This post is a little long, but I think you will still want to chug through, especially if your machine is having issues with heat and battery life.
I bought my MacBook Pro 17″ in June of this year. Straight out of the box, I loved the thing. Fast, at least compared to my Powerbook 1ghz. But there were other things I noticed about the machine that really did not thrill me. I of course, noted that it ran hot, so hot in fact that it was not comfortable to sit on my lap for any real length of time. I heard others mentioning this on the intarwebs, so I did not really think anything more about it. I also noticed that the battery life was short. Very short. I was lucky to milk 1.75 to 2 hours out of it. But, at the time I was not in a business situation that demanded long unplugged sessions so I just let it slide.
Fast forward to November, about 5 months of use. I have some leads on some work that may require Microsoft Project, so I download and install Parallels Desktop for Mac, with the intention of running both OS X and XP. Very common, nothing out of the ordinary.
However, my install of Parallels coincided with a problem I started having with my Apple Cinema HD 23″ external display. I stress that Parallels had NOTHING to do with my problem. Over a period of a couple of days, my external display would delay on waking up after sleeping. At first it was just a 20-30 second delay, then started stretching to 5 minutes, then finally it would stubbornly refuse to wake at all. My laptop display was fine, and according to the behavior of OS X, the MacBook Pro had detected the external display and was acting accordingly. The mouse would travel to the edge of the screen on the side I had my external display, and would disappear as it should when going to the next screen. Of course my other screen was black, so, not so good.
So on to the Apple support site I go, like a good Apple owner, trying to find out how to resolve this issue. After much fruitless searching, I give in, and call AppleCare. After all, I do own a laptop with expensive repair options don’t I? Also a 23″ display, very expensive to fix if you are not covered. AppleCare reps are their usual friendly selves and help me come to the conclusion the display has gone bad and schedules a pick-up. God do I hate doing that. You see, I have gone that route before with a laptop with a perfect LCD, but when it returned, I had a stuck “bright” pixel dead center in the screen. All my whining, debating, pitching fits to the Apple Reps did nothing. I was stuck with the display because it was within the tolerances for Apple. Not my tolerances, but Apple’s. Sure, they don’t have to look at the thing day in and day out. Back to the 23″ display though, the rep scheduled the pick-up but just before ending the call, she suggested as an aside, to unplug the display from everything, the video, the USB, the Firewire, and of course, the power plug. She said there was a tiny chance the karma gods would smile on me and somehow the display may reset itself.
Meanwhile, I got restless. The 17″ display on the laptop is good, but it does not compare with working across both a 17″ and a 23″ display. So, I thought, without real good reason, maybe my OS and preferences and PRAM and PMU and what ever other mystical concoctions were just so muddled in combination that my poor old display didn’t have a chance. Why not go ahead and backup my data and wipe the entire thing clean? Why not? It would be a good exercise of my firewire drive and Apple’s Backup software. And, after all, had I not got Backup through .Mac for just this kind of convenience and safety net? Well, I had some time on my hands, and went for it. Backup my personal data. Install OS X with the option to wipe out the entire drive and start fresh. Done in little over an hour. Complete with backup. Man do I like the external drive.
Here is where this long drawn out post ties into the title. After the wipe of Apple’s factory OS X Tiger load, my machine is performing better than it ever has. In the heat department, there is no comparison. It now runs so much cooler I can use it on my lap for as long as I care to. It is merely warm, not even getting uncomfortable. Now my battery gets between 3 and 4 hours of use, far longer than I was ever able to run prior to the wipe. I had even followed Apple’s battery re-calibration instructions to the tee before the wipe. Twice. And no improvement. Now it may be just wishful thinking or the power of self-delusion, but my machine even seems to run faster. This is very subjective and I did no measurements to back that statement up, but it does feel snappier and more responsive.
Could it be that a lot of the initial impressions from the MacBook Pro owners about heat were from default settings in the factory OS load? I don’t know, but it sure seems plausible. Yes, I have considered the effects that later revisions to the OS could have had. There were certainly adjustments that Apple made in the intervening time to address some of the issues. Even after I wiped, I did not run the machine for any length of time (just minutes) before I applied all the updates bringing it to current software levels. But, I was running the same software levels BEFORE the wipe as well.
…back to the display story
Finishing the story about the display, prior to unplugging the display from the wall power, I tested it on another Mac, my trusty old Dual G4 mirror-drive door. Same thing, no response. Then I did as the rep suggested, as I really did not want to lose the display and be stuck with god knows how many dead pixels. I did not hold out much hope.
Hours passed. All the reload of the OS and restoring up to current software levels, bringing over my personal data from the Firewire drive. Generally everything back to normal sans the external display. Total time the display sat unplugged was about 4 hours. Now for the test, my last real hope of keeping the display. I plug everything back in, and to my amazement, it worked! Not only was the display working, but the sleep issue was solved, and wakes up within about a second from hitting a key or moving the mouse. Not bad for a few hours of rest.
Posted by joelunchbucket 