P
Paul
Guest
I recently found a rather disturbing flaw in my new 17" MacBook Pro. And from what I have read I am not the only one and it is in "all" 17" versions of the MacBook Pro. The issue is that if you plug in a firebox firewire recording interface into it and do not use the AC power adapter it will light up and receive power, but not enough to recognize the device. Furthermore if you plug the firebox in with the AC adapter hooked up, get it recognized by the MBP, then unplug the AC adapter it works fine. The firewire port is providing inadequate power in the 17" build. The crazy thing about this is it works fine on the 15" MBP's! Therefore there is something wrong/different with the 17" firewire ports. Needless to say this is a real bummer for people who want to do a little mobile recording or use certain external hard drives without AC power.
Apple says they will not do anything about this unless they get a ton of complaints. The general consensus on some message boards is, the 17" MBP will not bus power some FW interfaces and hard drives, and apple has made some kind of change to the voltage circuit in the 17" version of the MBP.
I have posted some links to the discussion boards that talk about this, so you can better understand what I am talking about, as well as hear what others with this issue are saying.
I understand that any new product has growing pains, but a laptop that is geared towards audio, video, and graphics pros should be able to provide cordless power to all firewire external devices.
Paul
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2819319#2819319
http://www.bigbluelounge.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29573
(info pertaining to the firewire flaw is at the bottom part of the discussions on this link)
Apple says they will not do anything about this unless they get a ton of complaints. The general consensus on some message boards is, the 17" MBP will not bus power some FW interfaces and hard drives, and apple has made some kind of change to the voltage circuit in the 17" version of the MBP.
I have posted some links to the discussion boards that talk about this, so you can better understand what I am talking about, as well as hear what others with this issue are saying.
I understand that any new product has growing pains, but a laptop that is geared towards audio, video, and graphics pros should be able to provide cordless power to all firewire external devices.
Paul
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2819319#2819319
http://www.bigbluelounge.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29573
(info pertaining to the firewire flaw is at the bottom part of the discussions on this link)