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An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

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Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#81

Post by monkaiju »

jmkni wrote: post #25

Pre M1, I've always preferred a PC. When I'm using a laptop, especially doing real work, they heat up, the fans go crazy, the laptop is hot to the touch and everything slows down. It almost makes you anxious. You're wondering if it's about to crash or go on fire. I've always kept a Desktop PC on the go for this reason, a well cooled desktop just doesn't have these issues. With a laptop, I always feel like I'm comprom…

I've been on a ThinkPad X1 Extreme for almost 2 years (gen 2 with the i9) and never had any noise or throttling issues. I sit next to my partner (also a dev) and their i9 macbook pro regularly spins up then throttles the cpu a ton. We've seen it regularly throttle down by 70-82% (measured with pmset -g thermlog)

Just saying, I definitely get the feeling Apple values form over function. His biggest issues happen when he's using Docker (the annoying Docker for Desktop version) but I also use Docker all day and dont have any issues...

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#82

Post by sgt »

blunte wrote: post #53

Haha! I sort of need this. It's amazing how the only time I realize I have a runaway process is if my laptop heats up. It's truly incredible how much serious heavy work I do on a "little" M1 Air. MySQL and Postgres, Redis, Sidekiqs, Mailcatcher (small, but still), a couple of Rails apps, Spotify, Spark mail app, Firefox with dozens of tabs, Safari, Calendar, Photos in the background hopefully identifying faces, etc.…

Makes me want to replace my i7 MBP sooner than I was planning!

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#83

Post by sgt »

mirekrusin wrote: post #73
stephencanon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fan _was_ their notification. Why would they have wasted time adding another?

./build && say "done"

You wouldn't be able to hear that when the fan on my MBP is blowing at its peak :-)

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#84

Post by morcheeba »

bentcorner wrote: post #28
akmarinov wrote: post #22

No troll, the fan shutting off was how I knew my app had compiled and I could start debugging. With the M1, I now have to check the cpu usage history occasionally.

Honestly I believe that as developers we don't use audible feedback enough in our tooling. Imagine diagnosing your app health like you could diagnose your connection speed of a dial-up modem.

I've been feeling just the opposite - I've been using an IDE from the mid-2000s for a legacy project, and it's amazing how things have changed. The search function dings a bell if nothing is found, and it does it in real-time as you type... so it gets annoying really quick (no auto-complete, and not even ctrl-v to paste in to the search query)

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#85

Post by Animats »

MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #4

That's pretty hilarious. Until recently I didn't think of the CPU fan as an auditory cue for how hard your system is working. But now I can remember times that excessive fan noise has prompted me to investigate the cause of excessive usage.

Oh, yes. This has been an ongoing problem with "sleep mode", which users think means "off", but isn't really. Some Windows docs for hardware makers indicated that "sleep mode" should stop the fans, to maintain the illusion that the machine is "off". Some machines do that, and some stick to temperature-based fan control, so the fans continue to turn if the machine is warm. Some users then complain that sleep mode doesn't work because the fans are still turning.

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#86

Post by samat »

bentcorner wrote: post #28
akmarinov wrote: post #22

No troll, the fan shutting off was how I knew my app had compiled and I could start debugging. With the M1, I now have to check the cpu usage history occasionally.

Honestly I believe that as developers we don't use audible feedback enough in our tooling. Imagine diagnosing your app health like you could diagnose your connection speed of a dial-up modem.

remember ping?

     -a      Audible.  Include a bell (ASCII 0x07) character in the output
             when any packet is received.  This option is ignored if other
             format options are present.

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#87

Post by enlyth »

hollerith wrote: post #70
enlyth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I mentioned it is because OP's usage caught me off guard. Most of the time in colloquial usage I've seen PC used as an acronym to mean "computer with Windows installed as the OS", especially when being compared to Apple's products. But in this case it was used as "desktop computer", which sounded strange to me as I consider laptops, however portable, to be personal computers.

I agree with all of that -- and regret the recent trend of using "PC" to mean desktop as opposed to laptop -- but what does any of that have to do with Apple's marketing? You don't think Apple's marketing is behind the aforementioned recent trend; do you?

My understanding was that Apple's marketing created the initial deviation from the original meaning which led to the current one, but yes seeing what other people are commenting now it's not that simple and I was wrong on my assumption

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#88

Post by Justsignedup »

brokencode wrote: post #33
mlyle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both. It's harder and harder to grind out progress (and if you compare M1 to where the 90's-early 2000's exponential progression, we're not so close). As it gets harder, it becomes more capital intensive and the probability of success on any given process node decreases. The marginal utility of a doubling of computing is likely decreasing with time, too. At some point, these factors are going to compound to slow…

I don’t think the marginal utility of doubling computing will diminish any time soon. As we gain more computing power, we just start doing more and more computation heavy tasks that weren’t possible before. For example, VR games are notoriously demanding on today’s hardware, especially if you want to put that hardware in the headset. And many applications get slower over time, not faster, as new features are added. T…

Also old programs had to hyoeroptimize because it either is that or it's too slow.

Today the speed of the computer makes it incredibly forgiving.

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#89

Post by DenseComet »

jedberg wrote: post #43

This is funny. For the last ten years I've used Mac laptops as my primary machine. Of course the fan noise was a great auditory clue to tell me to check out Activity Monitor/top for rogue processes and help me optimize which tasks took too many resources. I didn't realize how much I relied on that cue until I temporarily switched to a Mac desktop machine during the pandemic when I didn't need to travel. The desktop f…

I'm also trying to figure out a solution for remote access/file sync. I've been using resilio sync to sync my files between my laptop and desktop. It works great, but it destroys battery life on my laptop, so I've been looking for solutions.

Syncthing is next on my to try list, but its very similar to resilio sync so I don't have high hopes. iCloud drive/dropbox/etc have issues with syncing git repos, so not sure about that either.

Re: An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes up

#90

Post by sachamps »

I’ll wait for the Pro… But honestly - the last Airs and Pros are a joke especially while using a second Monitor. The Pro has a known bug and can get pretty slow. The Air - unresponsive as hell if a second monitor is used and u are in a virtual conference with screencast and cam on. We must always look at the price value tag and at that point Apple really disappointed recently. Don’t get me wrong… I am a Dev and i appreciate the same things as you do. But I am not hyped by the M1… I just think at that price point apple should get things sorted out finally and if the M1 works out… Well, than thanks Apple and thanks for let me buying all this expensive crap upfront ;)
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