Some Users Report Post-Upgrade Issues On Aluminum MacBooks
11:08 pm, December 7th, 2008, Pete Mortensen
Other than some irritation about the death of FireWire and a few missing video output adapters from the Mini DisplayPort, the new Aluminum MacBooks are pretty much perfect. They’re fast, they run cool, and are incredibly light but also incredibly strong.
But not every MacBook out in MacVille is behaving nicely. As a matter of fact, many users on Apple’s support forums claim that their MacBooks became incredibly unstable after upgrading their RAM with third-party hardware. Frequent freezes, program crashes, garbled data on the screen. Though it’s anecdotal, most also claim that their problems went away upon switching back to the factory-installed memory from Apple, or upon taking it in to Apple for a swap. Even the normally impeccable OWC and Crucial are alleged to be having problems here.
This is a big surprise to me, not least because I installed Crucial RAM in my new MacBook more than a month ago and have experienced nothing but performance improvements ever since. It’s always possible that very minute changes in hardware between models could cause trouble. I have a 2.4 Ghz machine, so there could be an issue with the lower-speed machines, or it could just be that I got lucky. Anyone dealing with this?
jkontherun via TUAW
Apple Bomb Pillow from MicroRevolt
Posted by Pete Mortensen in Apple, Hardware | Comment on this article
I also have 4gb of Crucial RAM in my 2.4GHz MacBook. Performance-wise, its been great. However, I do get a colored static garbled mess upon waking it up from sleep 1 in 3 times, and occasionally, the screen is blacked out entirely when waking from sleep (requiring a cold shutdown/reboot to remedy the situation).
Adam, on December 8th, 2008 at 12:05 am
It’s not anecdotal if people are experiencing it themselves! It’s happened to me, I upgraded to 4Gb (Transcend) and suffered problems, then downgraded back to the original 2Gb sticks and it was fine. Mixing sticks to give 3Gb seems to be fine, it’s just the full 4Gb which appears to be an issue. Certain brands, such as Samsung and Hynix, appear to be fine at 4Gb. Of course there’s no way of knowing how many people have upgraded to 4Gb and not had problems, as they’re not going to go hunting on the support forums and posting about it!
There’s also a second issue with the new MBPs – if you have an external display attached, it (the external display) will often fail to come on when you wake the MBP from sleep. Again, plenty of people are experiencing this. I’ve posted my workaround, which is to use a Hot Corner to force the displays to sleep again and then wake them a second time- this usually brings the external display back up.
XLCR, on December 8th, 2008 at 2:10 am
@XLCR – Actually, that’s exactly what anecdotal means. One persons observations on a single machine rather than scientifically testing multiple machines with controlled variables and such is the definition of the anecdotal.
For my own experience, I put in 4GB Kensington Value Ram a couple days after getting the mac, and I’ve had no issues. I’m running the 2.4 as well, so that may have something to do with it.
Ryan Thompson, on December 8th, 2008 at 11:47 am
I have the baseline 2GHz MacBook, and upgraded to 4GB from OWC – no problems here so far. I upgraded about 3 weeks ago.
Hass, on December 8th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I bought the new macbook the week they arrived in the store and slowly but surely it behaves more and more like an old computer. It’s slow, programs crash, too much of the beach ball, it’s frozen and eaten discs as well as changing preferences.
this new mac owner is no longer impressed. Yes it looks pretty and it’s light but what are looks without substance?
stina, on December 11th, 2008 at 2:25 pm