I’m getting very close to finally sending my MacBook Pro in for repairs. I suspect I’ll have to jump through these hoops even though it is starting to sound like perhaps units of my vintage (ordered on the very first day) have enough quirks that they can only be comprehensively solved by replacing the unit. I’m jealous of my friends and readers who have written to let me know that their later models seem to exhibit none of the annoying shortcomings that mine does. Here’s to hoping that I can negotiate my way through the Apple support waters and end up a happy customer after all.

Anybody who knows me or reads this blog has probably started to notice a distinctly unpleasant noise coming out of my office in Somerville, MA. What’s that sound? It’s human whine. I try to be patient with Apple and wait optimistically for a solution that will make everybody happy. But I’m running into more and more problems with the MacBook Pro, and as my frustration about a particular problem compounds into the frustration of the next, the high-pitched whine of my muppet-voice becomes ever more piercing.

I thought I’d take an opportunity to sort of cleanse my system of all complaints. This will be helpful to me when I call AppleCare, so I can make sure that everything that may be fixable gets logged in my complaint. It may also serve to reassure you if you feel something is weird and just haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere yet. Best of all, if you spot something in one of my complaints that seems unfounded, please point me in the direction of a “duh!” solution, or let me know why I shouldn’t expect better from this unit. Alongside each complaint summary I’ve included my presumption about how fixable the problem is. Please help me update the presumption with a more educated opinion if you feel qualified to do so.

I would like to make extra-special clear that this list, every item on it, is a complaint that I have personally about my MacBook Pro. I’m not trying to be a citizen journalist here (much), by for instance providing a detailed survey of all problems that all users have encountered. It’s a shame that I’ve got so much to complain about – and too bad that on top of these I have heard of yet more problems that I thankfully have not faced.

Comprehensive MacBook Pro Complaint List (Ordered by Annoyance Factor)

