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Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

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Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#31

Post by kstenerud »

alexbock wrote: post #14
kstenerud wrote: post #5

They have to. Any time my MBP is working really hard, say, compiling, or talking on skype, or watching a video, or loading a web page, or browsing the filesystem, the fan ramps up like a turbine. It gets so bad that the microphone can't accurately pick up my voice.

Are you using an older model that hasn't been cleaned in a while? I use an early 2013 15" MBP and the only time I ever hear the fans is when I'm doing compilation with 8 threads (100% CPU usage on all four cores).

I have a 2011 model that I swapped an SSD into a few months back. I cleaned it out at that time as well. The fan's so damn noisy that the OTHER person on Skype can't hear me. The fans are on probably about 70% of the time I'm using the machine, and often I have to just start shutting down programs at random when I'm done until the fan stops, or else it will run like that for hours. Activity Monitor is particularly bad for CPU usage.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#32

Post by hedgehog »

jrowley wrote: post #29
DigitalJack wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a 2015 15" mbpr, and it doesn't take much for the fans to reach noisy speeds. one core pegged will do it after a few seconds. I run into this a lot with the new docker daemon. edit: just timed it (yes > /dev/null), it takes about 60 seconds of one core pegged to ramp up the fan to audible. And I'm used to silent so audible is noisy to me. Two cores pegged gets loud.

I'll echo you that my 2015 15" mbpr really screams the majority of the time. I probably should do a fresh install with the latest OS but moving files around is such a pain. Maybe we are in quiet environments and notice them more than other people?

If there's an app causing it then the "Energy" tab in Activity Monitor should show you which one. Google and Adobe apps along with their helper services are particularly poorly behaved even when "idle".

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#33

Post by Unklejoe »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #18

My MBPr 13" (Late 2012) turns off the left fan and left speaker when the microphone (which is on the left side) is in use. This is entirely in software, and Windows 10 does not also do the same. OSX has done this since 10.8, which came with the MBPr.

I guess Windows is at a disadvantage here since it doesn't know the physical layout of the components on the hardware it's running on. It would be up to the laptop manufacturers to include a driver to do such.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#34

Post by burke »

DigitalJack wrote: post #30
ianbertolacci wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were also wondering about existing temperature conditions. For example, I might be running some super benchmark that pegs the core temperature high. What happens when Siri turns on? If it still shuts down the fan thats bad. I could potentially keep prompting Siri (to turn off the fan) and drive the temperature a bit higher.

I don't have an app for monitoring cpu temps right now, and don't know if there is a CLI way to do it. I was able to keep the fan off for probably a minute before I stopped. I am interested to find out if intel's cpu throttling kicked in. edit: installed Intel Power Gadget. with 4 cores pegged (4 actual cores), the CPU was turbo-boosted (3.0GHz on my laptop). As I prevented the fans from running via Siri, the cpu thr…

There's no default utility for this. There's some sysctl values for the CPU and the GPU but they don't actually give you a temperature.

There's an API for this in IOKit. Easiest way I've found to get at it on the CLI is:

    gem install istats
    istats cpu temp | awk '{gsub(/[^0-9\.]/,"",$3);print $3}'

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#35

Post by thescriptkiddie »

jrowley wrote: post #29
DigitalJack wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a 2015 15" mbpr, and it doesn't take much for the fans to reach noisy speeds. one core pegged will do it after a few seconds. I run into this a lot with the new docker daemon. edit: just timed it (yes > /dev/null), it takes about 60 seconds of one core pegged to ramp up the fan to audible. And I'm used to silent so audible is noisy to me. Two cores pegged gets loud.

I'll echo you that my 2015 15" mbpr really screams the majority of the time. I probably should do a fresh install with the latest OS but moving files around is such a pain. Maybe we are in quiet environments and notice them more than other people?

Here's my anecdote. The fans on my MacbookPro12,1 spin up to annoying levels if I even watch a YouTube video.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#36

Post by burke »

mikeash wrote: post #19
ianbertolacci wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, I cant imagine that they'd forget something like that. Certainly on my iPhone Siri stops listening, which should on the PC restart the fan. I would be very entertained if you could melt chips with an overly patient Siri.

I'd assume it wouldn't be a timeout, but a higher temperature threshold. If the machine is on the verge of melting already then you wouldn't want to turn off the fans at all.

If the machine is on the verge of melting already, it's likely just going to hard-shutdown below the OS level.

All this could really open them up to is a hard-shutdown, and I imagine they would have implemented this as a higher threshold, not a complete disable -- at least, it seems like a really easy problem to foresee and circumvent.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#37

Post by hashkb »

n1000 wrote: post #11

It's been around for a while already. The dictation feature in OS X 10.10 already knows that trick. The thought of the little thinks is what still makes me stick with OS X.

> The thought of the little [things] is what still makes me stick with OS X.

This rubs me the wrong way because it's a vicious (positive, I guess) cycle. You keep buying iPhones, they stockpile billions in cash, and they can "think of the little things" (which is really just "How can we make OS X more like iOS and less suitable for power users?").

It's sad... but I can't imagine anyone taking the time to hack this together on their *nix laptop, and even if they did, it's not likely to be portable until a handful of other tinkerers donate their time. This will bring the downvotes, but the way we're stuck on Apple these days is far worse than the MS lock-in we revolted about in the 90s.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#38

Post by dkersten »

jbb555 wrote: post #28
ianbertolacci wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a good point, and I hope thats what they do. Im not Mac OS familiar, can other applications ask Siri to listen in? If they pause fans regardless of temperature, then it would be interesting to see if damage could be caused by an app running hot then repeatedly going to Siri. I bet theres a way to test their cutoff mechanism. Maybe someone could run some serious bench-marking apps (maybe more CPU bound ones) and…

You are unlikely to cause any damage, although you might make the CPU speed throttle right down

AFAIK most systems have an emergency shutoff anyway, so if it gets too hot, the machine simply powers off. At least, my old desktop did.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#39

Post by hmottestad »

cordite wrote: post #15
kstenerud wrote: post #5

They have to. Any time my MBP is working really hard, say, compiling, or talking on skype, or watching a video, or loading a web page, or browsing the filesystem, the fan ramps up like a turbine. It gets so bad that the microphone can't accurately pick up my voice.

My fan rarely turns on, and it is barely audible. It seems the tolerance is far beyond leg-scalding for my MBP, though it only gets to that point when recompiling a bunch of version specific libraries in a sandbox for over 10 minutes.

My work paid for the 2.8 ghz upgrade on my macbook pro 15". When doing video chat in chrome it scales up one of the cores to max and heats up quickly making the fans run at max after 10-15 min.

My older macbook pro 15" with the stock CPU doesn't get as hot and the fans run much less on that one.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#40

Post by DigitalJack »

burke wrote: post #34
DigitalJack wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have an app for monitoring cpu temps right now, and don't know if there is a CLI way to do it. I was able to keep the fan off for probably a minute before I stopped. I am interested to find out if intel's cpu throttling kicked in. edit: installed Intel Power Gadget. with 4 cores pegged (4 actual cores), the CPU was turbo-boosted (3.0GHz on my laptop). As I prevented the fans from running via Siri, the cpu thr…

There's no default utility for this. There's some sysctl values for the CPU and the GPU but they don't actually give you a temperature. There's an API for this in IOKit. Easiest way I've found to get at it on the CLI is: gem install istats istats cpu temp | awk '{gsub(/[^0-9\.]/,"",$3);print $3}'

I installed Intel Power Gadget. It's pretty nice actually, no options to configure but it's pretty useful information.
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