Apple/NVidia Driver Bug — Question Deleted

Joe Drago writes "I purchased a Mac Pro within the first week that they were available, and immediately upgraded to 3GB of RAM (knowing that OSX loves memory). When playing 3D games (World of Warcraft mainly), the game would Kernel Panic the machine if I had played it for a few hours, or if I swapped in and out of the game a few times, etc. I eventually found out (from an official Blizzard poster) that NVidia has a bug in their drivers that kernel panics a Mac Pro if any memory past the 2GB boundary is addressed in the driver. After waiting months for a resolution to this, I decided to post on Apple's support site. Here is an image of my post.. Within a few hours, they removed it from the site, placing it under 'Posts Removed by Administration.' What's going on here? Is Apple trying to hide this bug, or is there something more serious going on between Apple and NVidia?"

Apple Policy

[x_MeRLiN_x]

I don't claim to know anything Apple's forum rules, but could it not be that the question was removed because they thought this was an Nvidia bug and as such not their responsibility to discuss?

Re:Apple Policy

[TodMinuit]

So don't remove the post! Reply to it saying that and close the topic.

A new Apple icon needs to be added to Slashdot, showing a man gagged by an apple.

Re:Apple Policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this what you're looking for? [wikipedia.org]

P.S. I can't believe you got modded troll. Sorry, what I am saying, the world is full of idiots.

Re:Apple Policy

[ozmanjusri]

A new Apple icon needs to be added to Slashdot, showing a man gagged by an apple.

Good idea! If it's done properly, it could also be re-used as a GIMP icon.

Re:Apple Policy gagged

[avalys]

You're freaking nuts, and ignorant to boot. DRM was not the reason Apple switched to Intel - there's nothing DRM-specific about the Intel architecture. Apple switched because IBM was not able to deliver a PowerPC laptop chip that met modern performance targets (yes, we all know the G5 was fast, but it also sucked down power and spewed out heat).

And, name me one thing that Apple has done that involves DRM, besides the iTunes Music Store. You can't, because they haven't done ANYTHING. And the music store only has DRM at the insistence of the record labels.

As for the iPhone, I can't argue there - I can only hope that Apple will come to its senses in the next six months, and open it up for public development.

Re:

[shmlco]

ITunes was DRM'ed long before the Intel switch, is still DRM'ed on both PPC and Intel, and doesn't require TPM to operate. So, in actuality, the Intel switch and the DRM issue are completely separate things, not related at all, and has nothing to Apple "going down the Intel DRM path."

Re:

[Korin43]

This [zdnet.com] seems to indicate that Photoshop runs significantly faster on the G4 compared to the Macbook Pro. (First Google search result for benchmarks macbook pro photoshop)

Re:Apple Policy gagged

[dr00g911]

If a modern Mac is kernel panicking EVER, you've got a serious issue under the hood.

1. You have bad memory

2. You have a f-ed up or non-Intel compatible device driver or kernel extension/prefpane loaded

3. Your OS install is corrupt

I've seen this a ton of times when experienced Mac users get their hands on their new toy. They install their old versions of DiVX, APE, Adobe Bridge, scanner drivers, Quicktime extensions old HP all in one 3 gig "printer drivers" or just do something rash like copying over their entire /Library/ folder (which would result in PPC drivers and kexts from your old Mac getting shoehorned into the clean system).

Friends don't let friends transplant their cobwebs between machines.

Back up your users folder (and ONLY your users folder), nuke & pave, and use the migration assistant to move the old account over to the clean system. Don't copy them by hand.

Then get the absolute latest drivers for your devices (only get Intel/Universal compiled drivers, prefpanes and kexts) and do NOT install Adobe Bridge CS2.

Do this, and unless you've got crap RAM, you'll have a clean system that doesn't flake out on you.

Re:Apple Policy gagged

[dr00g911]

I almost forgot.

You can go to your /Applications/Utilities/Console.app and take a look at your crash logs. This will tell you what software is taking down the system if you don't feel like committing to a full nuke & pave (although, to achieve a pristine system you really really really should).

If ATI drivers are coming up and erroring out, they got loaded in there somehow, which means that you have other cobwebs in there deep.

Best of luck,

droog

Re:Apple Policy

[mrchaotica]

If so, then they should post a reply to that effect -- not delete the whole thread!

Re:Apple Policy

[mrchaotica]

No, they should just not remove it! If you're looking at Slashdot or any of the various other forums around the Internet, you can usually go back all the way to the beginning and read any post that was ever made. There's no reason for Apple's forums to be any different.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[mrchaotica]

So who appointed you the policy maker for Apple's forums? Just curious.

As an Apple customer, I did!

Look, Apple can do what it wants. But if it wants business from people like me, it'll do what I want. And what I want is for it not to ignore its customers' problems, especially when they're caused by flaws in the product! Instead, I want it at least to acknowledge those flaws, even if there isn't anything that can be done about it. If nothing else, it'd be nice to know I'm not hallucinating if I experience

You didn't get the memo?

