Apple Fixes Trackpad/Keyboard, Graphics on MacBook Pros

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

Apple has issued fixes for issues affecting its newest MacBook Pro notebooks.

If you've been holding off on ordering one of Apple's new Retina display 13-inch MacBook Pros because of the trackpad and keyboard issues some users have been experiencing, you can breathe easy. Apple has resolved the issue, which users say caused their trackpad and keyboard on their new laptop to become unresponsive. Apple didn't go into what was causing the issue but the fix is now available for download. Apple recommends it for anyone with a late-2013 MacBook Pro.

The company also issued a fix for the 15-inch MacBook Pro. It seems some users were experiencing a bug that limited the performance of the discrete graphics processor after system wake or boot. Apple says it's only an issue in rare cases, so it doesn't sound like too many people are affected. Still, there's a fix available for the problem regardless.

Apple updated its MacBook Pro line in late October, when it announced the new iPad Air. The update includes a new processor and a new price. The 13-inch MacBook Pro now features the same Retina Display we saw in the previous generation of MacBook Pro, as well as Intel's 4th generation 2.5 GHz dual-core Core i5 CPU, Intel's Iris graphics, 4 GB of DRAM, and 128 GB SSD. Pricing for the 13-inch MBP starts at $1299, a $200 reduction compared to the $1499 entry-level price tag from the last generation of MacBook Pro. It's now also thinner (now the same as the 15-inch) and slightly lighter.

The 15-inch model now features a quad-core 2.4 GHz Core i7 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of SSD storage, and dedicated GeForce GT 750M graphics. The pricing for the 15-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1999, which is also $200 less than last year's starting price ($2199). Of course, both the 13-inch and 15-inch models ship with OS X Mavericks.

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Jane McEntegart
5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • The Greater Good
    This must be that Apple "polish" that their fans talk about.
    Reply
  • Camikazi
    I honestly don't understand this, OSX only runs on a severely limited amount of hardware configurations. Hell for the most parts in all Macs the hardware is like 80% identical with only small changes (HDD, RAM amount, Vid card, CPU model) yet they still can't get things to work better than MS who has to work with number of configurations many, many orders of magnitudes bigger. They control software and hardware at every single step yet still get problems like this, I honestly don't understand it.
    Reply
  • onichikun
    Guess you aren't a developer than Camikazi. All it takes is 1 bad code commit which changes 1 line among hundreds of thousand to create bugs like this. Microsoft has had their share as well -- many significantly more catastrophic than a touchpad not working (in terms of data and personal info being compromised). Apple responded and fixed the problem in a timely manner.
    Reply
  • Vladislaus
    11892231 said:
    I honestly don't understand this, OSX only runs on a severely limited amount of hardware configurations. Hell for the most parts in all Macs the hardware is like 80% identical with only small changes (HDD, RAM amount, Vid card, CPU model) yet they still can't get things to work better than MS who has to work with number of configurations many, many orders of magnitudes bigger. They control software and hardware at every single step yet still get problems like this, I honestly don't understand it.
    Didn't Microsoft had problems on updating the Surface RT?
    Reply
  • apone
    @ Vladislaus

    "Quote:
    I honestly don't understand this, OSX only runs on a severely limited amount of hardware configurations. Hell for the most parts in all Macs the hardware is like 80% identical with only small changes (HDD, RAM amount, Vid card, CPU model) yet they still can't get things to work better than MS who has to work with number of configurations many, many orders of magnitudes bigger. They control software and hardware at every single step yet still get problems like this, I honestly don't understand it.

    Didn't Microsoft had problems on updating the Surface RT?"

    I think what Camikazi meant by not understanding OSX's apparent bugs is the fact that OSX has been (and continues to be) the prevalent OS on the Mac platform. Windows RT was released October 2012 so it's only been around a year. I agree with Camikazi, the amount of bugs that OSX is exhibiting is starting to gain unwanted attention considering "it just works".
    Reply