19 Responses to “MBP: Stop the Cow, MacBook Pro”

1. [xxx] Says:
   April 18th, 2006 at 10:41 pm

   [comment deleted at request of author]

2. Justin Williams Says:
   April 19th, 2006 at 12:51 am

   No, [xxx]. What is BORING is the fact that my MacBook Pro is still “Repair in Progress” and has been since April 15th. I delivered it to my Apple Store last Thursday. I never thought it’d take this long. It’s BORING not having my MacBook with me during down time and having to sit at my desk all the time instead of in bed computing.

   Keep up the good work, Daniel.

   [Editorial: Name of original author removed.]

3. Daniel Jalkut Says:
   April 19th, 2006 at 5:52 am

   [Daniel’s response to xxx deleted – irrelevant].

   Justin, thanks for the positive words.

4. Kay Says:
   April 19th, 2006 at 7:31 am

   Hi i just want to say i think your site is really cool and i laughed my head of when i read this part: “First and foremost, I backed up every single bit of data that was in any way important to me. They can incinerate precious if they want to, as long as they send me a new one without noise.” LOL!!! My parents are buying me a Macbook Pro next week and ive been reading eveything i can find about them and i thats how i found your site. I hope mine doesnt have any of these problems lol! Anyway good luck with your Macbook i hope it returns to you completely fixed! :)

5. Pork Chop Says:
   April 19th, 2006 at 10:01 am

   I had a MacBook Pro with a whine (upper right hand corner, loud high-pitched oscillation) problem and another one that appears to work fine. I swapped power supplies and I don’t seem to have the whine on either MacBook Pro now. Both machines have been up continuously since Monday morning. YMMV.

6. Object-X Says:
   April 19th, 2006 at 10:50 am

   I just applied the latest MacBook Pro firmware upgrade and it fixed the electrical whine!

7. GB Says:
   April 19th, 2006 at 11:38 am

   Daniel, my MacBook which is at the same service depot, same date also went into “Waiting for Parts Status” – I called Apple and they are waiting for inverter parts, (/sarcasm on) guess they are extremely popular (/sarcasm off). I’d call AppleCare and make sure they send out a parts search ASAP else you can be waiting up to a week extra for them to slowly track down your part.

   I also had my call escalated to a supervisor since Apple has had my MacBook longer than I have (3 days for me, 10 days for Apple and Shipping) and basically got a promise that my MacBook would be repaired and to me tomorrow/Friday or a new one replacing it will be sent on Thursday evening.

   Apple service is REALLY making me want to return this wonderful computer (and I really do think its wonderful – 3 days got me hooked) – cutting edge product, but accompanied by poor service in this instance.

8. Wolfgang Ante Says:
   April 19th, 2006 at 12:44 pm

   “Stop the cow macbook pro”

   Noo! I love the cow, seriously. No, I mean it. Convince yourself, it goes like this:

   A friend of mine suggested my MacBook is like Marvin from the Hitchhiker, when I told him about the whining. A so much advanced intelligence, only asked to do really stupid and easy things by totally uncomparable (in intellectual matters) carbon based beings. :-)

   Since that my MBP has the name Marvin, like marvin.local, and I am smiling when I hear him whine!

   DON’T PANIC!

9. Edwin Says:
   April 19th, 2006 at 8:51 pm

   Daniel,

   First, big kudos to you for maintaining this blog with the most informative comments on your MacBook Pro whine, all the while keeping up a good sense of humor, which makes your blog both entertaining and helpful at the same time.

   Thought I would share with you all my experiences a few thousand miles away, here in Hong Kong. Unable to access AppleCare in the US and without an Apple Store here, I had very low expectations that my MBP would be fixed to my satisfaction. Much to my surprise, I think I have it all sorted!

   Before I begin, let me state my problem: I had a whine that seemed to be a bit different from everything I’ve read. My whine was not too loud but *extremely* high-pitched, which made using the MBP *very* frustrating. It seemed to emanate from the bar just above the function keys, towards the right hand side, somewhere near the F8-F10 keys. Pressing on the bar seemed to get rid of it temporarily but eventually, it would come back. The whine was very noticeable right from when I took the machine out of the box. From what I’ve read, most of the whines came from the left hand side near the MagSafe connector. FYI, I ordered mine (2.0GHz/1GB RAM/100GB 7200RPM HDD) early February and it arrived Feb 23rd from Singapore. (I subsequently added another gig of RAM.) Serial number was W8607… making it a very early week 7 variant. Heat-wise, the machine was hot but never unbearable. The hottest part would be that bar above the function keys but it didn’t bother me too much.