[tomhudson]

Its all about competing with Microsoft to make sure they don't get yet another monopoly, this time on Evil ...

Two years ago, it was Sun's turn to be evil ... last year it was google's ; Novell tried last month, but they pretty much failed it, so Apple got the nod.

Re:You didn't get the memo?

[complete loony]

So there's a Token Ring network of evil?

It's their responsibility

[Sycraft-fu]

nVidia doesn't do Apple drivers. They may have their engineers help write them, but they don't support or distribute them. Apple is solely responsible for supporting the hardware they ship with their systems because they want it that way. You go to nVidia's site you'll find drivers for Windows of all varieties, Linux 32 and 64-bit, FreeBSD, and even Solaris, but no OS-X. So when you have problems with nVidias on OS-X, it's Apple that you need to talk to.

Re:It's their responsibility

[RatPh!nk]

You are incorrect, ATI and nVidia do write the code for the drivers that are included in the OS. I searched around the net, and I couldn't find any convincing evidence, but as a former employee, trust me. ATI/nVidia write the drivers, Apple does most of the Q&A. If you file a bugreport on a driver it will end up as being readable by ATI/nVidia, they have access to that category of bugs.

Doesn't matter

[Sycraft-fu]

Apple has chosen to take responsibility for sole distribution and release and thus support. That's what I mean by nVidia doesn't "do" Apple drivers. For other platforms, they distribute them directly, and they support them. However that's not the case for OS-X. Thus the proper channel to go through is Apple.

Also you'll have to excuse me if I don't trust you because of a random claim you make on the net. If I had a nickel for the number of people on the net claiming to have insider information on something and being full of it... Regardless the point is that telling the person it's not Apple's problem is wrong. It's similar to buying a Dell computer and the harddrive breaks. You don't call Maxtor or WD or whoever made it, you call Dell. They are supporting the whole package.

Re:It's their responsibility

[tpv]

Wow! That's fast.
The bug only just got published to /. and they're already hiring someone to fix it.

Re:Apple Policy

[DavidShor]

If the Apple PC ever gets serious market share, it will attract serious regulatory attention. Its business model opens it to large monopsony power if it ever gets large, and judging by how they've rolled out Fairplay, they seem like they will become a another textbook example of why we need anti-trust law.

the "problem"

[macadamia_harold]

I eventually found out (from an official Blizzard poster) that NVidia has a bug in their drivers that kernel panics a Mac Pro if any memory past the 2GB boundary is addressed in the driver. After waiting months for a resolution to this, I decided to post on Apple's support site. Here is an image of my post.. Within a few hours, they removed it from the site, placing it under 'Posts Removed by Administration.'

Macs "just work". Everyone knows that. Obviously the "problem" is your fault, and/or you're a troll.

Re:the "problem"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if I should mod that insightful or informative. Please advise.

Re:the "problem"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Please advise."

Obviously you can't do either now. You replied...

Here's my take on it

[TitusC3v5]

[This comment has been deleted.]

Re:Here's my take on it

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did this comment get deleted? I thought slashdot's moderating system meant offensive posts would just be moderated down. Is this a policy change?

No, slashdot has always been run by control freaks

[L7_]

[This comment has been removed by CmdrTaco Sunday January 14, @05:31PM]

Re:No, slashdot has always been run by control fre

[strider44]

Oh my god! CmdrTaco is so efficient and deadly at removing posts that he actually removed your post three hours before you even posted it!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on your the time zone you have set for the forum. Some people will see that Cmdr Taco was a few hors too slow...

Re:No, slashdot has always been run by control fre

[Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco is so efficient and deadly at removing posts that he actually removed your post three hours before you even posted it!

You stubborn Eastern Time Zone Americans! Set your clocks to the real time: Pacific Time.

Re:Here's my take on it

[larry bagina]

That was a joke. However, Slashdot deletes posts. In the past, they've deleted posts containing scientology info, leaked MS source code, and DeCSS source code when lawyers threaten to sue. They've also deleted page widening and xss hacks. They also delete posts when archiving stories. It's not confirmed, but there was a lot of rumors that Michael Sims was fired for (among other reasons) deleting posts critical of him.

some more MS source code for you

[r00t]

}
#endif

scientology

[commodoresloat]

Don't use the scientology thing to put slashdot down for censorship. When Scientology threatened to sue, they did delete the post, but they then posted a frontpage story about being forced to take the post down that was basically an extended critique of Scientology, complete with a huge list of links to sources about the abuses of scientology, xenu.net links, etc., including links to the very material that they had been forced to remove. The offending material, of course, was reposted in another comment (probably several times over) in the new discussion. The net effect was not censorship at all but a huge expose against scientology that was probably seen by half a million readers. The offending material was removed from a single comment on slashdot where it probably would have been ignored, but links to the same material along with a coherent explanation of many of the things wrong with the church of scientology was posted to the front page where it was read and discussed publicly by a much larger audience than would have ever been exposed to it. It was a victory for free speech, and it's unfair to criticize slashdot for censorship based on that example.

