the built-in or connected external displays. Anyone affected is directed to take their machine to an Apple Store or authorized service provider to receive a repair free of charge. Those who’ve already paid out of pocket for a fix are also eligible for reimbursement. The offer is valid for two years from the original date of purchase.

Though Apple claims that not all MBP’s made between those dates are necessarily affected, it seems unlikely that consumers who haven’t yet experienced problems will find this terribly reassuring. The two year time limit will have many wary, as well. Still, Apple should be given credit for admitting the full, potential extent of the problem and offering the free remedy for affected customers, both past and current. They’re clearly in damage control mode, and will likely succeed in shunting most of the blame onto Nvidia, who caused the problem in the first place and then apparently lied about it. A steep increase in failures following the two-year mark could come back to bite Apple, but those using MBP’s seem to have a higher laptop turnover rate so they might even dodge that bullet.

If you’ve had or are having problems, share your symptoms below so that others will know what to look for.

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A few days ago we posted a story about the much-sensationalized upcoming Apple mystery product, “The Brick.”  While there is still no definite word regarding what it actually is, 9to5mac is now reporting that a “reliable” source has lead them to believe that “The Brick” is not a product at all, but rather a production process and the facility to house it.

The blog cites Steve Jobs’ experience with in-house manufacturing during his days helming NeXT computers, and their earlier accuracy in predicting the arrival of a number of Apple products prior to launch (aluminum iMacs, MacBook Air, etc.) to back up their claims. 

The process they describe involves using lasers and water jets to carve MacBook casings from a single, continuous block of aluminum, thereby reducing or eliminating structural weak spots arising from the need for bends or screw holes in the metal.  Essentially, the apparatus sounds like a computer-mapped, high-precision, high-tech wet tile saw.

This rumor has a number of things going for it.  For one, it’s in keeping with Apple design principles (i.e. as few breaks in product shells as possible).  Second, after the substantial initial investment required to build the facility, production costs would actually be much lower in the long term, allowing Apple to move closer to a market-broadening lower price point.  Third, as Computerworld points out, being able to build and operate production facilities in the U.S. would potentially future-proof Jobs’ company in the event of a falling out between the U.S. and China.  This would also have the added benefit of allowing Apple to offer a totally domestic product to an American consumer base that is on the verge of becoming much more economically insular.

The new “Brick” rumors are hot on the heals with TUAW‘s reports this weekend that Nvidia employees are being given early demos of MacBooks with graphics cards manufactured by the company.  This is in keeping with earlier, less detailed claims along the same lines.

While an innovative production process and a graphics spec bump might not be as sensational as new, never-before-seen product types, the potential for future application is exciting.  What do you think, laser carving more or less drool-worthy than say, a tablet Mac?

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