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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

#311
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They have far more extensive permissions like direct filesystem access. It can make some interactions much more fluid or even just possible at all. You couldn't run VS code very well in a browser for example.

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

#312
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. -…

I am definitely missing your point. I was originally responding to your comment that the marginal utility of doubling performance is diminishing. I don’t believe it is. I never said the marginal utility of a DMIP or whatever isn’t decreasing, which I don’t think is relevant, since processor performance increases exponentially, not linearly.

I also never said that it will be possible to keep on improving performance at the same rate forever. The rate of improvement is what is diminishing, not the value of the improvement. If we could keep on improving performance at the same rate forever, that’d be great, but we probably can’t.

Fabs are still motivated by demand from their customers and competition. If a fab stops improving, they will either be surpassed (see Intel) or consumers will see less of a reason to upgrade their hardware, and the entire market will decline. Both are bad outcomes for the fab. So fabs will continue to push the envelope as long as it is physically possible and economically feasible.

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

#313
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…

The hardware is beautiful! As soon as it becomes trivial to delete macOS and install Linux (with reasonable support), I'm buying an M1 Macbook Pro. Unfortunately, I'm in too deep with the Linux ecosystem to switch over before then. Fortunately, Asahi Linux appears to be making fast progress, and there are even (spurious) rumors of official support on behalf of Apple Inc.

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

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. The problem is now my work desktop is a 32-core Threadripper w/ huge GPU and way too much ram. It’s kinda nice knowing that if my computer ever slows down it’s because of bad programming and not having a too slow computer. I want to like laptops. I really really do. But they’re slower, have bad keyboards, and have tiny screens. Or I’m docked and the fact that it’s a laptop isn’t meaningful. That said, I can’t f…

>It’s kinda nice knowing that if my computer ever slows down it’s because of bad programming and not having a too slow computer. And then someone with 4 cores tries to run the code and its unusable because it only runs well with 32 cores.

Yes. Software developers need to make sure their software runs well on their user’s machines. This is equally true for people developing software on brand new laptops and it running poorly on older laptops.

A great pet peeve of mine is that designers are notorious for only testing their designs on high-resolution MacBooks. A lot of tools look like crap on 1080p Windows displays.

The benefits of 32-cores mostly comes with compile times and build processes. Where, depending on your project, it can make a HUGE difference. One of my C++ projects went from 15 minutes to under 3.

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

#315
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.

Alternatively you can always use a voip client which doesnt need half your systems resources. Picking audio channels was a normal feature decades ago.

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because in many cases, it is. Unfortunately, there isn't as much communication between the GUI people and the kernel people in the Linux community as there is between those same groups at Apple Inc. Not to mention, there are multiple competing groups of GUI people in the Linux community making coordination across these levels difficult. Also, there are many competing interests working on the kernel who might oppose kernel-level optimizations which favor desktop usage at the cost of, for example, server usage. As a result of these and many other factors, Linux's desktop UX remains far less optimized when compared to macOS's desktop UX.

As with most of Linux's rough edges, however, this is trivially fixable if you're technical enough. Of course, that's exactly macOS's advantage. If you want the best experience on macOS, you don't need to be technical.

Personally, I run Linux with a tiling window manager and lots of custom keybindings and little scripts. Having used the default macOS experience a few times at work (on machines far more powerful than my dinky laptop), I can assure you that my highly customized setup feels far more responsive. On the flip side, it required a lot of up-front investment to get it to this point.

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Alternatively you can always use a voip client which doesnt need half your systems resources. Picking audio channels was a normal feature decades ago.

>Alternatively you can always use

No I can't. The IM platform is decided for me already so I can not pick something else. And the company will pick the platform with the most features / integrations which is currently Teams.

MacOS drawing a line in the RAM sand at 16GB with most on 8GB will likely encourage programs to be more efficient rather than be a burden to the user. As we have seen with mobile platforms, programs will use as much resources as they are allowed to. Adding more resources does not fix the problem unless the programs are already quite efficient.

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

#318
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…

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…

Depending on what you're coming from, it could just be you haven't been using modern hardware. I agree some is faster than others. I notice a difference going from my Ryzen 5900x to my i9 11900K. Typing and everything is definitely smoother on my latter machine. Part of it is just software advantages. Apple designed the compiler and built the system for the M1. On Windows and Linux, Intel has a boatload of engineers working on their behalf.

The single core performance of my 11900K is really hard to beat at 5.3GHz, and with 7 of 8 cores hitting that frequency simultaneously (which it hits all the time in desktop use) it's just buttery smooth. My guess is that you just came from an older system. The advances in CPUs (along with good compiler programmers working on that architecture's behalf) in my experience are larger than reviews and colloquial recommendations would suggest.

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

#319
post #65

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…

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…

Recently I visited the Apple store and compared the latest 11 inch iPad Air (A14 processor) and iPad Pro (M1 processor) models side-by-side. I loaded up Apple’s website in Safari and scrolled. The Pro is noticeably butter-smooth, while the Air stutters. My iPhone also stutters in the same way, but it’s never bothered me before. It’s only after looking at the performance of the M1-driven iPad Pro that I knew to look for it. And I previously had a similar experience noticing how much smoother my iPhone was than my old Android phones!

I don’t know for sure the processor is the difference, this is just a report of my observations.

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

#320
post #241
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…

> you can only hook in one external monitor

You can run multiple monitors on an m1 with a DisplayPort hub. (not relevant to the point about the number of usb-c ports of course, since you're plugging into the hub anyways)

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