Re:Here's my take on it

[coredog64]

If every moderator rates a comment as -1 Troll or the comment contains yet another ASCII art version of the penis bird,
is there really any reason to archive it for posterity?

To strongly worded?

[bcmm]

The complaint is reasonable and mostly well put, but perhaps the speculation at then end annoyed them enough to make them remove it?

It still comes across as a bit unreasonable to remove it, however. But it's Apple. They don't expect you to upgrade things on your own.

Re:To strongly worded?

[Wonko the Sane]

I wish I worked somewhere where I could get annoyed at my customers and treat them like that.

Re:To strongly worded?

[__aaclcg7560]

Dell Tech Support is hiring...

Re:To strongly worded?

[Dr. Cody]

...hope your Hindi is pretty good!

Re:To strongly worded?

[linuxpng]

Apple, where being better than Dell is somehow a big deal.

Forum rules?

[ParraCida]

Seems more like a complaint/accusation masked as a question, rather than a serious question and might have been removed for that reason.

Re:

[belmolis]

He may have expressed irritation, but he still asked a perfectly valid question. He's entitled to know if Apple agrees that there is a driver bug or thinks that something else is going on, and if it is a driver bug, are they working on it and when can the fix be expected.

Re:

[timeOday]

Seems more like a complaint/accusation masked as a question, rather than a serious question and might have been removed for that reason.

Give me a break. What is this, Jeapordy?

A screen grab?

[Anonymous Coward]

How often do people take screen grabs of their posts to a forum?

Was their expectation of it being removed? I find that more confusing then the fact that it was deleted.

Re:A screen grab?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he had it in his cache.

Re:A screen grab?

[tomhudson]

The screen grab wasn't of his original question, but of his question after they deleted all but the subject line.

It was only after the question was deleted that he began questioning Apple's motives.

My take on it is that nobody would buy a 3-gig box if they can't properly use the extra gig of ram, and this could hurt sales, as well as give people justification for post-xmas returns (and then buying the 2-gig machine at a post-xmas price).

Re:A screen grab?

[SuperBanana]

How often do people take screen grabs of their posts to a forum? Was their expectation of it being removed?

Apple routinely deletes posts discussing known defects; it's very well known among Apple-using techies. Apple has done it in almost every case where there have been hardware defects of any kind. A classic example would be the iBook motherboard failures. I would imagine they do it to a)keep other owners from finding out and demanding fixes as well, b)keeping the press from finding out, and c)to defend themselves in any lawsuits which can claim "well, people reported it on your forums, so you must have known about it!" So...yes.

Web forums and mailing lists fuck with a classic PR/customer service move: deny all knowledge. I had a problem with speakers in my car, which in some cases had caused smoke or fire in this particular model. We called the car company, and each member of the forum, over a period of several weeks, was told "we have no knowledge of any other reports of problems with this model." They lied straight through their teeth. We later found out that over ten years before, a vehicle had completely burned to the ground because of the same defect, and company reps came out, looked at the car, purchased it back off the owner no questions asked, etc. They knew about the defect for over a decade and a half, and only after lots of bitching to NHSTA, did we get them to do anything about it. Oh, and dealing with NHSTA was another barrel of monkeys. Call their 800 number, and you get an operator who cannot do a single thing except ask for your address and send you the forms to report a problem. Once you do, they completely prevent you from speaking to the investigator at NHSTA to communicate further details et al.

Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently bought a mac pro along with the Parallels software so I could run windows as well. Sorry, no go. Parallels wouldn't work on the mac pro. No way will you ever convince me that Apple didn't know that one of their biggest selling points was a dud. Caused kernel panics. It works on the mac book pro but not the tower. Took the parallels software back and the apple rep had never heard about any problems with it.

Next I found that the keyboard has the worst key-bounce since the Shadio Rack Mod I. A bi

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"So you spend money on computers without researching?"

That is just the point. If you don't know the exact problem it is impossible to find info on it. The parallels problem I had to dig through the Parallels forum to find a discussion of it and it wasn't the OS. It flat didn't work on the Mac pro and they knew it and weren't talking. Last time I checked, Parallels was finally offering a beta version for it months after I bought the machine.

all the places that would have the info are heavily censored.

Re:

[WatertonMan]

I can't speak to the Mac Pro issue. I'd read about that all over the place so it didn't seem "hidden" to me. But then I read sites like Ars, Slashdot and a few major Apple blogs fairly regularly. So I'm probably not the "typical" case. I never believe sales droids anywhere and personally am surprised anyone would. Having said that though, I've not found Parallels buggy in the least. It is a memory hog. Really, less than 2 GB is too little for anything serious. As for Adobe, that's been written about

Re:Sorry. Not Correct

[Pink Tinkletini]

The only accounting firms where Macs would fit in culturally are the ones practicing creative, avant-garde methods of accounting, and after the Andersen implosion there are precious few of those left around. My advice to you is to stay true to yourself: stay beige. Don't pretend you're anything else.

