Some proud owners of shiny new aluminum MacBooks and MacBook Pros are finding that the purchase is not quite living up to its name.  It seems that the new laptops have trouble with gaming because there are reports of lockups with blank screens and infinitely looping audio when certain games are played.

This may well be a hardware problem that Apple will need to resolve.  AppleInsider reports that once the computers lock up the only way to restore it is by way of a hard reset.  The problem is present in both Windows and Mac OSX.  Affected known games include Call of Duty 4, WoW, Ages of Empire III, Command & Conquer, Oblivion and Company of Heroes.  There are other games and are mostly CPU or graphics intensive games.  I dare someone to name a modern game that isn’t.

It could be as simple as a cooling issue as some users have had success using a program called SMCFancontrol to speed up the fans in the laptop (thus increasing cooling).  Others have used alternate nvidia drivers which also seems to help.

In the worst cases, the only solution was to have the laptop repaired or replaced under Apple’s warranty.

Another issue are distortions that appear while scrolling in web browsers with HD content.  This one is exclusive to Mac OSX and does not appear under Windows which is likely some kind of driver issue under OSX.

Apple is aware of both issues but has not identified the cause of either.  The company is said to be investigating the issues and will take appropriate action once the causes are discovered.

If you have this problem with your Mac and don’t want to deal with a repair push for a replacement before Apple decides the proper course of action is to repair them.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I’ve never had luck with in-store or sent out Apple repairs.  Never.  In one instance I wound up with a new laptop anyway which would have saved me a couple weeks worth of time had that been the first course of action.  If mine was affected, I’d push for a replacement.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 1:04 pm under Apple, Notebook, Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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