Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked in OEM electronics since 2007, and spent almost entire career in roles around manufacturing. And yes, when cookie cutter OEM laptops were making money, I did them too. > It is a bit presumptuous to say "well i could do it better" when referencing an entire team of qualified electrical engineers at one of the largest corporations in the world that has near limitless resources. Well, they still clearly screwed…
So you are the missing link in their hardware team? If you have the answers, go work for them. You probably wouldn’t even have to interview, just tell them in your cover letter than you are better than 1000 of their hardware and materials science guys. While you’re at it, you might as well offer to rewrite the operating system as well, because why not? As far as “clearly screwed up,” I’m not sure how clear that is. A…
MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
261–270 of 311 posts
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
This cliched argument is quite ironic and insane. A leader doesn't have to be visionary all the time. Just last week there was a news about Apple selling more Watches than the entire Swiss industry and no one would talk about Cook there but when things go wrong, we forget that it's someone in QA or Product but all the blame goes to how Cook isn't a Product guy.
No Apple watch is expected to last longer than five years, particularly with software updates. Additionally, the Swiss watch industry is not being subsidized by the US health insurance industry.
And the US health insurance industry isn’t buying watches in any great numbers (yet.) The US health insurance interest isn’t driving the demand, the demand is driving the interest.
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#263What can I say as a person somewhat close to electronics engineering: Look at that single skinny heat pipe, it will get saturated very fast. Second to that, look at those tiny radiators, they are clearly not capable to discharge the full heat flux. I simply don't see any signs of proper thermal engineering there. Apple says "we are listening now, and here is a new cooling design," then it comes out to be even less ad…
If I had to guess they know what they're doing engineering wise, but they're taking a calculated (and poorly thought out, in my opinion) risk that a small percent of people will regularly peg the cpu at 100% usage, and they're further relying upon clock rate throttling and the cpu die thermal sensor to keep things from melting down. Or the management/product design group has overridden the input of the people who act…
Is Apple ignoring this? Or just assuming these workloads are short/bursty enough to not worry about sustained utilization?
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#264Been using Mac primarily since 2011 and sad to see everything keep declining with Apple's software and hardware quality. When programming an app and its backend with react native/clojure my 2015 Mac Pro gets way too hot and slow. Just built a Ryzen 3600 desktop with 32 gigs of RAM for about 1/4th the price as the cheapest 16 inch Macbook. Windows with WSL2 has been extremely good and I'm satisfied with my development…
I think you are underestimating the cost of your setup. There is no way in my opinion that you can build a decent PC with 1/4 price of a MacBook Pro. European prices might be higher, 2699 official price for base 16" (you can actually get it for 2399 from official resellers). But still 675 Eu for a proper setup is impossible. Just the CPU and RAM will cost you a bit over 300. I know you are just making a point, but it…
Total 720
If you already own a case, psu, storage, gpu, you can upgrade for like $400.
You could even get a 1600AF or 2600X for $80 or $140 respectively
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a 2160p external monitor attached to my MBP 16" via Thunderbolt/Displayport 1.2 at 60 Hz. I tried out the five different "Looks like" scalings the Display Preferences allow for and then eyeballed the "Radeon High Side" wattage readouts via iStat Menus: 1280x720: 18W 1920x1080: 6W 2560x1440: 6W 3200x1800: 6W 3840x2160: 6W So it looks like it might (also?) be related to the display resolution scaling.
It would make sense if situations where the native panel resolution doesn't match the framebuffer resolution are causing the driver stack to have to maintain two framebuffers (native and non-native) to do the upscale and then feed it to the monitor. GeForce drivers on windows specifically have a setting to control whether this happens or not (let the monitor scale it, have the GPU scale it). The upscale would not onl…
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me (and at least one other commenter in this thread), the issue occurs when plugged into an external monitor. The linked thread seems to indicate the same. Any thoughts on that? I'll check the relevant setting.
I think graphics switching only works when running on battery power. Wonder if there's a way of make it still work when plugged in...
Not an option if you are using it for your "work" workflow.
There must be a kill switch somewhere; I'll have a look.
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems unrelated; I think Mac OS is the only place where non native resolutions use GPU-accelerated scaling. The other operating systems just set whatever resolution you asked for and let the monitor handle it. This seems to be excessive GPU use when simply connecting an external monitor at its native res.
Also, at least macOS provides a consistent resolution for windows, texts, etc. On Windows (after Win 8), many times old applications run with __blurred__ texts and icons while the new shiny Win apps have no such problem. It's actually one of the reasons I don't use Windows anymore, although it's been making good progress.
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems unrelated; I think Mac OS is the only place where non native resolutions use GPU-accelerated scaling. The other operating systems just set whatever resolution you asked for and let the monitor handle it. This seems to be excessive GPU use when simply connecting an external monitor at its native res.
NVIDIA drivers on Windows have an option to scale on the GPU instead of on the monitor, though I'm not certain whether they ever default that on. Presumably it's there as a workaround for people with bad/broken monitors. It'd be interesting to try and measure whether that option raises power draw...
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How can we move forward using Apple? And why should they? What's wrong with trying out something like Thinkpad X series[1] instead? Or Thinkpad P series, which can now come with Ubuntu LTS pre-installed. I wonder, if they would have invested so much time in fixing Dell's issues for Dell. Probably not. Why? Because there is no Dell's lock-in. [1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/c/t...
I have a SAAS that uses video chat for medical professionals and the #1 creator of support tickets for video problems are those with Lenovo. In fact, when someone has an audio of video problem, “Is this a Lenovo” is among the first questions we ask. The people who have the fewest technical issues? Mac users. A single anecdote, of course, but advice to switch to Linux is naïve. Most people aren’t software developers.…
That says nothing without knowing what percentage of people were using each brand.
Also, Lenovo's consumer hardware is of a much lower quality than Lenovo Thinkpads, which still maintain the standards of IBM.
> A single anecdote, of course, but advice to switch to Linux is naïve. Most people aren’t software developers.
I have switched all of my non-technical family members from Windows to Ubuntu over 5 years ago, and haven't received a single complaint from them yet. A single anecdote, of course.
> Many people use their computers for things like graphic design or media editing.
That's a minority of computer users. Most people use computers for web browsing, media consumption, and editing of Office documents.
> How do you run Final Cut or Logic on Lenovo with Linux? Photoshop?
Bitwig Studio[1] runs on all platforms and is in many ways superior to Logic Pro.
Adobe Photoshop can be installed on Linux[2], but for professional graphical and video editing I would still choose MacOS.
In other words, the only market where iMacs and Macbooks are clearly above competition is creative industry.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitwig_Studio
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7ql4kl/the_screensho...
Re: MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
#270There isn't anything wrong here. One of the confusing issues is that people say, "I'm only using 15% of my CPU, the fans should not be coming on." What they don't realize, is that using 1 core running at turbo speeds is only going to show up as 15% of the CPU, but draw enough power and create enough heat to trigger the fans! Another thing that some of these posters are not aware of, is that running these temperature/…
macOS (Activity Monitor) reports utilization normalized to a single core, so 15% really means 15% of a single core. On the MBP the scale goes up to 1600%.