Intellectual property

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I'm kind of surprised this popped up on slashdot (I figured it would get mentioned in a blog, at most, and forgotten about). I'm one of the admins on that forum, and can confirm that yes, we've been asked to nuke anything regarding nVidia, at least in certain contexts. One recent addition to our arrangement with them (to provide kernel drivers) involves some very restrictive IP deals that upper management has interpreted to mean we shouldn't even acknowledge certain kinds of bugs in a very specific area. It's my understanding that there are some serious showstopper bugs inherent to nvidia's platform independent core code that they really do not want releasing. Most of us think this is utter BS (and management being paranoid), fwiw.

And yes, there are enough forum admins that I'm not too scared about 'leaking' like this. Note that I'm keeping the exact details secret :p

Re:Intellectual property

[erroneus]

This sounds rather plausible... at least we all *want* to believe it.

But frankly, with all the other nonsense that goes on surrounding Apple, their products and all that, it just fits. I find that Apple is so incredibly arrogant about the way they refuse to fix problems (for example, the 128GB limit bug for some older G4 machines and before) I see Apple eventually going the way that Sony will be going -- relying on the ignorance of uninformed people who buy their brand because of the recognition and prior reputation.

EVENTUALLY, enough sales people at Best Buy and the like will tell people what's wrong with Sony and Apple and the word will get out.

Re:

[daveschroeder]

Uh, that's not a "bug".

That's an ATA controller than was made before support for Large Disks (e.g., >128GB).

It cannot be fixed with any kind of firmware or software update.

So, not a bug, and not planned obsolescence. Just an ATA controller made before Large Disk support was remotely common. Further, you can just buy an inexpensive ATA PCI card if you really wanted to use disks larger than 128GB. No need to buy "newer stuff" from Apple.

Also, you're wrong that there has "never been any such problem for PCs

Re:

[Digital Pizza]

Wrong; it's a driver/firmware issue. LBA48 support could have been added via a firmware patch but Apple chose not to do that. The fact that the HiCap driver from Intech works (see http://www.speedtools.com/index.shtml [speedtools.com]) proves that the hardware is capable. It's also proven by the fact that the IDE driver in Linux has no problem accessing large drives on those controllers (just make sure your kernel is in a /boot partition within the first 128GB on the disk). It's a software problem, not a hardware one

Re:

[daveschroeder]

The html tag parsing mangled my reply when I used a less than symbol. Fixed reply:

What was that Hi-Cap driver that I installed to allow access to the 300GB drives I have installed in the boxes then?

Something that bypasses the 128GB limitation of single partition size by doing a little trickery. I trust you noticed that you have to partition the drives into less than 128GB chunks.

There are no "inexpensive" ATA PCI cards that work for a mac. They are starting out at $65+ everywhere I have seen them. Cards for

Re:

[Anachronda]

Unless things have radically changed in the decade or so since I last dealt intimately with the IDE interface, the controller hardware has nothing whatsoever to do with block addresses.

The command registers are stored in the drive not the controller. Updating the system to deal with large disks is a device driver issue, not a hardware issue.

You have to partition large drives into 128G chunks on older hardware so that the BIOS can boot the thing. Booting from a larger partition would require a BIOS updat

Re:

[erroneus]

Please see the previous reply. It's not "trickery" any more than an updated BIOS is. You are seriously confused over the differences between software and hardware limitations. The Hi-Cap driver could just as easily be integrated into the OS. Furthermore, as for partitions, only the boot partition needs to be 128GB or less. All other drives can be at full capacity and there is nothing different about the partition scheme and works on other Macs.

Re:

[RedWizzard]

http://www.48bitlba.com/ [48bitlba.com] http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/137gb.pd f [seagate.com]

Neither of those two pages suggest new hardware is necessary is solve the issue - they both say that updates to software alone is sufficient. If that's the case in Windows world then why should the Mac world be any different?

Re:Intellectual property

[this great guy]

In a recent Slashdot article [slashdot.org] about an effort to write an open source driver for Nvidia cards, people such as mgemmons were asking "What is wrong with the proprietary driver?" [slashdot.org] Well, what a perfect example you have there: Nvidia is actively trying to hide serious bugs/limitations present in their drivers ! WTF ! This sort of vendor behavior is precisely one of the reasons why some of us would like open source drivers.

Re:Intellectual property

[bcmm]

Stuck your neck out? You are AC. Anyone could have posted that. In fact, I am somewhat doubtful that the parent and GP were even written by the same AC.

Why?

[WindBourne]

There are lots of things that happen on /. that ppl can not offer direct evidence of it. If you like, assume that all of them are wrong. But I have seen things on here from AC's that I knew to be correct (by having worked at 2 of the places that had been talked about), but were said to be trolls or conspiracy theories. You simply have to ask wether you will accept the possibility. If so, then ask is it possible. Then decide what you want to do with it.

As to the current posting, yeah, it is possible. Apple is not high and mighty. They have been shown to be "evil" at times. Of course, it is not that surprising. Lots of companies do things like this.

Don't do it.