   After reading about Rev D, I took mine to my nearest Apple Authorized Service Center (called CASE in Times Square, in case anyone from HK is also reading this post) on April 11th. I received my machine back on April 18th and talked to the technician then. He said he did two things:
   1. He changed my logic board from Rev B to Rev D. He said he had heard rumors that Rev E logic boards were already surfacing but he ordered whatever was latest from Apple and they sent him a Rev D.
   2. He installed MagicNoiseKiller for me! (Daniel – I thought you’d be happy about that!) He said he found it on the Web and wanted me to try it.

   He also mentioned that mine was the fourth MBP he had repaired. The other three all complained about heat – mine was the only whine complaint.

   So, in my two days of using my Week 7 MBP with a Rev D logic board, I’ve been pretty happy. The heat seems to have actually gotten a bit worse ‘cos instead of the bottom being hot, the vents next to the keyboard are now hot. But I’m fine with that.
   The whine – I can hear a very faint noise coming from near the MagSafe connector underneath the keyboard *only when I put my ear very close to the keyboard*. Otherwise, when I’m using the laptop normally, it’s not noticeable at all. The whine seems to go away when my CPU usage is high but in any case, it doesn’t bother me.
   My display did and still does have a slight buzzing when it’s not at the highest or lowest brightness setting. But again, it’s one of those things that I can only hear when I put my ear to the display so I don’t worry about it. I didn’t complain about it to the technician and he didn’t mention fixing that.

   Sorry for the long post but I hope it helps, especially those of us who do not live in the States!

   Edwin

10. Edwin Says:
    April 19th, 2006 at 8:57 pm

    Oops, forgot to mention that although I had read about MagicNoiseKiller, I never tried it on my machine before I took it to service. I did try the Mirror widget hack and it didn’t work on my previous whine – it would continue regardless.

    After I took my MBP to service, the technician put MagicNoiseKiller on my desktop but I haven’t used it. In other words, my observations above about Rev D were made *without* MagicNoiseKiller running.

    I haven’t done much testing but I tried running MagicNoiseKiller once or twice. It seems to kill even the slight whine below the keyboard near the MagSafe connector that I can only hear when I put my ear to the keyboard. But like I said, it’s so faint that I’d rather not use MagicNoiseKiller.

    Also, FWIW, I upgraded my firmware to 1.0.1.

11. Ian Says:
    April 19th, 2006 at 9:21 pm

    Hi Edwin,

    Thanks for sharing the information, I’m also in Hong Kong and also dealing with a noisy MBP, so it was good to hear your experience. I’m currently working with Apple HK concerning my situation.

    Thanks too, Daniel, for a great service to all us noisy MBP owners – as Edwin says, you do this with good humour too, so makes for a great read. Hope you get your issues solved to your satisfaction in the end.

