Apple said the fixes a problem reported by "a small number of customers" using drives based on the latest SATA specification with the , released this month.
But Apple warned that it has not shipped drives operating at the higher-speed specification, saying, "While this update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbit/sec, Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported."
Apple interface on its most recent MacBook Pro laptop models, moving from a 3Gbit/sec. interface to 1.5Gbit/sec.
Most industry observers Computerworld spoke to speculated that the MacBook Pro line was experiencing higher than acceptable data error rates related to the 3Gbit/sec. SATA interface.
Apple has yet to respond to multiple requests for information about the reason for its SATA downgrade on the MacBook Pro.