[WindBourne]

Look, this is not about a person's life and/or our rights. This is NOT that important. Keep things in perspective. All in all, if Apple decided to do this, then more issues will show up. It will come out and be reflected in their attempts to sell more. Besides, I would assume that you like your job AND do not wish to end up in court losing against Apple. And yes, they will win this one.

Besides, this is an easy test. Just submit the same bug by 1000 or more different ppl on this list. Once that happens AND

Re:

[timotten]

... When I have a spare moment, I'll go over the admin-view forum page (where the deleted post still lives, along with an internal reply mentioning to other admins why it was deleted) _absolutely sure_ I've scrubbed it of anything personally identifying...

I'm sure that some Apple customers would feel reassured to have proof of someone inside who's watching out for their (customer) interests and keeping them (customers) informed. However, if you're concern is about your job, don't get too cocky about your ab

Driver support

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple and nVidia have both said, in public, many times, that in the specific case of Apple NV cards, the drivers are handled by Apple.

I'd love to see the commercial

[d474]

Apple Guy: Hi, I'm an Apple.
PC Guy: Hi, I'm a PC.
Apple Guy: *itching crotch*
PC Guy: Got a problem there?
Apple Guy: No, I'm fine. (*cockroaches fall to floor from pant leg*)
PC Guy: Having a little problem with that "Nvidia card"? (chuckles)
Apple Guy: *walks off set*
PC Guy: Don't mind him, he's just trying to support more than 2GB of RAM...

Re:I'd love to see the commercial

[Dr. Cody]

Doctor Guy: That is the worst case of crabs I've ever seen.

Apple's Bugs

[Liquid-Gecka]

This is what I would expect. When I bugged apple about their broken NFS support on servers they told us that engineers would get back to us. They never did. So I started asking on forums and mailing lists to see if I could get an answer and as soon as I brought it up the thread would get killed or the post would be deleted. Then when we had issues with MPICH it as the same dang thing. Eventually they admitted that MPICH2 works much nicer on Mac OS than MPICH 1 due to some network implementations stuff. Every time I brought it up on the forums though the thread would get killed. (For the curious, the problem that we where having was that an Apple server running NFS would always seem to forget about the last file in a directory when it cached the directory contents. so running "mkdir a; cd a; touch 1 2 3 4 5 6 ; cd .. ; rm -rf a" would fail one out of four times when being done over NFS. If you waited a half an hour then ran rm -rf a it would work great. This issue didn't happen when Mac OS systems mounted Linux NFS shares, but happened every time a Linux or Mac OS system mounted a NFS share off of a Mac OS based system. This was still happening to all of our PPC based systems as of last summer when we finally switched them over to PPC Linux, which made the problem go away) I guess what I am saying is that it is not surprising. Apple has always nuked threads that made them look bad so why not this one?

Re:Apple's Bugs -root cause is Apple QA dept!

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont know why apple fanboys have to keep modding this to -1 as flamebait its INFORMATIVE and FACTUAL :

Its WORSE than you think! The Apple bugs are now rampant.

Apple, like all software companies large and small, maintains an internal employee BugBase or bug database.

Other companies also include feature requests in such databases with acknowledgement from engineers.

It was a shining example from apple until a couple years ago some managers at Apple decided to irrationally ban thousands of Apple employees fro

Simple, stupid bugs.

[SanityInAnarchy]

That's been my experience. When Windows fails, it's usually some strange registry corruption or chunk of spyware, taking down the entire system, and generally, you won't be able to fix it -- or it will be simpler and cheaper to reinstall the OS.

When Linux fails, either it's something in hardware (Linux seems to be more sensitive to bad RAM than Windows, which I consider to be a Good Thing), or it's something easily fixable -- not even by a kernel hacker, but by a competent admin with a little shell scripting ability. Even Gentoo isn't usually that hard to fix.

When OS X fails, it's going to be some annoying little thing. You'll contact Apple about it, they'll get back to you -- sometime this century -- and in the meantime, it'll piss you off enough to want to install Linux, or even Windows (if you're lucky enough to have an Intel Mac -- mine's PPC).

My bug is simple and stupid, and very annoying. My Powerbook has f1 through f10 or so mapped to hardware functions, which is actually quite nice, and I don't know if I'd easily get used to using the fn key to trigger those functions. That is, just hitting f1 would adjust monitor brightness (I think), whereas the alternative is having fn+f1 do that. But it also means that in order to pass it through to apps, or even the OS (other than hardware controls), I have to hit fn... So, to tell Expose to show me all windows, it's fn+f9.

Well, of course that was annoying as hell, and I often used Expose to peek in case something got lost -- my virtual desktops being buggy (still waiting on Spaces), often I'll accidentally move a window to another desktop and have it somehow bury itself under everything. Also, Adium has a habit of opening popup windows of any kind under what you're doing, which is nice, but a few kind of popups in particular don't trigger any notification (no growl, no sound, no duck bouncing in the tray), so the only way to see them is to hit Expose and check under your windows every few minutes to see if, say, someone had invited you to a chat, or sent you a file, or whatever.

