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

fanfan.rambo.codes

291–300 of 454 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PC originally meant "IBM PC desktop clone". Apple was different because it's hardware wasn't compatible with PC software (for mainstream users).

"PC" was "personal computer" years before the IBM PC. Just look at old computer magazines. The whole reason the phrase "IBM PC" existed was to differentiate it from the other PCs that already existed. "IBM" was the adjective. "PC" was the noun. Because of its success in offices, "IBM PC" became just "PC" the same way other words like "omnibus" became just "bus" because it's simpler to say.

As I recall, the most widely used term early on was "microcomputer", to distinguish the small home computers from the larger "minicomputers" (e.g. the DEC PDP-11 of blessed memory). The term "personal computer" was also in use, but the use of "PC" was not common until after the introduction of the IBM model 5150 (whose actual product name was the "IBM Personal Computer").

Since then, you might refer to any of a variety of machines as "personal computers", but "PCs" only meant "IBM PCs" (or later "IBM PC-compatible machines"). In other words, I would argue that the term "PC" derives specifically from the "IBM Personal Computer", and not generically from "personal computer".

Source: I was there. :-) I haven't done the research, but I bet if you did search through Byte and similar magazines of the time, you'd find plenty of supporting evidence. (I do have a memo cube from the early '80s with the slogan "Apple II -- The Personal Computer", but I suspect that was Apple Marketing trying to fight an ultimately losing battle.)

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

#292
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evergreen webviews baked into the OS are the next frontier of desktop app development. They can share a renderer and have much lower memory usage per app as a result - see the changes in Windows 11. Couple that with a lighter weight desktop compatibility shim to break out of the sandbox conditionally (like Tauri does in Rust) and this architecture can be totally fine. The issue isn’t the concept of using web technolo…

This will never be the same as Electron due to differences in the various rendering engines (e.g, Webkit2/WKWebView/WebView2 all have subtle differences), and this isn't accounting for version differences. The reason people ship Electron is because Electron is literally the same thing wherever you shove it. You can search on this very forum for comments from the dev who migrated Slack from per-platform-WebViews to El…

That’s what I meant by evergreen webviews. I think you missed the point of what I was saying. There are not evergreen webviews cureently. They currently only update webviews on major OS releases. with windows 11 they will ship an evergreen webview for use by Teams and will abandon trident as well. it’s currently a react/electron app that will run in the OS webview on Windows instead of in Electron. This is precisely the reason MS is doing this. Slack was os-specific before evergreen webviews were a thing.

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

#293
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is nevertheless only two screens.

>only two screens Honestly I feel like multi monitor setups are actually worse than single monitor. Having to bend your neck to use some of your windows left me with neck pain. Now I only use one large monitor and use the workspace switching shortcuts to move everything around so I only look forwards. My productivity is identical and my neck feels better. I'd only say its worth it for when you really do need to see a…

Multi-monitor setup has been a giant boost to my programming productivity.

I can simply keep the specification/documentation/stack overflow alongside editor/IDE window alongside debugger. If I had to put the benefit in words, I can offload the state of my programming session all on screen, instead of in my head, taking space where more of the abstract logic and relational graph can reside, before it gets turned into code.

On the other hand, it gets way easier to get distracted because you can keep a chat window on one side, constantly getting pinged.

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

#294
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are they any better than the PWAs?

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

#295

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.

Some ideas for playing a notification sound in a script runtime: Shell # system beep; also flashes the screen if you have that enabled in accessibility osascript -e 'beep' # play the sound file given by the file system the path afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Hero.aiff AppleScript beep do shell script "afplay '/System/Library/Sounds/Hero.aiff'" JXA + Cocoa API $.NSBeep() // search for and play a sound file; the lookup…

Also shell (edit: as noted elsewhere):

$ say "Your build is done."

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

#296

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…

I have been using syncthing across Mac, arm Linux, Linux, windows and android. Occasionally an Android release turns into a battery drain, but I haven't had an issue with mac (my Mac shares are about 70G). Could need a db wipe and reinitializing? I think their file watcher is native.

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

#297
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regu…

Look, I think you're missing the point:

- First, the marginal value of 1MIP has plummeted in the past 40 years to near nothing. When my dad programmed on the 1401, another .01DMIPS would be worth ~$100,000 (1960s dollars, or $86 million 2021 dollars/DMIP). Now another 100000DMIPS is worth almost nothing (Maybe $0.006/DMIP today). So there's really no debate about declining marginal utility of computation vs. time.

- Second, developer productivity is great and all, but only a tiny proportion of computing units go to developers. Therefore, we can't assume that increased developer productivity will necessarily pay for new process nodes (with increasing capital costs and risks and decreasing benefits for end-users).

- Third, YES, finding new apps is the only thing that can keep things moving. But my point is: the proportion of the marketplace that is seeking above-baseline features and are willing to pay a premium for them is an ever shrinking portion. Replacement cycles for computers are, overall, lengthening, and the proportion of the market that buys the high end is steadily decreasing. This makes paying for ever-more-expensive process nodes more difficult.

- Fourth, when we were really enjoying Moore's law and areal density was improving significantly, better process nodes were clearly worth it: they lowered the cost to manufacture existing parts by yielding more parts per wafer. That is, the fabs wanted to shrink ASAP even without new use cases because of the improving economic picture. This is no longer the case.

- Fifth, eventually a doubling costs more than the entire world economic output, as eventually doubling will get harder and harder. No matter how many killer apps you find in #3, you can't keep this going forever.

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

#299
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I bought a Lenovo P1 Gen 3 a couple of months ago and the fans spin while the machine is sleeping. I'd love to know if it's crappy thermal design from Lenovo, crappy CPUs from Intel, or Windows sleep mode being too demanding. Maybe it's all three?

Depends on which A1, S2, S3, stage it is etc. And laptops differ from manufacturer to type and models.

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

So why does linux ux feel slower?
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