MacBook Pro 2018 Core i9 model: What was going on?

A few weeks ago, the new MacBook Pros were introduced, including an Intel Core i9 processor. Unfortunately, all users of these models experienced thermal throttling. But why?

Worse than the i7 model

YouTuber Dave Lee was one of the first to test the new MacBook. In his video, he showed that exporting a project in Adobe Premiere Pro takes longer on the model with Core i9 than on the model with Core i7. The reason for this: thermal throttling. This is where the clock frequency is reduced significantly to prevent damage to the CPU. However, this should not happen, as the CPU should normally be cooled by the fan. And indeed: after Lee put the MacBook in the freezer and repeated the test, the times were better than before and better than the export times achieved with the i7 model. The conclusion: the fan in the MacBook Pro cannot cool the Core i9 properly.
This affects not only a handful of users, but everyone who owns the MacBook Pro 2018 with Core i9.

The update that is supposed to fix everything

The thermal throttling was caused by a bug in the firmware. This meant that the laptops were constantly running at the temperature limit. This is no longer the case with the update released by Apple, which has been available for a few days now with version number 10.13.6. According to initial testers, the speeds of the affected devices are now also better, but the devices still get very hot - especially when doing things like exporting video projects.