So I mapped Expose to cmd+semicolon. Which is very nice on Dvorak, as the semicolon is where Z is on QWERTY -- looking on your keyboard, they are right next to each other (for PC people, that "Windows" key is the cmd key). The only problem is, the OS forgets this mapping every reboot. And, this being a Powerbook, I often just let it sleep -- for weeks at a time -- until an upgrade forces me to reboot, or I feel like showing off the Ubuntu livecd (or trying to get Linux to work again), or whatever. So it's not like this is part of my morning ritual -- boot computer, login, remap Expose. No, this is pretty random, and every time, it annoys the hell out of me.

Well, I submitted a detailed report on this issue. I would paste it here, but after digging up the original email, it seems that Apple places bug reports under a blanket non-disclosure agreement -- so certainly I may not paste their response here. However, I do know how to make a detailed and helpful report.

Their response: It's a known issue, currently being worked on by engineering. On the website, the bug's state is: Dupe. The website also confirms: I submitted this bug on July 25th, 20006. Their reply -- the email basically telling me it was a dupe, and that they're working on it -- came on September 22nd, 2006. As far as I know, the issue has not been resolved.

Frankly, I'm not surprised that Apple has been deleting bug discussion -- I don't know if they actually use their bug database for anything other than reassuring consumers that they know what's going on, but I now know that their standard response to bugs (or any flaw or deficiency) is to bury their head in the sand and pretend it never happened... until they fix the problem, and then claim it was always a good idea, and always what they were planning. Remember how they toted the G5's "Intel-crushing" performance (or was it "Pentium-crushing"? Whatever), before they suddenly switched to Intel, and now they're all a

Oh fer cryin'...

[Hawthorne01]

Has this person never heard of Hanlon's Law [wikipedia.org] (with Hawthorne's Collary - "Because the latter is easily the most common element in the universe") ?

Either that, or the tinfoil hat's beginning to cut off circulation.

Possible reason

[dtfinch]

"Using your Mac Pro" might not have been the appropriate section to post your topic in.

Redundant bug: fix to be backdated

[vandan]

The post was clearly redundant, as the bug will be fixed in the future, and the release date back-dated :)

Maybe your post just sucks?

[dr.badass]

I read your post, and I'm struggling to figure out just what the hell your question is. You ask "who is fixing this bug?" but in a place where nobody that could actually provide the answer will be looking. You've clearly already made up your mind that there is some sort of "power struggle" or conspiracy going on, so what, if anything, could someone tell you that would satisfy you? I don't know what the criteria for removal is on those forums, but I suspect yours was removed because it was pointless and inflammatory, not because of any conspiracy. That you feel that having one forum post removed is a crisis worth submitting to Slashdot reeks of paranoia.

Why don't you try Apple's bug reporting site instead of the Discussion forums? You know, the place where you actually report bugs?

Easy Answers

[GarfBond]

How about this: the forum post deletions are the result of an overzealous moderator, and as a result, your post to slashdot is the result is an overzealous conspiracy theory?

Dumb bug on someone's part, but you're looking for a conspiracy where there is likely none.

BBB

[zoftie]

File a complaint with BBB, after a while they can't delete history with BBB, you can always post their dealings with customers too, out to dry on the web.

http://bbb.com/ [bbb.com]

Use "Use"net

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always thought that the proliferation of forums was in many respects doing everyone a disservice and in general a step backwards for the Internet community as a whole.

First and foremost messages can be easily lost forever due to software or hardware failures, they can be censored by individuals who want them gone (Nazi Moderation). They also tend to not exist after a finite amount of time due to companies closing up shop or local retention limits. With usenet messages are propogated throughout the planet to thousands of separate stores.

Second using a browser even with all the modern trinkets and features still stinks compared to a real editor/news client.

Third to get answers that people take the time to post publically as a service to others tend to expose you to mounds and mounds of crap due to the proliferation of sites that exist to make money from google adwords.

Fourth categorization and search is much easier with a common protocol vs ad hoc web applications.

Fith access performance and just plain getting crap done factor was generally much higher in the good ole days before PHPBB and similiar technologies.

I know the above is one sided and there are lots of advantages to local systems.

Anyway I remember posting a message to one of the most popular soft phone forums a while back basically saying how stupid they were for allowing hyperlinking to SIP uris that just dial phone numbers without any kind of user say or any way to disable it short of registry hacks. A rediculous, stupid and obvious security problem. My post disappeared 20 minutes later but eventually after many months and lots of counseling I got over it and still use their software :) I figured at least they were smart enough to realize they were being stupid.

NVidia bug OR memory upgrade issue?

[martyb]

(Couldn't access the article's screen capture - site's bandwidth exceeded.)

I did some googling around, and it appears that Mac Pro systems have been known to Kernel Panic in a number of cases after a memory upgrade. Have you considered that you might have TWO (intermittent) problems?