    Ian

12. Jack Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 1:49 am

    My new macbook pro is really hot and has a high pitched whine. So I’ve been reading about it all over the web today. It is not the screen whine, it is the cpu whine, which I can confidently say from all I’ve read. Many sites point to the “Read Sweater Solution” or “QuietMBP”. Before I started on this reading frenzy, the first thing I noticed was that if I turned photobooth on, the noise would get so quiet as to be ok. Turn it off, and it’s back. With the power cord plugged in, the whine is there and it bothers me, but it is obnoxiously loud when running on batteries (my hearing is quite accute…when plugged in most people would say it is quiet but it still bothers me).
    Then I tried the mirror widget. It works. I turned it off. NOW HERE IS THE WEIRDEST PART!!!: the noise stays away even after you shut off the mirror widget! It only comes back if you reboot your computer! Running QuietMBP after I have done the mirror widget thing (on, then off) makes no difference.
    UNLESS: if you open address book and mess with the area for a picture, guess what? Noise comes back, mirror widget doesn’t work until I reboot the computer and turn the mirror widget on and off again.
    I know, I sound insane. But this is happening.
    Oh, and did I say my macbook pro was hot?
    I called Apple Care. The tech had never heard of the whining. He put me on hold for 4 minutes and came back and said I need a new logic board. I told him that I think that solution was for the “screen whine” not the cpu whine. And I said “what about the heat issue?” His reply was that I had to take it back to the Apple store where I bought it to see if the heat is “within spec”.
    I have a feeling this is going to be a long process. I don’t want to return it and get a computer that has the screen noise and the cow noise too! And people have sent it in for repairs and gotten the computer back in worse condition. And besides that, this is not a toy to me…as I told the Apple tech (who was very nice by the way) this computer contributes to my livelihood. I can’t just not have it for a week.
    I hope at least part of this post is helpful. I’m sorry I vented a bit. I will keep you posted however on what happens. But the mirror widget thing is freaking me out. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m going to try other things tomorrow if I have time. Thanks for QuitMBP. At least that makes sense (a lot of sense), but I think there is some kind of grounding issue going on with everything else. If you read the forums at the Apple support site for the new Intel iMacs, they are hearing the whine through external speakers. This makes sense as users in the music business (as I am) have reported that the noise contaminates the audio inputs and outputs rendering Logic Pro usless. This is not a “user sensory problem.” One intended use of this computer is Logic Pro, and as one’s music is rendered useless, this is both a noisy macbook pro problem and a computer that cannot “use” apple software properly as well (or any other application that counts on the audio inputs and outputs not being contaminated with a high pitched noise…even if it’s just using external speakers).
    Thanks for all your work.

    –Jack

13. Daniel Jalkut Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:37 am

    Jack: I think if you read through all my other articles on this issue, you’ll find that you’re observations are not so weird after all. The whine seems to be alleviated by using some amount of power, and apparently using and closing the Mirror widget leaves the computer in a state where it uses more power than normal.

14. jill/txt » macbook noise Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 1:16 pm

    […] I got a new MacBook! Hooray!! But it makes this noise. Sort of a high-pitched hissy whiny noise. Not very loud, but loud enough that it’s annoying in a quiet room. So I google “macbook noise” and find a blog post at Red Sweater Blog which lists the 500 most recent google searches that led to that blog. A depressing number of them are searches for macbook noise. […]

15. Ron Says:
    April 30th, 2006 at 9:30 pm

    Thanks for keeping on this Macrap. Great job.
    This is my first Mac–major outlay of money, and now high pitched/deafening whining, heat issues, cursor dragging, dropping Airport connection…the first few problems are like having a late 90’s PC. Wonder what the heat is going to do to the rest of the components. For the money, especially, this is totally, totally, unacceptable. In short, great software, but the hardware is a real piece of crap.

16. Anonnymous Says:
    May 11th, 2006 at 3:12 am

    I bet you need some time to appreciate a joke: http://takaakikato.jp/2006/05/macbook-pro-whining-issue-precursor.html

17. Daniel Jalkut Says:
    May 11th, 2006 at 8:09 am

    Heh – thanks. I think if my MBP constantly emitted Green Day, it would also drive me nuts. But at least I like Green Day :)

18. baklava Says:
    May 16th, 2006 at 10:30 pm

    even at this late date, i just want to add an emphatic “one more” to the growing list of MBP users with noise/humming/whining complaints. On mine, over the last four weeks or so, it’s subtley getting worse. My problem is nearly identical to Edwin of the apr. 19th post. If i touch the bar above the f8-f11 keys, the noise really aggrevates and increases in volume. the hardware is hot but not untouchably so. Neither the Photo Booth nor Mirror widget have proven helpful for me as quick fixes.

    Any new news on solutions…what’s Apple saying about this problem? This is my first Apple purchase…I’m happy but growing anxious as this noise problem continues to become more audible.

19. Qoqe Says:
    September 19th, 2006 at 4:33 pm

    I wrtiing this comment as I found no other thing to while I am on hold at the apple 800 repair number. The MacBook pro that I just bought less then three months ago just stop working. Apperantly the display lamp is dead and the part is on back order. This is rather scary to hear that it might take more than ten days to get the items back. It’s been more than half an hoour now since I’ve been waiting for a rep to pick up the phone. I have to say that up to this point I will do everything I can to get a refound to the +3,000.00 I’ve paid for something that will brake so soon.
    I just can’t believe it….

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