Free your Speech

Thank you so much for having published broken firmware updated.

I had no problems with my Macbook Pro running Linux, until I decided to update to the EFI 1.4 firmware.

This firmware was supposed to fix keyboard problems when booting. That problem was not particularly annoying, but I thought that upgrading the EFI firmware would not do any harm. Apple does not warn against any potential problems.

However, after the upgrade, MacbookPro core 2 duo 17″ laptops are broken under Windows and under Linux. The video is corrupt and some colours can not be displayed correctly anymore.

Apparently, Apple does not care about it at all, they even blacklisted some threads in their discussion forums talking about that specific problem.

There are other lenghty discussions.

There is no fix for that problem, and no firmware update since last September. Complaints from users are being ignored.

What can I do ? Ask my employer to buy me a new laptop ?

That’s not serious, it is probably the first and the last time I buy anything from Apple.

Update: It seems the radeonhd driver largely attenuates the problem compared to the proprietary fglrx. It means no 3D, but I don’t need it.