Apple updates MacBook Pro firmware

Apple has released an update for its newest MacBook Pro notebooks introduced at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month.

According to notes provided with Monday's MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7, it allows drives to use transfer speeds greater than 1.5Gbps. Specifically, these drives are based on the SATA 3Gbps specification.

Apple does note that use of these drives is completely unsupported. The company has not qualified any of the drives for use and does not offer any of the drives itself.

The update and instructions for applying it are available from Apple's support Web site.

[ikramerica--2008]

It's interesting that Apple responded to the complaints and issued a firmware update when they had no obligation to do so. They only ship SATA 1.5 compliant storage in the laptops (their SSDs are not the uber expensive type that would be slightly hindered by 1.5), and with no eSATA ports, there was no reason they had to do this. Customers choosing to upgrade their machines on their own (ex-warranty) are always hit with limitations on all products.

The complaints were from modders who were putting in the fastest Intel drives and seeing a "noticeable" slowdown, which in the real world of non-exaggeration translates to an UNnoticeable slowdown/placebo effect, and they were mad that the chip inside was capable of 3.0 but was not enabled. Some were mad because it limited upgrade options "down the road" as faster SSDs will eventually be cheap enough and large enough to make sense and you might actually notice the slight decrease in max throughput. Then again, anyone impacted by that kind of minor speed difference also won't be happy with a "slow" 2-year old laptop once the prices come down anyway, and would already have sold this MacBook Pro and moved on the next one.

So now it is enabled. The world can start spinning again.

[sanenazok]

Only with Apple would a hard drive change affect the warranty. Geez isn't 3G Sata like 4 years old?

[tipoo_]

Well that was quick. Now people can start complaining about why Apple hasnt moved to SATA 6Gib/s yet ;-)

[dragonsky1]

A hard drive replacement doesn't affect Apple's warranty. Trust me on this one. The replaced hard drive, however, will not be covered under the warranty, though the rest of the machine will be. I ran into this issue when my PowerMac G4 got fried in a power surge. Apple didn't cover any of my modded parts, but they eventually replaced the machine after CompUSA couldn't repair it. I even got some free software for all my trouble.

[DrtyDogg]

What happened to the "required" charge for updates to hardware, like the 802.11N debacle?

[CrashPad63]

LMFAO, Apple drops the ball again. Not fixed, scratching their collective gords and cant figure it out.

[jcmark42]

Does this firmware update benefit someone who just bought a new 13" MBP?

[tipoo_]

Yes.

[jinx101a]

So is this what you get for all the extra cash? :P