Bryan, pictured above, has been having issues with his new Santa Rosa MacBook.  He recently took it into an Apple store to have it repaired.  Apple then sent him an online survey where he could only leave 2k of comments.  He asked me to post this online so he could send Apple a link to his comments and tell the world that they are selling rotten produce.  Bryan’s comments are below in blue.

To Whom it may concern:

Apple needs to get an actual engineer in the store, not just someone with a “Genius” title that can reload software or recommend replacing the motherboard -- they did not know what the issue was and asked me what I wanted them to do.

I am fairly new to Mac's (six months now); but, I have two minis and I’m on my second generation of MacBook. I am getting very used to what works and what does not work on them.  I wasted three hours in the car, only to be told there was nothing wrong.

There is definitely something wrong.  My new Macbook is a "B" series with an x3100 video chipset, 2.2GHz CPU, 4GB of memory, and 160GB hard drive.  I was shocked to find out that it runs slower than my "A" series 2.0GHz MacBook with only 1GB of memory.  There are obviously some issues here than no one in the store wanted to address.  As I mentioned earlier, the "Genius" asked me what we need to do to fix it, last time I checked, he was the "Genius" and he should have told me what is wrong with it.  There are issues here that may remain unresolved for a long time.

The issues I see are: 

1. •Excessive rainbow pin-wheeling when streaming video
   

2. •Horrible boot time
   

3. •Tiger is unsupported
   

Yes, you read that correctly.  I am stuck with Leopard because Apple will not write a driver for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) to run upon the “B” series MacBook hardware.  How completely messed up is that?

I ran quite a few benchmarks using Xbench, and found that there are some obvious issues with the video chip or video driver in the new Santa Rosa series MacBook. I ran Xbench 1.3 which is the same software that other reviewers of Apple products run.  This is the best way to stress all system components to their limits.

Sadly my Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz Macmini benches higher than my new Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz MacBook. As you can see below, the Mini trounced each new "B" version MacBook except the MacBook Pro.  The following tests were run with newly loaded images of both Tiger and Leopard.

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Macmini 2.0G memory, 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo, 80GB HD

Results 103.57

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.5.2 (9C31)

Physical RAM 2048 MB

Model Macmini2,1

Drive Type ST980825AS

CPU Test 115.33

Thread Test 174.65

Memory Test 126.59

Quartz Graphics Test 161.02

OpenGL Graphics Test 271.48

User Interface Test 233.71

Disk Test 32.13

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MacBook 4.0GB memory, 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 160GB HD

Results 67.31

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.5.2 (9C31)

Physical RAM 4096 MB

Model MacBook3,1

Drive Type ST9160823AS

CPU Test 119.32

Thread Test 206.37

Memory Test 147.08

Quartz Graphics Test 164.04

OpenGL Graphics Test 22.60

User Interface Test 250.51

Disk Test 33.74

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In Store Floor Model 2.4GHz MacBook "B"

Results 77.25

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.5.2 (9C31)

Physical RAM 2048 MB

Model MacBook4,1

Drive Type FUJITSU MHY2160BH

CPU Test 162.39

Thread Test 329.42

Memory Test 169.93

Quartz Graphics Test 187.39

OpenGL Graphics Test 25.10

User Interface Test 260.84

Disk Test 37.69

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In Store Floor Model 2.4GHz MacBook Pro

Results 124.05

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.5.2 (9C31)

Physical RAM 2048 MB

Model MacBookPro4,1

Drive Type Hitachi HTS542525K9SA00

CPU Test 167.60

Thread Test 306.51

Memory Test 166.67

Quartz Graphics Test 184.99

OpenGL Graphics Test 167.95

User Interface Test 324.84

Disk Test 37.37

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The MacBook Pro scored best overall. What’s telling is how poorly the new “B” series did on the Open GL Video scores.  Surprisingly the Mini clearly ran away with the best Open GL Video score, beating out even the MacBook Pro on this task!

One would expect that a machine with a 400MHz faster CPU, a better video chip set with double the shared ram, and twice the system memory would kick the crap out of a Macmini.  Am I right?  I personally think there is an issue here that Apple is refusing to acknowledge or wants to cover up. 

If someone at Apple would care to contact me and address these issues, I am all ears.  In the meantime, I am very unhappy with the run around I got at the Apple store. I expected a resolution; I would have settled for an acknowledgment, documentation, and escalation of the issue.  There is a serious issue here and it needs to be addressed before EVERYONE that buys one of these machines gets stuck with the same issue.

The new MacBook should not have been shipped in their current production state, unless Apple is now subscribing to the Microsoft theory: "Ship it now, and we’ll fix it later!"

Sincerely,

"Soon to be previous Macbook Owner if it Does not Get Better" Bryan F.

itpmguru@yahoo.com

So, it seems from Bryan’s testing above that Apple and Santa Rosa aren’t playing nicely together.  I would highly advise anyone reading this to delay purchasing Apple’s newest hardware until these major flaws are resolved.