There’s a video from YouTuber Dave Lee that certainly caught the attention of many potential MacBook Pro buyers because it drops quite the bombshell. In this video, he reviews the i7 and i9 version of the MacBook Pro, and discovers that the i9 version appears to have thermal regulation issues (or put another way, it can’t manage heat properly) that require the i9 processor to throttle back to such a degree that it is actually slower than last years model which only had an i7 processor when doing anything that requires sustained CPU functions. His theory on why this is is that the case that Apple uses likely creates an environment that forces the i9 CPU to slow down so that it doesn’t fry itself. Something that he confirmed when he put the MacBook Pro in a freezer and found that by doing that, it actually performed significantly better.
Here is the video in question.
My take on this goes something like this. This is something that Apple would have tested inside their test lab. Or at least you think they would have tested it inside their test lab. Thus they must have known that this was an issue before they released this MacBook Pro. Assuming that is true, then you can’t call this a “pro” level computer because anyone who runs anything like Final Cut, Mathlab, or anything else that pushes the CPU for an extended period of time is going to want to get the i9 processor because that should give them the best performance. But based on what I see here, it doesn’t. Considering that fully spec’ed, this MacBook Pro can run as high as $10,000 that’s a #EpicFail.
Now Apple hasn’t made a statement on this. But they need to in my opinion as they’ve really shot themselves in the foot here. And they need to explain how they will address this as this story is getting legs and you can bet that others are working to confirm what Dave Lee has found. That won’t be good for Apple and their attempts to win the hearts and minds of “pro” users.