
Windows on New Macbook Pro Permanently Damages Speaker Due to Poor Drivers - aq3cn
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5e1g37/warning_bootcamp_driver_causing_blown_speakers_in/?st=iw3meaz2&sh=424702c4
======
oarsinsync
Followup post showing Apple is willing to replace the devices damaged by their
faulty drivers

>
> [https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5e7whh/update_bootca...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5e7whh/update_bootcamp_driver_causing_blown_speakers_in/)

and have since also updated their drivers

>
> [https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5e7whh/update_bootca...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5e7whh/update_bootcamp_driver_causing_blown_speakers_in/daitcu8/)

~~~
pat2man
Seems like a reasonable and responsible solution to this issue. Perhaps the
"Apple is imploding" comments were a bit premature.

~~~
niij
The Apple is _exploding_ camp got it right.

------
rplst8
For the record, if the speaker is truly blown (ruined) this is a problem with
the hardware - not the software. If you can't design a speaker and amplifier
combination with a limiter that won't let itself self-destruct, you are an
audio design failure.

~~~
wrigby
I mostly agree on this, but I can also see how they got to a design that has
this flaw. You can do better (more transparent, more adaptive, etc.) limiting
in DSP than with a simple hardware circuit. Doing the limiting in the driver
also saves you hardware components and PCB layout space.

It's a slippery slope of optimization that only works when you control the OS
(or drivers at least) and the hardware together, but one slip-up can be
catastrophic.

~~~
mikejmoffitt
A small micro or DSP processor can sit in the data path and solve this problem
"in software, in hardware". It's unusual for software to be able to damage
hardware for a consumer product.

~~~
avian
Old Samsung ARM Chromebooks used to have a similar problem where some ALSA
settings would overload and destroy the built-in speakers. Mine actually
started smoking and melting after I installed Debian.

[https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2012/12/10/how-to-fry-
spea...](https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2012/12/10/how-to-fry-speakers-in-
your-chromebook/)

I don't want to compare a $300 browser-in-a-box with a $2000 laptop, but
issues like this aren't unheard of.

------
chx
The damage here is much bigger than a few laptops. We have been trying to
educate, encourage people to go and try everything ;) saying you can't write
software damaging your hardware. This sort of bug violates that trust and IMO
it's a big deal.

~~~
slededit
Nobody has ever claimed you could write drivers without damaging hardware.
When I was writing my own toy kernel there were many warnings such as:

"Probing memory-mapped PCI devices may have unpredictable results and may
theoretically damage your system, so once again we discourage its use." 1

[1]
[http://wiki.osdev.org/Detecting_Memory_(x86)](http://wiki.osdev.org/Detecting_Memory_\(x86\))

------
2bluesc
Sounds like the audio amp is too powerful for the speakers if it permanently
damages it.

I'm betting the amp is integrated into a multi function chip or codec where it
was selected because of integrated features rather then matched to the
required speaker power.

~~~
wpietri
Huh. So "we'll fix it in software" is the consumer device equivalent of the
entertainment industry's, "we'll fix it in post"?

~~~
Senji
You have no idea. Faulty hardware? We'll fix it in the drivers.

~~~
Scuds
or in the compiler :)

------
hartator
I think I am starting to get worried about the future of Apple.

2016 was a bad year. New iPhone has been the worst selling one in relative
numbers since the iPhone. New MacBooks has several issues and controversial
choices, while not bringing anything substantial to the table. New Watch
changes are so small, nobody noticed an update.

~~~
joshklein
I'm also worried. At first, I rationalized weakness on the Mac front as a
side-effect of a strategic prioritization of the mobile & cloud ecosystem. But
then I got the new iPhone, and I've been surprised by my emotional reaction to
it feeling buggy.

It's all relatively minor in isolation; voicemail consistently fails to load
messages multiple times before it succeeds, voicemail occasionally crashes,
apps get stuck halfway down the screen after I swipe to check the notification
screen, texts and iMessages sometimes show up hours or days late,
notifications appear on the lock screen but are missing when I unlock the
phone, the weather app sometimes displays a blank temperature, web sites have
broken behavior with auto-playing, the state of the device when using volume
controls changes unpredictably, and so on.

Most of these are undoubtedly caused by my service provider, or a 3rd party
app, or me fat-thumbing an interface, or my complete misperception of a UI
paradigm, or are otherwise not Apple's fault. But that's entirely besides the
point, because we're talking about my emotional reaction, not reality, and
we're talking about something Apple used to bend over backwards to control.

