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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

#281

Post by SilverRed »

Shorel wrote: post #77
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…

Want to use "apps" that run in a browser. Then just open them in a browser. That's what I do with Teams, Discord and so on. Much better than opening many isolated browser runtimes for what's essentially badly optimized webpages.

Electron has higher permissions so you can do things like select your audio inputs in discord which is nicer than the browser selection.

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

#282

Post by threatofrain »

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.

And the rumors say that Apple will be removing it. Let's wait and see for the upcoming rumored 14/16 Macbooks.

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

#283

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

breck wrote: post #276
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…

I used Macbook Airs for 10 years. Had a week with a loaner machine which happened to be an MBP with TouchBar and I found it neat, and so ended up getting an M1 with TouchBar. I like it. I so rarely use the F keys that it's kind of nice to have sliders, emojis, mute button, et cetera up there. I almost certainly could live without it, but I used to hate on it and now at least opted for it.

I kinda like it too but I resent it a lot because they displaced the function keys. Had they kept both, I think we’d be seeing more touch base fans.

A lot of the time it’s really nice to have a context sensitive/modal form of input.

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

#284

Post by 1123581321 »

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…

The differences are larger battery, active cooling, touch bar, brighter screen, better speakers, and the base ram/storage model has the 8 core GPU.

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

#285

Post by ziml77 »

baggy_trough wrote: post #275
SilverRed wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hate it because it’s too easy to accidentally press a “key” and trigger some potentially large scale event.

This has always been my issue with it. For some reason it doesn't have pressure sensitivity like the trackpad (which also has no physical button). Lightly brushing the touchbar is enough to activate the controls on it.

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

#286

Post by noduerme »

Funny. I spent a summer in 2009 in Vietnam, working on one of those old unbeatable Powerbook silver models, in an apartment without air conditioning. The fan would run at full power constantly, and finally gave up the ghost. There was no way to repair it where I was. So what I used to do was keep a bunch of Wired Magazines in the freezer, and put them under the laptop, changing them out every 20 minutes or so. The machine still works... but yeah, that fan noise is really a great subconscious reminder that you're using it too hard. Also a good way to know if your code just entered an infinite loop, long before any other warning comes up... and occasionally that clue gives you enough time to cancel a process before the input freezes.

[edit] Just had a cool idea, since this discussion is heading towards how subtly useful auditory cues have been in our workflow. What if different processes played fans at different pitches, so the total volume still added up? That could actually be really useful out-of-band state information.

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

#287

Post by _nobody_243212 »

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…

Well, depends of course on your Windows Laptop. I had a Thinkpad X1 Carbon with no heat or noise issues at all. Now a Surface Pro 7 with also no heat issues. It's not the fastest around, but for a tablet really impressive (typical dev setup running Postgres in Docker, Goland, Webstorm with no problems).

Still I likely buy a M1 Air soon. Not because of the M1 CPU, but because it's almost half the price of a comparable Thinkpad. And I hate the bloatware shipped with basically every non-Microsoft Windows laptop.

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

#288

Post by noduerme »

matznerd wrote: post #183
qeternity wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, the M1 feels very performant with 8gb (I have MBP and Mini 8gb variants) compared to my 16gb Intel MBP and my 32gb Hackintosh. That said - it’s not magic. 30 tabs in Chrome is a lot if you’re not using a tab suspender extension. But one thing I do notice is that when a Rosetta 2 app is running, the entire machine seems to take a hit. I would check the architecture of your apps and see if you have any x86…

Lol 30 tabs is a lot? I'm running 32 gb ram on windows i7-6700 3.4 ghz on mini ATX and currently have 883 tabs open, using marvelous suspender and few other tweaks, but still have 95 windows opens (1 tab typically alive in each window minimum excluding my suspension blacklist...). Also have photoshop, notion, and a few other apps going and am running smoothly at 40-70% cpu utilization and 85% memory...

Wow. That would literally send my OCD over the edge. I have a thing about closing all my tabs, reading all my mail, and having nothing on my desktop at the end of the day.

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

#289

Post by soheil »

There are many people mentioning how the lack of fan is so strange and looks to them that something's wrong. I'd like to point out also that the introduction of the fan in the first place was probably the thing that should have looked very strange. Just pause for a moment and think how odd it is that there is a very high correlation between heavily using one's computer and a noise being emitted from its inside. It seems pretty random that a fan spinning faster and faster should be the thing that happens when I start up Photoshop. But then again how many things like this we take for granted, just the way it is until it's gone, just because we have no other reference point to compare them to when they're initially introduced?
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