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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

#131

Post by abledon »

microtonal wrote: post #8

This is funny, but I prefer my computers silent. Semi-related: I can hear the inductors on my NVIDIA GPU, which is somewhat useful. When I am training deep learning models, the coil whine follows very regular patterns. Also, the pattern changes between training and validation. So, I can literally hear when an epoch is done. (Of course, TensorBoard for the real monitoring.)

When I'm training a model on a RTX 2070, i have a 'ticking' coilwhine that ticks every 1second... kinda funny that it only happens when i do that

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

#132

Post by minusf »

Retr0id wrote: post #124
Rd6n6 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked up some benchmarks. Apparently a m1 is 2-4x faster at many tasks than my wife’s gaming desktop from 5 years ago. It’s comparable in many benchmarks to my ryzen cpu as well? What’s the catch?

The only real catch is that you're currently limited to only 16GB of RAM.

and big sur and up... unfortunately the quality of the OS is not keeping up with the quality of the hw.

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

#133

Post by parasubvert »

gambiting wrote: post #123
lukevp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons iOS feels smoother than Android is because the render loop of the OS is decoupled from the app. The apps aren’t allowed to introduce jank, so if you’re scrolling a webpage and stuff is loading simultaneously, iOS will be way smoother. I think this is also why they can have such low latency on inputs, for example with the Apple Pencil which is much lower latency than the surface pen or the android s…

I wonder what made apple give the iPad Pro such an awful screen though, considering all the software optimisations that they do. I got the M1 iPad a month ago, and the screen has absolutely horrendous ghosting issues, like, what is this? An LCD from 2001? Just open the settings app, and quickly scroll the options up and down - white text on the black background leaves such a visible smudge, it bothers me massively wh…

This is a very interesting anecdote considering the m1 IPad Pro is supposed to have one of the best screens available on any device that form factor, the same XDR display technology as their $5000+ monsters. Every reviewer has mentioned the display as the selling point. I have looked at them in person and have debating buying one, but Next time I’m at an Apple Store I’ll want to see if I can replicate what you’re seeing.

You might be experiencing the mini-LED effect where the back lighting is regionalized, which isn’t ghosting but can be noticeable.

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

#134

Post by skavi »

gambiting wrote: post #123
lukevp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons iOS feels smoother than Android is because the render loop of the OS is decoupled from the app. The apps aren’t allowed to introduce jank, so if you’re scrolling a webpage and stuff is loading simultaneously, iOS will be way smoother. I think this is also why they can have such low latency on inputs, for example with the Apple Pencil which is much lower latency than the surface pen or the android s…

I wonder what made apple give the iPad Pro such an awful screen though, considering all the software optimisations that they do. I got the M1 iPad a month ago, and the screen has absolutely horrendous ghosting issues, like, what is this? An LCD from 2001? Just open the settings app, and quickly scroll the options up and down - white text on the black background leaves such a visible smudge, it bothers me massively wh…

Edit: the parent commenter does not have a miniLED iPad.

If you have the 12.9” M1 iPad, the ghosting is likely due to the new miniLED backlight which was introduced with that model.

This backlight is not static, but tracks to content in order to increase effective contrast (similar to FALD backlights on higher end LCD TVs). If the backlight does not track the LCD content fast enough, there can be ghosting.

In addition, since the LEDs are large compared to pixels, you can sometimes see haloing, particularly in small bits of white on a black background.

Overall, while the display is great for video, especially HDR video, it has some problems with UI and (white on black) text.

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

#135

Post by Rd6n6 »

minusf wrote: post #132
Retr0id wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only real catch is that you're currently limited to only 16GB of RAM.

and big sur and up... unfortunately the quality of the OS is not keeping up with the quality of the hw.

How so?

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

#136

Post by ryanSrich »

barrkel wrote: post #127
ryanSrich wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone explain to me the psychology of having 30 tabs open? Why not just bookmark the URLs to an ephemeral folder or something? Having more than 10 tabs open is beyond stressful for me, and honestly I can’t see how having more open would make anyone more productive. Really curious to learn about other workflows and excessive tab use is one I’m morbidly curious about.

Bookmarks are like a bin things get thrown into and completely forgotten about. I open a bookmark maybe once a week, and then it's usually for something like accessing the wifi router, or a bookmarklet for adapting a web site. Tabs are like a TODO list. If something needs to have attention paid to it, and then dismissed, I open a tab for it. (Of course, I use Firefox & Tree Style Tabs. I find Chrome almost unusable d…

Interesting.

I’d never be able to use Tabs as todos because I personally use tabs very ephemerally. Closing out of chrome with 3 profiles and 10 tabs each open is nothing to me because I don’t care what tabs are open. If they’re important links then I’ve already written them down in Roam and/or bookmarked them.

question - how do you find anything? Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve never used tree tabs, but finding the link you used last week or last month to complete a task sounds like a nightmare without bookmarking it. Contrast this with my workflow, which doesn’t rely on tabs, and I can easily find it in my notes in less than 10 seconds.

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

#137

Post by willyt »

testfoobar wrote: post #98
RandomWorker wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, it’s like a freaky experience. I run mostly from the browser but have a couple of things going at the same time. One thing I noticed is the blazing fast typing on the Mac. There is an ever so small lag on windows in perceptible when using it. But, when you type on the Mac you notice it, and the brain just feels good using it. I have no idea if this is a real thing, but it’s similar with scrolling, you touc…

Typing lag is such a sad result of all our modern computing abstractions. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/261148-modern-computer...

Sounds broken? Return it.

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

#138

Post by skavi »

porknubbins wrote: post #95
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…

As a hardware nerd I always kind of like that moment when the CPU starts really working and you hear fans spin way up. The auditory feedback is like a throwback to a more mechanical age, like a manual transmission vehicle where you can judge when to shift by engine speed.

I like it if the laptop only starts the fan up when the device actually is working. Not constantly turning it on and off during like light web browsing.

My 2018 MBP 13” and the Surface Laptop I’ve tried did that well. An XPS 15 I’m currently using does not.

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

#139

Post by lucb1e »

Animats wrote: post #85
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 does…

Wait, why would the device get warm during suspend? Or do you mean a different kind of sleep mode? I'm thinking of the state where it just refreshes DRAM to keep its contents (this does not produce much heat at all) and everything else is off: that definitely does not require the cpu fan to run because the cpu is not processing any instructions during that state.

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

#140

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

Is this a "hardware have gotten fast enough" situation?

My latest laptop (Ryzen 7) takes a lot of beating before putting the fans at an audible speed. I've never seen this happen in laptops before either. (But well, my last one didn't slow down either, it just started making some noise.)

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