1. Screen-related buzzing at all but highest brightness. This has become the biggest complaint because it’s also the loudest distraction. And it kicks in whenever the computer decided in its power-savings, or I decide in my blindedness, to reduce the screen’s brightness. When I’m working quietly, I have to put the screen at maximum brightness, or I can’t concentrate. That’s annoying. Fixability Factor: should be fixed by replacing faulty screen inverter.
2. Screen-related high-pitched squeal. This started much later than all the other complaints, but is also unbearable. The squeal begins reliably after some short period of working in silence, and goes away promptly at the slightest adjustment of the screen’s tilt. Is it related to the inverter flaw above? Who knows. This one happens even when the screen is at highest brightness. Fixability Factor: may go away if the above problem is fixed.
3. CPU Whine. The classic. The only good things about this bug are that it’s maskable by various power-guzzling workarounds, and that it’s barely noticeable when one of the insanely loud noises above is being emitted by the machine. Best theories so far suggest the problem is a flaw in the power supply, which vibrates in response to fluctuating power draw and produces audible noises. The most recent shipping units seem less likely to exhibit the problem, though it seems some are still squeaking (heh, heh) by. I’ve never read of or heard of anybody who has sent a machine in for repair and had the whine fixed, though I have heard from several who have received replacement units with no whine. Fixability Factor: I’m guessing it’s 100% fixable but perhaps a 10% or less chance a defective unit will actually come back fixed.
4. Mooing Madness.The extremely sporadic mooing problem is usually either absolutely present are or absolutely absent. I am pretty sure it has to do with the heat of the machine, with gives credence to the idea that it’s a cooling fan repeatedly firing up and spinning down. It’s wrong, whatever it is. Fixability Factor: it seems like an obvious flaw in either the power management software or in an electrical connection to that fan. If it is a fan, that is. I’m holding out for 50/50 chance of fix.
5. White Noise. As we move down into the “far less problematic, but still annoying” ranks, we have the issue of the 100% active left fan. While the mooing noise almost sounds as if it’s a fan that can’t quite get started, the subtle white noise that emanates from the left side of the machine seems more like a fan that will never shut off. Perhaps the computer runs hot enough that always running a fan is the way to handle things. UPDATE: Chris Liscio chimes in with information suggesting that the Seagate hard drive is responsible for this noise. How can he be so confident? He observed a similar sound from his iBook, starting when he replaced the original hard drive with a similar Seagate. Case closed, as far as I’m concerned! Fixability Factor: Assuming it’s the hard drive, anybody who is really bothered by this constant, very quiet white noise can probably find another hard drive that doesn’t exhibit the same trait.
6. Hot, Hot, Hot! Perhaps related to the always-on fan is the fact that the machine gets very hot. So hot that I can’t hold it on my lap. I thought this might be a side-effect of 2.0Ghz of dual core power, and maybe it is. But some have reported that the heat issue is less significant in later revisions. If so, I might as well point out that ideally I’d like to be able to put this laptop in my lap. Fixability Factor: if the always-on fan and the can’t start fan are signs of underlying cooling problems, it might explain why the machine is frequently hotter than a fresh biscuit. Vague hope for a fix.
7. Track, Damn Trackpad! This is one I hadn’t noticed until I started trying to do more long working sessions at the MacBook Pro. Frequently I find myself unable to move the mouse for a few seconds as the trackpad apparently becomes unresponsive to my movement. I don’t know if this is a wacky side-effect of the way I use the pad, or what. I’ve never had this problem on another Mac laptop, but perhaps it’s somehow related to the “two finger scrolling” feature, which I quite like. Fixability Factor: given my extremely negative experience with the Mighty Mouse, I suspect it’s possible that Apple is simply studying users who don’t expect pointing devices to behave the way I do. If that’s the case, perhaps I just have to learn to live with it.
8. Bright Spots. No, this isn’t the optimistic change of tune you might have been hoping for. My display has bright spots. Literally. The bottom left and right corners are slightly brighter than the rest of the display. Not a big deal, but a “sub-perfection” observation. My only concern would be if the brightness is an early warning that the magnetics in the speakers are not being properly shielded from the display. Does it even work that way on an LCD, though?Fixability Factor: don’t care that much but suspect that another screen might happen to be better (or worse).
9. Sweeping Broom Noise? Is this is a new UI effect, or yet another aural anomaly? I sometimes upon starting up my machine hear a sort of crashing/broom-sweeping noise. It only seems to happen when power cycling, but it’s disconcerting. One reader has reported a “rattlesnake noise” which might be the same. Anyway, this barely bothers me at all because it’s confined to a specific period of time, but I’m slightly worried it is the tip of a problem that will develop into something more omnipresent. Fixability Factor: shrug – I’m in the dark here.
10. Airport Flakiness. Here we are at the very rock-bottom list of my complaints. This is the least of all complaints, but it’s something I haven’t noticed before on my other Macs. It’s basically guaranteed that every other time I click on the Airport menu bar item, it will be empty of stations. I have to click it again to see the list (sometimes quite numerous) of stations in my immediate vicinity. Note this is not the same as the “doesn’t reconnect after sleeping” issue, which I fixed by making a new “location” in Network Preferences from scratch. This issue doesn’t affect connectivity at all but is just a nuisance when trying to make an initial connection. This has mostly annoyed me on my recent week-long vacation to various points west of the Rockies. Fixability Factor: suspect it may be fixable in software, as other wireless detection software such as AirTrafficControl seems to maintain a more consistent view of the wireless world.

Well – that’s roughly what I’m going to try to convey to Apple when I call up to get the ball rolling on this. Quite a mouthful, huh? I’m hoping I can convince the rep to “get real” with me and cut to the chase if replacing the unit is really what will be required in the long run to address at least all the “can’t concentrate in a quiet room or record music” noise problems.

Based on reader feedback I’ve received and forum postings I’ve read at Apple, I’m a bit pessimistic about what will happen when my machine goes in for “repair.” Based on some anecdotes it sounds possible that some techs at Apple are happy to address one of the many issues described as problematic, and send it back to the user for further head-bashing. It seems like all the shipping and ill-will would be more expensive than making a deliberate effort to really patch things up here, but who knows. I shall know more soon (I hope!) about how effective the problem resolution process is.

Software developers love to talk about their work. This blog is proof of that: blah, blah, blah. But for a variety of reasons we must often guard our speech to avoid spilling the beans about details meant to remain private. Salaried engineers are usually expected to keep mum about a project’s details or even existence until a shipping product is delivered. So when I ask my Apple friends what they’re working on, they may reply with something vague like “on a consumer oriented application.” Oh, whoopdie-doo. Apple’s making something for consumers? Only when the application or product becomes public do they get to beam proudly, confessing their involvement as the world flocks to enjoy the fruits of their labor. If the project instead gets axed or indefinitely postponed, they turn gloomy and unresponsive. All that time, wasted on something nobody will ever see or use. Even when the product does go public, admission of involvement is usually on a friends-only, hush-hush basis. Apple and other big companies increasingly keep hidden the names of their products’ makers.

