Macbook Pro 2018 overheating, and other strange problems

Of course theoretically too much RAM is wasteful and never used. But I've never run across such a situation. I guess if one was to get 32 GB RAM and only ever use his computer to write an occasional email the 32 GB RAM would never be used. But if one is writing Word douments, reading/writing email, browsing, editing music, watching videos, etc., then all the RAM would be used not only a portion thereby saving RAM unused for whatever reason.

With respect to the battery, different users and environments will experience different battery use. The numbers published by Apple are theoretical more than practical.

To tell you the truth. I don't know many who actually do all of those things at one time. I haven't been able to edit photos, watch a video, edit music, and do all of those other mundane tasks you describe all at one time. If I could, we would be in agreement.

Otherwise, my laptop 'at rest' uses up 5-6GB of RAM. And browsing, emails, and working on my Office files only adds up to 1GB or less. It looks like Apps working in background with the new operating system eat up more RAM than earlier machines and OS.

I migrated my MacBook Air 2013 TM Backup to the new MBPro. So they are running just about the identical programs and apps.

Apple has no answer.

And, the battery life, as claimed by Apple, is 10 hours. This is under 'normal' conditions. This is not their top number but one that they feel comfortable in promoting. It is more like an average. Some users have gotten more and others less. 40-60% less is not acceptable to me. I am running another test this evening focusing on the screen brightness. We'll see what happens. Tomorrow into Apple's local store and have them check out the battery. I refuse to accept this product if the battery does not perform reasonably.

So, I went to my local Apple store and my 'Genius', who was more than helpful, advised to change out the laptop for a brand new one. I have had it now running for 3 days---with High Sierra as my OS X. So far it has been running normally as I would expect. What is interesting is that, while at Apple, the issue of battery drain was not really addressed with any specificity. Yet, there are blogs/threads out 'here' that discuss the battery drain issue when moving into Mojave--and I only had the latest updated version. So, I am holding off d/l Mojave until I hear more and possible fixes. The heat problem was reduced as well.

Of course my original unit could have had a problem. So, if anyone has the same 2018 15.4/2.6 unit and is running Mojave without any issues; I would like to hear back.

Thanks for the feedback.

Hi guys. Experiencing the same issue. Got my first one in december 2018 replaced it with a new one after 14 days, which came in yesterday - started working on it today same issue! As soon as you work on it and it can be a simple task such us browsing or answering a few emails on safari it is overheating like crazy. If you don't it cools down. Also the battery drains like 1% per minute if you are working on it. I don't even know what will happen when I start working on 2 screens, after effects and photoshop (did not even install them). My config is 13", i7, 16gb ram.

So as far as I understood it was not a hardware issue. If it has really to do with mojave, how can I go back to high sierra with this new mbp?

Anyone else found any solution in the meantime. I'd really like to keep this as this is my first mac after windows, but neither on windows I experienced this. My HP spectre still has a 3-5h battery life after 3 years full usage, while this one *** after being on it for only 3 hours.

Thanks!

​[Edited by Host]

Your trip to the Apple store will not yield any answer that is satisfactory. You must restore the original OS X High Sierra and forget about Mojave until Apple does another update that addresses these problems. Or return it for a full refund.

Hi all, me again

I already posted on this forum stating that I have the same issue with my MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

I have notice that MACBOOK PRO starts heating when:

1. I start a videoconferencing using GoToMeeting or Google Hangout.
2. Using Lightroom and exporting RAW pics to JPEG format (CPU temperature is up 100 celsius degrees)

Anybody knows how to scale this to apple?...

Sounds very much like Spotlight is indexing the system. On a new Mac it could take up to 48 hours. I have a 2018 MBP and the battery life is the full 10 hours quoted by Apple. I would also recommend to stay away from Chrome unless you really need it. Chrome is a big resource hog.

Agreed, and that's exactly what I was trying to tell the earlier poster. People always think Apple is the only company that makes computers with issues. It's only because of Apple's high popularity and YouTubers who say negative things to get clicks. Grass isn't always greener. The Lenovo X1 Extreme was something many Windows users were waiting for. Lenovo quotes it as 15 hours battery life, but with the 4K screen the battery life gets cut down to a max of 6 hours with simple use. It's not much more with the standard 1080 HD screen. It gets very hot and drains the battery. Noisy fans on this machine is another big complaint.

Hi DPJ, thank you for your reply.

1. No Chrome unless I have to test a website. I am a web developer and I use Safari for Wordpress. But I do use Chrome occasionally to test a webpage.
2. I will check the activity monitor to find out which app is using high resources.

I do watch video and I have the MacBook Pro connected to an external display for this. Not sure if this contributes to high heat as I'm mirroring the display. But I normally turn off the display for this.

If all else fails, I'll try the PRAM reset you suggested. Thank you.

I also have the 2018 13" MacBook Pro with 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7 & 16GB of RAM. When I first purchased the computer I had many similar issues as described here. I also visited the Genius Bar (all tested fine), performed numerous SMC resets and sent logs of both my Activity Monitor as well as Mac Fan Control. I finally reached a Tier II level support tech who suggested that I complete a new install of the OS (I was running Mojave 10.14.4) Thie computer has performed much better and cooler. I still experience rapid heat build-up on certain web sites. Everything from nike.com, cnet.com, theverge.com and even news sites such as cnn.com. The heat builds up almost instantaneously when one of these windows is open (doesn't seem to matter if it is Chrome or Safari by the way) I typically have 6-8 tabs open in Chrome and 2-4 in Safari. (my company uses Google apps primarily, so I don't have a choice as the systems are optimized to run in Chrome) In any case, it is maddening that a machine that in theory should be blazing fast can be impacted in heat and performance by one tab in either browser. Just crazy, I have not gone back to Apple as I am weary of reporting this. I am also curious if anyone has heard of 2018 MacBook Airs suffering similar issues.

Thanks to the community for any input or advice in advance.

"I am also curious if anyone has heard of 2018 MacBook Airs suffering similar issues."

This is the MacBook Pro section. Was this a typo?

I have a 2018 MBP and suffer no overheating issues as you are. You might want to check your applications or utilities that may be running in the background.

What are your temperatures under what loads?

My temps are typically 40-50C idle, 60C active, 80C under load, 95-100C when all four cores and GPU are working hard.

My 2018 13" drives two monitors plus external drives and peripherals through a hub, editing photos and videos.

I don't think it overheats because it really has to be busy for the fans to come up.

And I don't think a Mac is overheating unless it is crashing and shutting itself down out of desparation. If it continues to run applications and complete jobs, keeping its temperature under the 100C Intel CPU limit, then I don't think it's overheating. If your Mac is staying under 90C then I really don't think it's overheating, it's just running hot.

I do not think overheating can be judged from a hot exterior alone. Sometimes that just means the Mac is successfully pushing heat outside. Internal and external temperatures can be very different. The internal temperature is what matters.

"I really think the MBP has a more powerful hardware than the OS can efficiently handle. "

That's a completely false statement.