Top stories

Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Apple Provides Firmware Fix for 17″ MBP Graphics Issues

Apple released a firmware update Wednesday for owners of 2009 unibody 17″ MacBook Pros meant to resolve issues with Nvidia graphics processors that have been causing display anomalies for some users.

Reports on March 6 described complaints related to the Nvidia GeForce 9600 graphics processor in new 17″ MacBook Pros that were causing lines to appear all over some users’ notebook displays, as reported in Apple support threads and in comments to Cult of Mac’s original post.

The firmware update released Wednesday applies only to 2009 model 17″ MacBook Pros. Users wishing to apply the firmware fix should consult Apple documentation for information on how to apply the update.

Let us know in comments whether the firmware solves the problem.

About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

2 comments

    So far, so good. I haven’t had the “lines” issue, but I have had the screen flash/flicker (black across or full screen and redraw – just a flash or flicker). I’ve been tracking the problem for the last couple weeks and found I could consistently trigger the problem by putting the machine to sleep, then wake. I’d either see the flash/flicker right away, or soon after. This has been very consistent: As long as I don’t put it to sleep, I have no problems running the 9600.

    I applied the firmware update, then put the machine to sleep. For the first time since switching to the 9600, I did not have the flash/flicker upon wake. Of course, this single instance isn’t much of a statistic, but I’m hopeful.

    I’d like to see Apple acknowledge the ATI Radeon X1600 video distortion issues with the 1st-gen MacBook Pros, among others. Seems to require a logic board upgrade but it isn’t clear. I blogged about it recently and many have posted about it on Apple’s own forums: http://tr.im/h8Ce

Buy Inside Steve's Brain Buy from Amazon.com Buy from Barnes & Noble