Greg Benz:
Unfortunately, my update was picked up and shared in the media and the story that has been shared is incorrect. I have contacted the authors of articles which I am aware of to clarify the story, however, I can only control is what I share.
So here’s the full story as simply as I can put it:
The issues with my computer are isolated to my machine only and were created by 3rd-party software I have installed. Neither the laptop hardware nor Apple software have the issues related to brightness controls as I had previously believed.
The tech media is always happy to jump on Apple. Let’s see if they report this story as “thoroughly” as they reported the original.
Good for him to set the record straight. However, he sure writes a lot of words without ever giving any detail on the actual issue. What third party software could possibly make the login screen black at bootup? How was it ultimately discovered and resolved? Was it a bug in that software? Configuration error? Other?
The author simply says “Unlikely you would run into the same set of conditions.” in response to another comment. What a BS response. Just tell us what actually happened!
And even though it was third party software that caused the issue, his ordeal highlights a few areas with room for improvement on Apple’s part. First, no third party software should be able to turn off the backlight prior to login. And second, the brightness keys should be usable prior to login (oops, Touchbar isn’t enabled yet!). And finally, did tech support at no point suggest wiping the machine and restoring data from backup? He did have backups, right?? Or at least restore to a blank partition and copy data off the original?
Yeah I see this problem a lot from so-called “experts.” There is one particularly weird blogger, Lloyd Chambers, who maintains a section of his blog titled “Apple Core Rot.” He goes on and on at length about some obscure software problem that he declares as a sign that Apple software quality control is so bad that he can’t recommend the new OS releases until HE fully stabilizes them, that takes at least a year.
Invariably his problem turns out to be caused by some incredibly stupid thing he did long ago, something that modified low level Unix functions and he forgot all about it. And then he issues a tiny tech article explaining the problem, rather than a correction. Sheesh.
I believe the original story described multiple repair efforts restoring from full backups after swapping out the motherboard or some such.
The restores are what kept duplicating the problem.
Deleted.
I’ve followed him loosely for years. As far as I can tell, he often has a point, but he’s so over the top it’s often hard to know. His angle is making money from extremely high-end equipment recommendations in his various areas of interest. Therefore it’s always in his interest to find and exaggerate any microscopic imperfection with a product and sell his readers on the (invariably most extreme) “solution.”
I remember chuckling to myself years ago when he gave a high recommendation to a certain bicycle tail lamp, one of those flashie things. It cost nearly five hundred dollars. But, you know, if you were a serious cyclist, then of course nothing less would do.
(diglloyd, macperformanceguide, and windinmyface for anybody interested. Add the dot com to each.)
I’d be willing to bet that none of them will report on this