Here’s my plan. I bought a refurb 2018 MacBook Pro 15” on 11/15 and it worked fine for the first week or so. Then, the following happened:
• 11/15/2018: Received/Started using laptop
• 11/24/2018: Kernel Panic over night
• 11/25/2018: Kernel Panic over night
• 11/26/2018 9:00AM: Network hangup - network briefly froze, then came back
• 11/26/2018 9:30AM: System froze - took a long time to power off.
• 11/27/2018 8:45AM: System rebooted - randomly rebooted with kernel panic, I was not at the computer as I had just stepped away during a conference call.
• 11/29/2018 9:00PM: Network hangup - network froze, spinning wheel in ToolBar, browser not resolving websites. Apps are also slow to launch. Trying to launch Activity Monitor, it’s not launching. Console not launching, Terminal not launching. System totally froze at 9:18 and shut down. Fan briefly came on full blast. I powered backup, had to log back in, system is warm and fan ran at first. WTF? Crash report popped up.
⁃ 11/30/2018 1:58PM: Apps hung and system crashed again . As I was joining a customer call.
⁃ 12/1/2018 8:06AM: Opened laptop and it had to boot up (seemed to be powered on, just not booted). Crash report of bug_type 210
⁃ 12/3/2018 7:10AM : Opened laptop and it had to boot up (seemed to be powered on, just not booted). Crash report of bug_type 210
- 12/4/2018 - 3:15PM - system was on fine, then the fan went on high for a second and the system shut down (all within a 1-2 seconds). Had to fully power up from powered off.
- 12/5/2018 - installed update Mojave 10.14.2
- 12/8/2018 2:30PM - Network hangup - network froze, spinning wheel in ToolBar, then the fan went on high for a second and the system shut down. Upon reboot, crash report same error as previous.
- 12/9/2018 6:45PM - Opened laptop from sleep and it was restarted. Had to log in. Crash report, same error popped up. (yes, just half an hour ago from my posting this...enough's enough)
I am able to return this one, so I have initiated the process. Instead I am getting a 2017 15” refurb, which is what I had before (but new not refurb…gave it to my wife and figured I’d get a 2018 while I was at it). I had no idea of these issues at the time, but these issues have been hitting with enough regularity to be very concerned.
Side note: I’ve been using Apple products since the Apple ][+ in 1980 and this is the first time since then (I’ve owned numerous Apple ][’s, NeXTStations and Cubes, MacBook’s, Mac Pro’s, iMacs, Mac mini, several recent generation (2009 on) MacBook Pro’s (probably between 20-30 computers over the years) and this is the first set of issues like this I’ve had since some chip issues on the ][+ which could be mediated by swapping out some chips (those days are long since gone.
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I had my MacBook Pro 2017 for about a year and a half and it’s been rock solid, aside from the keyboard. The 2017 keyboard has been flaky ('s' key popped off, one was sticking for a while but seems to have fixed itself…overall pretty minor issues (so far) and all covered under AppleCare. My wife is much less demanding on laptops so I’m anticipating it to last fine. I use mine for work and it’s on non-stop all day for calls, presentations, slide decks, docs, complicated spreadsheets, occasional video and design work, music, etc.
I’m going to use the 2017 until I see a rock star MacBook Pro come out (you know, every so often Apple nails it and comes out with the perfectly balanced workhorse of power, features, weight loss, etc).
I love the feel of the keyboard on the 2017, like the 2018 even better, Love the weight of the 2017/2018s, design-wise a step in the right direction. Maybe by 2019/2020 they’ll nail it again. I want to say 2013 or 2015 was the last time they really nailed it? And these generally have great longevity, we’ve often had 4-5 around the house between 1 and 8 years old, and even old ones have reasonable resale value.
The TouchBar is not only useless, but annoying to use to adjust brightness, volume, etc. I don’t believe I’ve used it for anything else. I’ve gotten used to a ‘virtual’ ESC key, but that’s a bit odd to critical key to fake. Though it has never failed me on the TouchBar.
I do like TouchID, that’s been handy. The bigger touch pad is nice, and while I’m cool with only USB-C connections, Magsafe is a major loss that I greatly miss - I can only guess it’s hard to implement with the laptop being this thin, they have been getting weaker over the years as the laptops have gotten smaller.
I’d like to hope 10.14.2 is fixing issues for people, I’m sure it is in some cases and will continue to improve. But I have some crazy travel and work schedule coming up and can’t afford to be down nor take them time to troubleshoot and spend hours at the Genius Bar. I need it to “Just work” as they have in the past.
Caveats: yes, the 2018 is a refurb., I’ve probably bought 50/50 refurb vs new in the past 20 years and have never had an issue with refurbs, until now I have wholeheartedly recommended them to anyone who didn’t need retail box new. Hopefully new batches of 2018 MBP’s are working out for folks, based on the poll on here it sounds like most people aren’t having an issue.
I have all the crash reports from the event crash history in case anyone would benefit from more specific errors to help you troubleshoot your issues.
Looking forward to the next killer generation of MBP’s, hopefully in the next couple of years.