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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

#261

Post by prawn »

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 have an 8GB M1 MBP. Photoshop, Lightroom, Resolve, Sublime, Chrome (50+ tabs), Transmit, etc and it's almost always very fast. Only slows down if importing to Lightroom and generating previews, or rendering video from Resolve.

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

#262

Post by fomine3 »

halotrope wrote: post #5

It makes me a bit sad that for ten years I took it for granted that Moore’s law is dead and notebooks are constantly overheating incapable computers just to learn that the whole issue was Intel messing up their process nodes.

MacBook series' thermal design is considered bad compared to other laptops for a long time. It accidentally helped a bit people think M1 is great and Intel is bad (though it's mostly true). (I believe it's not intended.)

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

#263

Post by fomine3 »

morcheeba wrote: post #84
bentcorner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Transition of search dialog to search bar is also a huge improvement.

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

#264

Post by noizejoy »

tbrock wrote: post #241
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…

Having enjoyed using an Elgato StreamDeck on a windows box for a while, my next MacBook Pro upgrade cycle definitely includes a touchbar on the wish list.

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

#266

Post by rsfinn »

rbanffy wrote: post #75
rambambram wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must be nice, using a fresh machine that's so silent. I recently switched from a powerful desktop PC with noisy fans to a passively cooled RPi4 running Ubuntu Mate. I just feel my productivity and focus going up now I don't hear the equivalent of a small fighter jet taking off. The RPi4 is still a fighter though, very quick and powerful for it's size, price and specs.

I like my 15” MBP, but the fans are extremely annoying. I had to switch IntelliJ to power save mode so I can hear what I’m thinking. It’s quite surreal the big Xeon server (an actual server, with optional rackmounts) with lots of spinning rust under the desk is still much less distracting.

You might want to look into [Turbo Boost Switch](http://tbswitcher.rugarciap.com), which in my experience does a pretty good job of keeping the CPU cool enough that the fans stay pretty quiet, with a minor impact on performance. (It's easy to turn it on and off from the menu bar, in case you need to turn the knob up to 11 and are willing to hear the fans again.)

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

#267

Post by jen20 »

wumpus wrote: post #109
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t ‘home computer’ the generally used term before the IBM 5150 ?

I don't think so. Comparing use of these terms in books: https://books.archivelab.org/dateviz/?q=home+computer https://books.archivelab.org/dateviz/?q=personal+computer Personal computer was used a lot more when books were eventually written about the era.

As far as I'm aware, the UK the phrase "microcomputer" (or simply "micro") was used before IBM-compatible machines.

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

#268

Post by [deleted] »

ocbyc wrote: post #171
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'm sorry, I have an Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with 120mhz. Using my girlfriends iPhone 12 makes me dizzy. 120hz is something you don't notice much when you enable it, but you definitely notice when it's gone.

[deleted]

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

#269

Post by brokencode »

mlyle wrote: post #235
brokencode wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Marginal utility of anything decreases as you have more. And it obviously has in computing. E.g. 20 years ago, you could buy a P3-1GHz for $200 or P3-750MHz for $100. So you'd pay about $100 more (2001) for 850 more Dhrystone MIPS. Vs. modern processors where for a few hundred bucks you get >500,000 DMIPS in a package. You would not choose to pay $150 (2021) more for 850 more DMIPS ( I think this is true even if you…

Doubling performance might not be directly noticeable for the average smartphone user as an example, but it is definitely noticeable to the average app developer, who can spend more time on user experience and less time on optimization.

Better performance also enables new forms of technology, such as AR, VR, ray tracing, advanced image processing for smartphone cameras, etc. These are visible and sought after by regular users.

Users can tell the difference, it’s just that they might not realize that the new features are enabled by higher performance of the hardware.

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

#270

Post by SilverRed »

SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #253
tbrock wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Obviously, to people who choose to pay for it. I produce video news and the Touch Bar is integral to my workflow. Just because something is not useful to you doesn’t mean it’s useless.

The touch bar should have been in addition to the function row really. On the 16" mac there is plenty of space for both. Few people hate the touch bar, they hate the lack of function keys.
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