Apple Fixes 17" MacBook Pro Graphics Issue

Over the last few weeks, a number Apple customers who invested in the new 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro have been reporting problems with the graphics on their new machines.

For those unaware, the notebook contains both a GeForce 9400M and a GeForce 9600M GT. Through March, many customers have been complaining about vertical green lines on the display. While the lines only seem to appear when users switch to the 9600M GT card (sticking with the integrated graphics fixes the issue), it’s not surprising that those who had forked out serious cash for the machine were pretty ticked off.

Apple today released a graphics firmware update and published an article entitled “About the MacBook Pro Graphics Firmware Update 1.0” on the site’s support pages that explained this recent update would take care of people’s problems of nasty lines all over their screens.

The document walks you through the firmware update (usual stuff like making sure you’re plugged into a power source and making sure you’ve successfully updated by checking your “About This Mac” details afterward).

Unfortunately, Apple has not revealed what the new firmware changes or fixes to rid the system of the graphical flaws. We just hope that it's not hardware related to the Nvidia GPU as we've all been down that road before.

We know there a few of you out there who had ordered these (we found you out when Apple was screwing around with shipping dates). If you guys had issues with the graphics let us know if the update has solved your problem.

And if you don't own one of these, read on Tom's Guide about someone who spent $2,845 on one.