According to this [xlr8yourmac.com]http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/Mac_Pro/mac_pro _ram.html [xlr8yourmac.com] upgrade memory should have larger heatsinks than standard heatsinked FB-Dimms. It has links to: memory test utilities, ECC correction reports, and most notably:

FYI - Page 2 [anandtech.com] of PC site Anandtech's Mac Pro upgrades article has comments on using standard heatsink FB-Dimms (which some readers previously reported worked ok so far at least, although others have noted ECC error corrections)

"We had no problems running all of our benchmarks with the standard (flat heatsink) Crucial FB-DIMMs; however, if we ran a memory stress test for even just a short period of time the modules quickly reported correctable ECC errors. (Apple system profiler memory status section) Apple's original modules did not generate any ECC errors, so it looks like the additional cooling is necessary under the most extreme situations." (emphasis added)

Questions:

1. What brand of memory did you upgrade with? Apple? Crucial? Kingston? Other?
2. Did your memory have the standard-sized or larger-sized heat sinks?
3. What memory stress tests have you run?
4. Were any ECC errors reported?
5. What was the distribution of memory in your system? (which boards of what size and manufacture in which risers?)
6. If you pull the original memory and use just the upgrade memory, does the problem still exist?

Hope this helps!

Re:NVidia bug OR memory upgrade issue?

[Vexorian]

I was going to mention that the problem completely sounds as a memory issue. I mean the guy got these issues right after upgrading the RAM AND it tends to happen after going above 2.0GB...

Similar story from 10 years ago

[laing]

I identified a serious flaw in all USR "Sportster" and "Courier" modems (only the ones with flashable firmware). It was reproducable (at least to me) and caused a dropped connection under certain conditions. After making it past the tier 1 support folks, I got in touch with the product engineering group. I gave them enough info that they took me seriously but they claimed that they could not reproduce the problem. They sent me a brand new computer with modem so I could configure it like mine. I did so and they dialed into it and saw the problem. I sent the system back and kept in touch with them until they fell off the face of the earth about 2 weeks after I returned their computer. I have all of the e-mail threads to document this.

USR apparently did not want to deal with the product liablity. It would have bankrupted them to fix all of the modems. Instead they quietly dropped the product line and completely ignored me. I solved my problem by buying a bunch of modems from another manufacturer.

JSL

Re:How did you get the screenshot?

[JanusFury]

There's this thing in your browser called a cache that stores a copy of pages you visit...

Re:Wrong place?

[Karzz1]

The video card was standard in his machine. In other words... it was supplied by Apple. The drivers he is using are from Apple. Nvidia doesn't even offer Mac drivers on their site. [nvidia.com]

Re:Wrong place?

[x2A]

"And if he bought a Dell is it Dell's fault, MSFT's, or Nvidia?"

...if he bought a dell, his nvidia card would work, genius.

"The answer is the same whether you want to admit it or not"

Funny, it doesn't sound the same.

Re:Wrong place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reality check:

When the stock car stereo in your new Ford emits magic smoke one week after you drive the car off the dealer's lot, do you contact your the Ford dealer network or Delphi?

Of course you know the answer. Not suprisingly, if you buy a Dell it IS Dell's fault. Dell claims to sell computers, not assembly services for a pile of Intel, Nvidia, and Seagate parts. Dell is even obligated to support the majority of the Microsoft software that it "merely" installs on those computers under the terms of the various licenses and supply agreements that it has negotiated. And we're not even discussing Dell, we're discussing APPLE. The mere suggestion that the end user should have to resolve a bug by contacting an OEM parts supplier, however famous, is laughable.

Re:Wrong place?

[duffbeer703]

NVidia will only directly support customers who purchase add-on cards. If you buy an Apple, Dell, HP, etc with an NVidia card, you need to work with the OEM to get a supported driver.

Re:Wrong place?

[petecarlson]

In fact, the bug was written by an out-sourced company in Taiwan. Did you try contacting them? Obviously Nvidia isn't the right company to contact... No wait, this just in. The bit of code was actually written by Michael Huang, a temp who works for a contracting firm. Please send him a letter describing your problem.

Next week on Slashdot.

I sent Michael Huang a detailed letter describing my problem and he shredded it without responding. Is this any way to treat the customers of your clients customers customer?

Re:

[mdarksbane]

This type of problem of "random things breaking with large amounts of memory" isn't limited to Apple, unfortunately. I've got a Dell that doesn't wake from sleep because of its 2g of memory. They have a fix, but you can't get it publicly, and I haven't forced myself to wait through their tech support to get it from them yet.

Re:Wrong place?

[v1]

It now occurs to me just how good of a comparison that is. In both cases, when the included accessory fails, it causes a crash!

Re:Wrong place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad drivers, perhaps?

Re:Wrong place?

[markov_chain]

If I buy a Ford, and the Firestone tire fails under warranty, you better believe I will be going back to the Ford dealership to take care of the problem, and not Firestone.

Re:

[bcmm]

Of course they are smart, and of course hushing things up is the answer.