As a consultant, it’s usually understood that credit (or blame) for a product will go to the company itself. Even if the company is the type that still puts their employees’ names in the about box, it will be their name and not yours that goes in the shipping product. Sometimes this is a blessing. For instance, if the client is determined to make the Mac port of their Windows application look and feel just like its crappy Windows counterpart, it’s comforting to cash the check at the end of the project and wash ones hands clean of the dirty work that was done. We don’t like to talk about those projects. But when a project goes well and is received with public praise, it can be difficult to maintain one’s legal or ethical obligation to anonymity. Pride of ownership is one of the best fuels for software innovation. Just ask Linus Torvalds. No wonder the open source community has exploded over the past decade. As companies give programmers fewer and fewer opportunities to gloat, the open source community offers nothing but recognition as compensation for a job well done.

It was a pleasure of mine recently to work with a company that has a great perspective on this. SoundSpectrum is the company behind the “G-Force Visualization Engine,” which is what makes the pretty colors and patterns Apple’s default iTunes visualization plugin. They sell a suite of products that make the already-amazing iTunes visualizer look like child’s play. When they asked me to help them expand their Mac offerings, it was clear that they weren’t looking for a “crappy Windows port.” Their Windows products are quite good, but they made it clear that they wanted the Mac products to be different. Even a great PC application should not be blindly ported to the Mac. Mac software is different. Our agreement on this point made me eager to sign up for the job.

A consulting job where the task at hand is to “take the Windows product and make it kick ass on the Mac.” I can work with that. What Mac programmers really want is to leave a beautiful mark on the landscape of available Mac software. We want pride of ownership! SoundSpectrum took the concept to an unusual level by offering to put my own true and legal name in the about box of their products. This is brilliant. Not only do I get pride of ownership, but they get accountability. It’s my professional responsibility to always do my best work, even when it’s anonymous. But let’s face it, putting a consultant’s name in the about box can only improve the odds of getting their best work.

Two products carrying my name were released last week. The Mac editions of the G-Force Toolbar and G-Force V-Bar are dramatically different from their PC counterparts, and they kick ass. I was responsible for designing and implementing these applications from the ground up, and I’m proud of that. I’m also thrilled to have been assisted by a rich cross-platform code base, thoughtful technical brainstorming, and the excellent graphics design contributed by another consultant. It was a team effort, but in many ways the buck stops with me. Hate something about the products? I own it.

If you’ve never tried SoundSpectrum’s advanced visualization products, you should give them a spin. One of the pitfalls to this job was the tendency I had to find myself lost in staring at the mind-blowing hypnotic imagery that these products are capable of producing. You can try out the advanced visualization engine by downloading the free trial. My contributions are included in the Gold and Platinum editions, which are very affordable. In particular the Toolbar gives you fine-grained control over just about every aspect of the visualization engine. The V-Bar offers a unique kind of animated “wallpaper”: a band of transparent visualization along the side of your screen. These features have benefited PC users for several months, and now the Mac is caught up. Damn it feels good to leave a beautiful mark.

At this point we understand that a number of workarounds exist for the “CPU whine” noise bothering many MBP owners. What has remained unanswered, for the most part, is whether there is an impact, and if so how much, on the battery life when applying these workarounds. I have assumed that each of the workarounds takes away from battery life to some extent, but have been hard-pressed to declare with any confidence which is the “most efficient.”

Those days of uncertainty are over. At least, I’m ready to share my somewhat scientific results. So here is the experiment: “How long does it take a fully charged MacBook Pro to exhaust its battery to the point of forced sleep?” I applied this question to some of the workarounds I know of, and also to a control case: the MacBook Pro without any workaround (“with noise”).