If the common narrative about Apple's modern successes being rooted in design
sensibilities is correct, I don't see them being able to sustain leadership in
the areas where they've been leading. The good news for Apple is that there
still aren't better alternatives for customers who are heavily invested in the
Apple ecosystem. The bad news is that there eventually will be, and also that
there is material economic harm in keeping customers but losing their
enthusiasm.

~~~
spacehacker
There certainly is regression at all corners:

1\. Try finding a close-up of the keyboard of the function key model on the
MacBook Pro website. It seems it is just not there or I'm failing to find it.
Previously Apple used to have a design section where you could see the
products from all angles.

[http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/](http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/)

2\. The online shop is just horrible. Even finding the store takes a while and
the icons look like clip-art. Complete mess.

[http://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all-
accessories](http://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all-accessories)

3\. This is how the Apple Pencil and the Mighty Mouse are supposed to be
charged:

[https://i.imgur.com/CvcaGze.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/CvcaGze.jpg)

[https://i.imgur.com/P8M8pqO.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/P8M8pqO.jpg)

The Mighty Mouse is also an ergonomic disaster.

4\. The iPhone case with battery pack has an aweful design. Who would ever let
this pass?

[https://i.imgur.com/DyvTE3w.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DyvTE3w.jpg)

5\. It also feels like the "Designed by Apple in California" book was
published 20 years early. It's just like the new Star Wars movie, all those
recent sequels of the n-th iteration and Marvel comic adaptations. Nobody
innovates anymore and people just replicate what worked well before or only
improve it incrementally.

~~~
comex
The Mighty Mouse charge port is indeed a WTF, but what's wrong with the Apple
Pencil? The charging setup looks ugly, but it allows the Pencil to be charged
on the go without needing an extra cable that people would lose or leave
behind. And it's fast enough (15 seconds of charging for 30 minutes of usage)
that the awkwardness hardly matters.

~~~
Watabou
The Mighty Mouse is the same. You get 9 hours of use from 2 minutes of charge
time, and macOS warns you ahead of time, enough time for you to go and get a
cup of coffee and by the time you're done, you'll probably end up with a full
day's worth of charge. Or on the day that macOS warns you, just leave it to
charge overnight. You get over a month of charge (I get close to 2), of usage.

The charging port on the back of the mouse is done to stop people from using
it with it plugged in, which ruins the overall design, and since most people
are lazy, they'll leave it plugged in all the time. Apple designs its products
by thinking of an ideal use case first. Then they will try their hardest to
make people use it in that ideal scenario.

I don't quite see the WTF here. I understand Apple's design decision and think
it's actually quite clever, despite what it looks like at first glance.

------
dogma1138
The amount of hardware issues with the new MBP are kinda staggering....

USB-C issues, GPU issues, image corruption, now this.

~~~
slantyyz
Has there been as contentious a Mac release as there has been with the new
MBPs?

I've been using Macs since the mid 80s, and I'm trying to think of some, but
am drawing a blank.

The only possibilities I can think of are the two processor switches (680x0 ->
PPC followed by PPC -> Intel) or maybe the first release of OSX (but that's
not necesarily hardware related).

~~~
amyjess
There have been quite a few, actually, especially during the '90s. Low End Mac
has a nice list: [http://lowendmac.com/2007/the-10-worst-macs-
ever/](http://lowendmac.com/2007/the-10-worst-macs-ever/)

The first item on the list contains this gem:

> Anyhow, Apple put a 32-bit CPU on a 16-bit bus and created a monstrosity
> that worked okay as long as you didn’t use the modem or a network
> connection.

And the PowerBook 5300 was on the honorable mentions list. I remember that
machine: it was notorious for the batteries catching on fire. And I've got
personal experience with one of the machines on the honorable mention list,
the Performa 630: the IDE hard drive was the bane of my existence back then,
and the use of the execrable 68LC040 meant I was locked out of using certain
software.

Oh, and here's another, much longer, list, from the same website:
[http://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-
macs/](http://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/)

~~~
mikeash
Yeah, there were some pretty bad ones in 90s. If they were not as contentious,
it's only because people's expectations for Apple were far lower back then.

Consider, for example, the original Power Mac G4 release. There were three
levels available: 400MHz, 450MHz, and 500MHz. Turns out Apple had overreached
with the 500MHz speed, so they had to roll it back to 350/400/450\. Quite an
embarrassment at a time when Apple was struggling to convince people that
their PowerPC chips outperformed Intel and were therefore worth a bunch of
extra money.

