Hasta La Gadget!

Apple may have dodged the big Sandy Bridge problem with its new MacBook Pros, but it looks like it may now be experiencing some growing pains of an another sort. As evidenced by a 44-page and growing thread on Apple’s official support forums, a number of users have been seeing their 15-inch and 17-inch MacBooks freeze up when they’re under a heavy load — encoding a large video file, for instance. That problem seems to be related to the laptops’ new AMD graphics, as switching them to integrated-only seems to “fix” the problem for most users, although obviously at some considerably expense to performance. While Apple isn’t offering much publicly at the moment, a user that spoke with customer service said that Apple seemed to be aware of the issue, and that they suggested it was a firmware or driver-related problem, and not an actual hardware issue. Unfortunately, there’s still no indication as to when it might be fixed. Let us know in comments if you’ve run into some similar issues.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

New MacBook Pros freezing under heavy load? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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We’ve seen reports of strange video behavior with Apple TVs before, and it looks like a new problem has now cropped up with the most recent update. According to a growing number of reports on the Apple support forums, those using an HDMI to DVI adapter to connect the device to their TV seem to have been hit with an annoying issue that causes their screen to flicker every few seconds. That’s apparently happening with a wide range of TVs, and at least some are also reporting the same thing happening even if they aren’t using an adapter. A few folks have apparently been able to fix things in the interim by simply pulling their HDMI cable and plugging it back in, but most are stuck with the annoying issue — or worse, a downgraded 480p signal. Having some similar issues? Let us know in comments.

Apple TV update reportedly causing screen flicker issues with HDMI to DVI adapters originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve been following the seemingly-massive Gmail outage, you’ll know that it’s actually not as massive as it sounds. Google’s revised its estimate again to say that only “0.02% of Google Mail users” — roughly about 38,000 by our calculations — were affected by the issue in total, claims that a full third of them have already had access restored, and expects the issue “to be resolved for everyone within 12 hours.” As to the fate of years worth of email, Google reps wouldn’t say, but promised us that engineers are working “as quickly as possible” to see the data restored as well. Keep hanging on, folks.

Google restores Gmail access to one-third of affected users originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Redmond is opening up and offering a few facts, stats, and tips around its first update to Windows Phone 7 — an update that didn’t go smoothly for everyone — and it sounds like there are at least three distinct failure modes, two of which are pretty simple to fix. The company figures that somewhere around 10 percent of users attempting the upgrade encountered a problem, but of those, “nearly half” failed because they lacked a proper internet connection or enough disk space (turns out the update process takes a backup of the phone’s contents just in case something goes horribly awry). Most of the remainder may have been swept up in the issue affecting “a small number” of Samsung devices, an issue that the company says it’s working to fix as quickly as possible — and in the meantime, they’ve turned the update off for those models.

Put simply, when you get prompted to install the update, Microsoft simply recommends that you’ve got plenty of hard drive space on your PC (you can’t do this one over the air) and a solid connection to the interwebs; some 90 percent succeeded in installing the new code, which isn’t too shabby considering this is the very first update to the platform they’ve attempted so far. Let’s just hope that brick rate is down to zero by the time the good stuff comes, right?

Microsoft details Windows Phone 7 update problem, ‘small number’ of Samsungs affected originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 23:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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