Hasta La Gadget!

In a world of sophisticated electronics these days, there are always risks to being an early adopter. Alas, it appears that our latest victims are owners of Apple’s Thunderbolt-laden MacBook Pros. Since launch, a number of frustrated customers have been reporting that their new unibody laptops — of all three sizes — are causing random flicker on both 24-inch and 27-inch Cinema Displays when connected via their Mini DisplayPort / Thunderbolt combo port, and now we have video proof to share the pain. Some also confirmed that even replacement machines from Apple are exhibiting the same behavior, though a source of ours says this doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue, and that the company’s hardware engineers are already looking into this. Either way, we’re likely to see a firmware fix for this bug soon — it’s no good having a large monitor constantly blinking at you.

[Thanks, Armando]

Update: sja3274, the creator of the original video above, informed us that his Cinema Display actually had a faulty connection anyway, but he still saw flicker on a new display — much like the behavior shown in the second video. As such, we’ve replaced our first video embed with our second one. Additionally, sja3274 was originally told to expect a software update last Tuesday or Wednesday, but obviously that didn’t happen, so perhaps this is a trickier fix than Apple expected.

Some Thunderbolt MacBook Pros causing flicker on Cinema Displays, Apple investigates (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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