Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

Apple blames MacBook Pro graphics issues on bad software

Updated Dec 7th, 2016 8:10PM EST
MacBook Pro 2016 Graphics Problems
Image: Apple

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

For Apple, the great thing about making the hardware and software that go into its computers is complete control over every aspect of the customer experience.

The bad part is that when something goes wrong, you can’t just blame Windows.

The new Touch Bar MacBook Pro has been suffering from a bunch of weird graphics glitches. According to reports from forums and users, the glitches mostly look like tearing and distortion in certain apps.

That’s not a scandal-level problem that means we need to append -Gate onto the end of it, but it’s also not the kind of thing you want when you spend $2,500 on a laptop. Luckily, it looks like a fix should be out soon.

In an email sent to a MacRumors forum member, Apple’s senior VP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said that the problem is software-based, and should be fixed in the latest beta version of macOS.

Graphics problems are reasonably common with brand-new hardware, as any PC gamer knows well. The first couple weeks after a new graphics card comes out is normally a hellscape of crashes, frame drops and blue screens of death. So, some problems were to be expected with the 15-inch Pro, which has to hand off between the integrated Intel graphics and the AMD discrete GPU.

But still, you’d think that with the two-year wait to update the Pro, someone could have spent a little time debugging the graphics driver first.

Chris Mills
Chris Mills News Editor

Chris Mills has been a news editor and writer for over 15 years, starting at Future Publishing, Gawker Media, and then BGR. He studied at McGill University in Quebec, Canada.