Does Apple not have a reputation for excellent, reliable hardware that "just works"? I know Slashdot knows better, but the majority of people believe what they are told. Hushing things up makes perfectly good business sense, because by annoying a few customers, they avoid many potential customers learning to doubt the reliability of the product. They probably don't care that it isn't very nice for those customers, because they are a co

Re:

[QuietLagoon]

Does Apple not have a reputation for excellent, reliable hardware that "just works"?

No. Apple has the reputation for ease of use and quality marketing, both of which rely upon the hardware working. Unfortunately, the hardware is not providing the foundation it needs to provide.

Re:I really wanted to buy a MacBook Pro but...

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience with Apple's handling of reported bugs has been _very_ bad. I reported dozens of problems, all with as much technical information as possible (I am a OS programmer myself) and none of them got any resolution whatsoever except for some time passing comments which mostly intended to make me understand they don't care about the bugs.

Of particular mention is a security bug - complete with stack traces, register values and other goodies. No response and the bug still exists after 3 releases of the product.

Re:I really wanted to buy a MacBook Pro but...

[linuxpng]

Tack that on to a reproducible core audio bug that makes the new dvd player app crash on certain disks. Reported that one till I was blue in the face.

Re:I really wanted to buy a MacBook Pro but...

[QuietLagoon]

You guys should report these issues to the Month of Apple Bugs if you've not done so already.

I should only have to report a problem to Apple. I should not need to report a problem to some random third-party "expeditor".

OS-X is tightly bonded to Apple hardware. Apple should do all within its powers to assure the hardware is nothing less than excellent.

Re:Hopefully this won't be deleted soon.

[papplegate]

The article was about a Mac Pro, not a MacBook Pro, which is a laptop. The MacBook Pro has an ATI video card not a NVidia card.

Re:A more obvious conclusion...

[Petrushka]

As a default setting, I'd agree. However, this post [slashdot.org], this post [slashdot.org], this post [slashdot.org], and perhaps this post [slashdot.org], suggest to me that that isn't the most likely explanation, but rather that there is a cross-platform nVidia problem. (Just talking about what seems more likely, not what necessarily is the case in actuality.)

Not the same

[The MAZZTer]

On the Mac, the issue is as simple as upgrading your memory to 3GB, and can be done by any user.

On the PC if you upgrade your memory to 3GB, it won't happen, because you still have a 2GB per-process memory limit. You can get 3GB per-process memory limits with the switch you described, regardless of how much physical memory you have (remember virtual memory).

The thing is, you can't really toggle this switch by accident. You have to specifically set it in your boot.ini file. The only thing I can think

Re:Some suggestions

[meme lies]

1 Switch to an ATI card. They always seem to work better with OS X. I don't know why, but the NVIDIA cards never seem to work that well for me in OS X.

You're suggesting that he purchase a new card on his own dime to correct the problem?

2 Take out one stick of memory. 3GB is kind of excessive IMO for OS X unless you REALLY need that much memory. I used to run WoW, iTunes, Firefox, Ventrilo, and other apps just fine (when I played WoW) and never had any memory issues with 2 GB. I think the Mac Pro benefits from interleaving as well (don't quote me on that, I don't have one) and requires a specific memory configuration.

There are plenty of reasons a Mac Pro owner would need over 2 gigs. Real time rendering in Final Cut or Motion, for example. Or large Photoshop files (particularly with the Rosetta crutch.) He uses WOW as an example but I doubt he bought a $3000 workstation to run a game that will play on an iMac. At least I hope he didn't.

3 Play WoW under windows with bootcamp. It was always a little faster for me under XP than OS X, but my subscription ran out a little while ago.

Obviously unacceptable. Booting Windows is not a solution. For one, you'll be going online, which means you will need to become a Windows security expert quickly-- and you will have to purchase a retail copy of XP, again on your own dime, to solve a problem Apple should fix.

This is Apple's problem. If it is a known issue they should fix it, or issue a recall to replace the cards. If the machine is under warranty he needs to raise a continual stink to get the problem fixed (one thing I do know about Apple support, if you draw one "genius" who won't help you you have to keep trying until you find one who will.)

Re:

[mollymoo]

It's been tagged as flamebait because Apple users do not like being reminded that they paid Apple AND gave up their freedom to use, modify, study, and distribute software.

How can you give up something which you do not have? Apple users never had the freedom to modify, study and distribute NVidia's copyright code in the first place. Owning an Apple computer does not stop you using, modifying, studying and distributing software which you are entitled to use, modify, study and distribute. The only thing st

Re:

[Kjella]

It's being tagged as flamebait because it is flamebait. Just because I bought something I don't know how to repair myself (hint: My car, TV, microwave, washing machine, digicam and a kazillion other gadgets fall into that category) doesn't mean I can't expect a working product, and if the producer refuses to repair or even acknowledge the fault I'm sure going to make a stink about it. "STFU and take it" means "Eat the cost of defective products yourself" - like hell I will. If it was an elitist Linux user w

Re:

[QuantumG]

hint: My car, TV, microwave, washing machine, digicam and a kazillion other gadgets fall into that category

All of which you are free to take to a third party to have repaired. On the other hand.........