Already tested: Limitation update for new MacBook Pros

Slow down new mobile Macs with high performance requirements. An update of macOS should help. Mac & i has the results of the test equipment.

Apple released the "MacOS Sierra High 10.13.6 Supplemental Update" Wednesday night to address speed issues with the new MacBook Pro models. As Apple confirms in a statement, it comes with the stress of high-performance machines ("many workloads") to the fact that thermal management is so strangling the clock frequency of the processor that devices are weakening. This also writes Mac & i in the review of new machines, which appears in the issue 4/2018 (from August 2 in the trade): In addition, the new Intel processors in the MacBook have cooling problems. In our tests, the fans showed up early, the performance was abruptly collapsed and the work faltered. Background: The new processor will shut down if it becomes too hot. This can be very well watched with the free Intel Power Gadget program. First of all, the processors reach high clock rates for a few seconds, only to afford a break from time to time. Overall, the Coffee-Lake processors are still pretty fast, but sometimes a calculation or presentation becomes ugly. The higher the number of GHz, the more often the problem occurs. If you're working with applications like Word or Safari, you will not notice it, but performance-hungry tasks like Final Cut Pro or Cinema 4D can be boring with noise and sudden drop in performance.

Core i5, i7 and i9 affected

Reason for irritating behavior is, according to Apple, a "missing digital key" in the firmware, so it needed a bug fix. This will now be delivered with the update. "We apologize to all customers who have had less than optimal performance on their systems," says the company.

Image 1 by 5