MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update addresses SATA interface speeds

Uh, yeah, this problem was "fixed" by the firmware update 1.7, except that the fix appears to be responsible for degrading performance by seemingly causing a case of persistent "spinning pinwheel"-syndrome when the machine is under load. It also prevents upgrading the harddrive to a 3rd party drive (e.g., WD Scorpio Black), which is "unsupported", but they have instructions on how to do it right in the user manual, and it worked fine on all previous Macbook Pros. My main motivation for wanting to upgrade the HD was to hopefully solve the "spinning pinwheel" problem, but that was shot due to the incompatibility with EFI update 1.7.

These problems are well documented in a huge thread on the apple support site:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10137928#10137928

Anyone facing these problems should submit feedback to Apple (http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html), since there does not seem to be enough of a ground swell to force Apple to fix the issue.

FYI, the problem definitely appears to be a firmware or hardware issue for me, since I do not get the "spinning pinwheel of death" when I run from the original HD in an external USB enclosure, only when the HD is installed into the Macbook Pro.

I looked up the model (Hitachi) of HDD (147.6Gb) in my UMBP 13" and it would only do 1.5Gbit/sec anyway.

Anyone else bother to check their actual drive specs?

Thanks Apple, responding to issues like this, no matter how small, in such short order, leave me feeling even better about my decision to take the plunge!

I suspect that Apple reduced the speed of SATA to make the battery life of their new non-replaceable battery look better.

Now with SATA at full speed, the real question is whether Apple will change the battery life specs on the new MBP's!

THE REAL ISSUE:

What is the SATA interface for pre-installed "Apple" SSD's on 15" UMBP'S?

The firmware only addresses non-Apple installed SSD's.

If NEW UMBP's with SSD's ship with SATA 1.5, then there is something seriously wrong with their understanding...and ours, since this has not been addressed!

Good on them for updating quickly

If you only have a regular hard drive you won't notice any difference. It only matters for SSD and the likes which can saturate 1.5Gbps.

(http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/15/new-macbook-pros-shipped-with-hdds-only-have-1-5gbps-sata-chips/)

can everyone just knock it off now.. a small driver issue the first week of a new product line is not that big of a deal--- think V*sta

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/firmware_hardware/macbookproefifirmwareupdate.html

I'm puzzled by people thinking this was some conspiracy by marking people or whatever.

Apple has engineers that make their products. Engineers are humans. Humans make mistakes. And some Apple engineer made a mistake in the EFI code for the new system and it resulted in the SATA bus being slowed down to the SATA I specification. Here we are 2 weeks after the products came out, and Apple has fixed it with another firmware update.

No conspiracy needed to explain this one. But clearly it was newsworthy enough to be plastered all over the place and hyped up as some conspiracy. *sigh*

This is nice to know. Although it doesnt affect me. (using White MB)