The new MacBook Pro is a pretty decent machine. It has some typical first-
generation hardware problems, and the design certainly doesn't make everybody
happy, but it's not _bad_. And Apple has released outright _bad_ machines in
the past.

~~~
ardaozkal
Yes, but those were times where computer design was still being experimented
on a lot. Apple has much more knowledge and resources now, Their products
having issues like these, in 2016, is pretty unacceptable.

~~~
mikeash
That's what I'm getting at when I say that expectations used to be much lower.

------
belltaco
Why does the bios/firmware have no safeguard against this? Imagine a rogue
program or virus damaging your hardware, even on OS X.

Also, the headline is jumping to conclusions, this is what the poster wrote:

" It is unclear what the source is, but most people are suspecting the
deprecated audio driver on Windows."

~~~
realkitkat
Well, that makes up for an interesting ransomware - you have 48h to pay up 4
btc or your shiny new mbp hardware will get borked.

~~~
paulmd
I have to imagine that any self-respecting author would use '1812 Overture'
just for style points.

------
Const-me
I remember Dell laptops also had speakers permanently damaged, they blamed VLC
software for that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7205759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7205759)

~~~
aq3cn
That was three year old post. What is the status now? I know VLC allows
playing 400% of original volume, and their cheap speakers cannot handle it.

But Macbook Pro is an premium laptop. It should not be happening.

~~~
pmontra
Even if at 400% volume the hardware shouldn't let through as much power as to
blow the speakers. The waveform should be amplified and clipped to a safe
value. The same applies to this Mac. If they know the sound chip can be
tricked to send too much power, fix the sound chip or pick another one. If
they didn't know, they didn't test their product.

------
mmgutz
The title suggests it is Windows damaging the speakers. When it's actually the
bootcamp drivers provided by Apple correct?

------
teilo
I think this is more than a Bootcamp driver issue. I don't run bootcamp, but I
do run Parallels, and I know exactly what they mean by the pops. I hear them
whenever I am in Windows in Parallels. I never heard them on my old MBP.
Theoretically, when in a VM, they should be mitigated by the macOS audio
driver. However, if I am in Parallels, I am almost always connected to
external speakers, so I don't know for sure.

Parallels doesn't run the Bootcamp drivers, but perhaps the drivers are
similar.

------
etatoby
This makes me wonder if the Linux drivers have been damaging my (several years
old) MacBook Air speakers.

The sound always seemed to be louder and more distorted in Linux than in OS X,
but I have never tested the level with a microphone.

------
jxy
Did anyone try Linux or BSDs on it? Do they damage the speaker too?

I don't expect Apple to release Linux or BSD drivers. So people should be very
cautious on running other operating systems on new macbook pros from now on.

------
aq3cn
Is there a possibility of happening this to headphone connected to Macbook
Pro? Can that damage my ears due to loud sound?

~~~
cbhl
Even with a properly functioning Macbook or iPhone, you can damage your ears
if the volume is too high. In the EU, there are limits to how high you can
turn up the volume in an attempt to prevent this.

------
brazzledazzle
Does anyone know if this was reported on radar and added to open radar?

------
notadoc
Has there been any good news or sentiment about this new product?

------
WayneBro
The actual content of those comments hasn't really been addressed by these
quick fixes though.

Does this fix the other numerous and varied complaints about the Macbook Pro?
Does it change the fact that they're not doing anything that's noteworthy in a
positive way? Does it fix slumping iPhone sales?

Does it change the fact that more and more pro users are getting sick of the
tyranny of Apple and moving away from them?

Nope.

~~~
sctb
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13064089)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
WayneBro
How exactly is this off-topic? How is the post I'm responding to is on-topic?

That's fucking bullshit.

Here's what the person I responded to wrote:

> Seems like a reasonable and responsible solution to this issue. Perhaps the
> "Apple is imploding" comments were a bit premature.

Then I responded that nobody actually addressed those "Apple is imploding"
comments....

What the fuck is your deal man? Can't stand anybody who doesn't love Apple
like you do?

------
ulfw
Is there literally ANYTHING good about those new Macbook Pros?

~~~
ardaozkal
Well, if you ignore the cost, the new MBPs are good alternatives to the
Chromebook Pixel or the Macbook Air.

~~~
ulfw
Hahaha. True true!

------
ceejayoz
Heh. The thread loaded up with an ad for /r/CatastrophicFailure for me. Bit on
the nose, Reddit.

------
JustSomeNobody
These laptops just keep getting better and better. Go Apple!

