New MacBooks Are Cranky: They Have Insomnia and Hate Third-Party RAM

The standard “journalism” rule is that three is trend. So here’s one with the new MacBooks: They’ve got problems! Screwy video cards, insomniatic, power-sucking sleep and not playing well with other RAM.

There appear to be a couple variations of the sleep problem. The more obvious, crazier one is that after going to sleep, the notebook will wake up 30-60 seconds later, then go back to sleep, repeating the cycle until the battery is dead. The other, subtler version that I’ve been experiencing on my own MacBook Pro is that I’ll put it to sleep, and despite not visibly waking up, when I pop the lid in the morning, the battery will be totally dead, even with a full charge. Aaaaand, there’s also a separate sleep problem where the damn thing just won’t wake up.

The most official solution offered so far is to reset the memory and controller chip. It works for some people, and for others (like me) it has not. Some posters say that Apple offered to swap out their notebook entirely.

Now for the memory problem. In short, memory upgrades—with all of the proper specifications like DDR3-1066, etc.—from third party makers, even super-reliable ones like Crucial and OWC, are making new MacBooks go bonkers, with crashes, lock-ups and other wonkiness. Reinstalling the original sticks make the craziness go away, like magic, as does purchasing the RAM straight from Apple. (FWIW, Apple’s using Samsung RAM.)

Like most of these kinds of problems, neither of them affect every single MacBook or Pro. Luckily, insomnia seems like a firmware update will take care of it, much like the buggy trackpad. (And, uh, Apple, today would be great for me, thanks.) The deal with memory, however, is perhaps trickier to diagnose. It seems like a firmware problem as well, but who knows. Whatever the cause, it needs to be fixed.

God, beta culture sucks. [Apple Forums, Apple Forums via JKontherun]