So what did I do to make it “fairly scientific”? A few things. These are the preparations I made to the MBP, with the goal that battery drain should be as predictable as possible and therefore reveal any discrepancies caused by the underlying workaround. Since I have to wait around while this is happening, I also make no effort to achieve a particular long “control case” life:

1. I configured the computer’s energy saving settings (for “Battery”) such that it should “never sleep” either the computer or display. I also unchecked the “Put the hard disks to sleep” option. These features all seem like they could add unpredictable savings to one test case while somehow not kicking in the same amount on another.
2. I turned off Spotlight indexing for each of the 3 partitions on my MBP drive. Although Spotlight should only kick in when new files get added, I don’t want to take any chances that it suddenly decides to rebuild an entire index during the test.
3. I turn the screen brightness up to high. Not only is this necessary for complete silence on my computer, it also helps drain the battery faster so I can get my answer.
4. Before each test, I recharge the battery to 100% (and then some), and then restart the computer with the power cable attached. I then configure the particular workaround so that it is “active.” That is, the noise will not be audible during the test.
5. After restarting the computer, I take care to run as little as possible. After enabling the particular workaround, I launch a small, custom application I’ve written which is designed to simply record the time it was launched and the time the computer was forced to sleep. As I launch the application, I pull the plug on the 100% charged battery, thereby starting the test.

The computer is left untouched in a corner of my office. After a few minutes the automatic screen saver kicks in, and continues to run until a couple hours later, when the power gets low enough that, despite my Energy Saver settings asking not to be put to sleep, the computer is forced to do so. Whenever I notice that the machine has actually gone to sleep, I plug the power back in and wake it up. The resulting difference in time between yanking the power and going to sleep is the “test result.” Now, I worried at first that the screen saver could be using enough CPU to essentially negate the power lost to QuietMBP’s CPU utilization technique, but the tests show that such concerns are unwarranted. QuietMBP’s impact on battery life is unarguably noticeable, despite the operation of a graphical screen saver for the bulk of the test time.

So, having hopefully described my test scenario sufficiently to make it interesting and respectable, here are my results, listed by name, brief summary, and time in hours, minutes, and seconds. The order is from “most battery life” to least, with the difference from the control case in parentheses:

• Ear Plugs – Noisy MBP control case. 2:43:36
• Single CPU – Disable the second core to minimize the noise. 2:28:04 (-15:32)
• MagicNoiseKiller – Like the Mirror widget but no Dashboard involved. 2:27:58 (-15:38)
• QuietMBP – CPU idle utilization. 2:17:26. (-26:10)

So, no doubt in my mind working around the problem costs battery life, but at least I have a bit more perspective on what I’m trading for my sanity. What’s interesting of course is that Single CPU mode appears to cost battery life: the same amount as MagicNoiseKiller! This has been anecdotally discussed on various forums, but I was curious to discover its apparent truth. My theory is that when both CPUs are running, the machine doesn’t have to work as hard to do “everyday stuff.” Probably when you disable a CPU, the remaining CPU works overtime to get the same work done, and this costs it more power.

Tests that will be less interesting but still worth trying when I get more time:

• Photo Booth Visible – Photo Booth running in an open window.
• iChat Video Hidden – iChat video preview on but minimized.
• Mirror Widget – Classic “Magic” workaround, open and close Dashboard widget.

So what is the takeaway? The MacBook Pro is flawed, but you can make rational choices about which workaround has the least impact on your lifestyle.

If I can’t exploit the full battery life of my computer without distracting noises, then it’s no “professional” computer. I still don’t know what to do – I’m intrigued by suggestions like the one from Jasmine on a previous post, who suggests that perhaps the power supply just needs to have “epoxy poured on one of the coils.” If some kind of retrofix is possible, then I’d like to have the issue addressed when I send mine in for the screen inverter buzz. If they can’t fix it I may push for a (late) return, since I find the computer to be unusable without these compromising workarounds.

Those of us suffering the noise feel pretty helpless: we spent all the money and we have to sit and question the correctness of our decision. I don’t know if there is any value in online petitions or if this one is even the most appropriate one to target my signature to, but I signed it. Maybe it will help, and I don’t think it can hurt.

I’ve gotten a fair number of incoming links to my separate entries relating to MacBook Pro noises, and as I continue to make new discoveries and add new entries, I’d like users who are linking in to have a consistent target to link against. So I’m adding a new page to my site specifically to summarize my findings to date and point to other posts I’ve made. Please use this page as a link if you decide to send information about any of my MBP Noise related posts to a friend.

Thanks for reading!