Apple Releases Mac Pro Audio Software Update
Posted 02/12/2010 at 6:34am
| by J.R. Bookwalter
Mac Pro owners, fire up your Software Update engines! Apple has something waiting for you this week.
MacRumors is reporting that Apple released Mac Pro Audio Update 1.0 on Thursday, an important software patch that addresses heat and performances issues experienced by users of the Intel Nehalem-based Mac Pros when processing audio.
“This update is for Mac Pro (Early 2009) computers running Mac OS X v10.6.2,” the release notes explain. “This update reduces processor utilization during audio activities, such as playing or recording music.”
The full update is only 1.64MB and as mentioned above, it requires Mac OS X 10.6.2. Additional details are included in the
Apple support document online.
MacRumors explains that Mac Pro users in their forums first began complaining about the audio issues last October, which showed up with excessive power usage and processor core heat load “when performing audio-related tasks as simple as playing music through iTunes.”
The problem is not unique to Snow Leopard, although no fix is currently available to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 users. The same issues do not appear under Windows via Boot Camp on on older, pre-Nehalem Mac Pros, which seems to indicate a software problem.
