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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

#241

Post by tbrock »

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 dont understand why they sell the pro. The touchbar is rubbish and the air has 99% the same performance. Yeah the pro can go faster for longer without throttle but its heavier and doesnt have those physical f-keys.

Its more expensive too… not sure why anyone would buy it over the air. Two more usb-c but you can only hook in one external monitor! Also 200 more nits on screen but… is it really that important?

I cant wait for the 14/16 with the m1x. These are already barn burners.

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

#242

Post by qudat »

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…

> Now I'm looking for a better remote access solution so I can consider sticking with a desktop at home and then maybe just an iPad for travel with good remote access and file sync.

This is my solution. I don't really need to do any file syncing as rsync or scp works fine for my purposes. It has been a fantastic dev experience. I remote in, bring up my last tmux session and pick up exactly where I left off, regardless of the front-end machine. I use an ipad pro for a ton of development now and it really is fantastic for it.

I've got a overkill desktop dev machine (previous gaming rig) that can make all the noise it wants in my basement and my front-end shell remains quiet.

I set up zerotier so I can constant access to it whether I'm on my local network or remote.

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

#243

Post by heavyset_go »

grishka wrote: post #221
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…

Android has had a separate "render thread" for ages, though it's per app and runs in the app process. Some animations run on it, but many do not. You can't access it directly from within the app. The thing macOS on M1 does very cleverly is scheduling threads on cores. IIRC all UI threads run on high-power cores, while all background tasks run on low-power ones. So they never interfere with each other. iOS probably do…

> The thing macOS on M1 does very cleverly is scheduling threads on cores. IIRC all UI threads run on high-power cores, while all background tasks run on low-power ones. So they never interfere with each other. iOS probably does the same; Android probably does none of this.

This feature has been in the Linux kernel for ages[1]. Android and ChromeOS are based on the Linux kernel, and have had this feature for quite some time. This is nothing new.

[1] https://community.arm.com/developer/ip-products/processors/b...

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

#244

Post by Saris »

hackathonguy wrote: post #32

Wondering if it's just me: I bought an M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM, based on reports saying that RAM management is much more effective than with Intel CPUs. Ever since, I'm really struggling with load management. I typically have Chrome open with 20-30 tabs, plus a couple of Electron apps (Notion, Slack, Google Calendar), and my MacBook frequently slows down to a crawl or gets stuck entirely. Simple commands - "cl…

I don't have an M1, but on my computers I find Chrome to be memory heavy and rather slow.

It's worth trying out Firefox and seeing if that works better for you.

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

#246

Post by nyanpasu64 »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #107
DenseComet wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abo…

Syncthing is great, however the biggest issue Ive found with thr Mac version is you explicitly need to end the task in the upper taskbar or it will just drain your battery. Also, if you sync a Mac with anything besides, be prepared to see a .nomedia file in EVERY.SINGLE.DIRECTORY. (i cant recall what exactly it is). It's very annoying to say to least. That being said, Syncthing works great for a wholly cross platform…

To my knowledge, .nomedia files are created on Android to prevent the folder from being scanned for media. I don't think it's due to "anything besides", but Android in particular. I haven't tried configuring the Android Syncthing app to exclude .nomedia files, but it may be possible.

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

#249

Post by gonehome »

This would be funny for remote dev. I’d gotten used to the fan spinning up when building on my MacBook Pro (Intel), and after switching to building code on remote servers I realized I used the fan sound as an indicator that stuff was working.

Playing the fan sound based on remote server cpu would be a fun hack.

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

#250

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

kelnos wrote: post #230
dreamcompiler wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CRTs are potentially worse. It takes the electron beam 16 ms to paint the screen. If the electron beam is halfway down the screen and you change a pixel right above where the beam just painted, you'll have to wait 16 ms before you see anything change. All CRT displays attached to computers in the last 40 years were driven from memory buffers just like LCDs, and those buffers were typically only allowed to change whil…

> CRTs are potentially worse. It takes the electron beam 16 ms to paint the screen. Back when I had CRTs, 60Hz displays were the older, less-common, cheapo option. I'm having a hard time remembering a CRT display that wasn't at least 75Hz (I believe this was the VESA standard for the minimum to be flicker-free), but most of the monitors I used had refresh rates in the 80-90Hz range. I remember a beautiful higher-end…

Before multi-sync CRTs and SVGA, 60Hz was not the "cheapo" option.
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