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New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

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Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#41

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #23
giantdongfuz wrote: post #20

hangouts is shit, stop using it .. simple google slaves

You might have a point about Google Hangouts not being a technological stroke of genius, it obviously has its flaws but I'm not sure how that addresses the contents of the post. If all the computers were severely overheating and crashing when using Skype, then sure, by all means, get the pitchforks. But the thing is that my 4-year-old Macbook Pro can handle Hangouts and Skype just fine. The problem is really with new…

And some people want to render Blender clips or audio mixes. It's not Skype or Hangouts that are the problem. It's the fact that Apple has increasingly designed for looks, not practicality.

I've yet to buy an Apple computer that could be used for full-processor computing.

You might argue these are special use cases. IMO if you can't use the cycles you paid for, the design is bad and the machine isn't truly fit for purpose. A lot of people perform music with Apple laptops. You really don't one to crap out on you in the middle of a gig.

At least give people a choice of fatter turbo models with realistic cooling for those who need it.

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#42

Post by rayiner »

gherkin0 wrote: post #37
rayiner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 15" rMBP will apparently throttle if you load the CPU + discrete GPU at the same time. That said, I have no use for GPU, and I've been pretty impressed by how cool it stays given the thin profile and quad-core CPU.

Do the fans stay at a pretty consistent level, or do they throttle a lot from quiet to noisy? I'm thinking of getting one, but the people I know who have them tend to use them in noisy environments and can't answer my questions.

It depends on what you're doing. Most of the time, the fans are totally inaudible. Even at full bore, it's an unobtrusive "woosh" not an annoying "whine." And Apple probably has the best fan control in the business in terms of not fluctuating between different speed ranges. It's actually kind of a shock to go back to a ThinkPad and hear the fan struggling.

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#43

Post by rayiner »

ryanswapp wrote: post #39

I'll preface this statement by saying that I LOVE my Macbook Pro. (Retina, 15-inch, mid 2014) However, I do find it disheartening that it overheats so frequently/quickly. It generally overheats if I have more than 8 or 9 chrome tabs or I have a server running (ember-cli causes it to instantly overheat). The worst and hottest it's ever been was when I tried to play Starcraft on it the first day I got it. Haven't tried…

Do you have a discrete GPU?

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#44

Post by sz4kerto »

savanaly wrote: post #6

This is a severe problem for me with my 15" MBP. Long meetings (heck, even short) with colleagues make it extremely hot to the touch (keyboard and frame) and destroy the battery. Same with streaming netflix or youtube videos. Microphone seems fine but not great quality. It wasn't my decision to purchase this computer, it was my company's, but I'm very disappointed in its performance at simple two way audio video comm…

That's the main reason I ended up buying a Zbook G2. During summer, the 2013 rMBP was unusable, basically.

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#45

Post by macNchz »

Hangouts is awful in general...it heats up even very powerful computers in the process of showing pixellated, glitchy video with distorted audio, even over a very low latency 200 megabit connection. We use it every day for work and its a source of constant frustration. Honestly I'd prefer a conference call on a landline, we have the video off most of the time anyway because it seems to cause more audio dropouts when it's on.

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#46

Post by TD-Linux »

anon1385 wrote: post #36
TD-Linux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems highly doubtful. They are both Google's code - one is just packaged as a plugin rather than built into Chrome.

It's possible that they are using different video codecs. On Safari H264 and on Chrome VP9 but with only H264 being hardware accelerated. This is just a total guess of course (and I'd have thought it would depend on what the other end of the chat supports as well), but I bring it up since people have recently been complaining about YouTube in Chrome using far more CPU than YouTube in Safari, because YouTube uses VP9…

Well, Hangouts on Safari is a Google plugin. I believe it generally uses VP8. Hardware doesn't matter, as what's needed is an encoder - and hardware encoders usually aren't good enough to use for real time chat. Encoding video for any format well is going to be costly, hence the original article mentions complains about Skype as well.

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#47

Post by deanclatworthy »

savanaly wrote: post #6

This is a severe problem for me with my 15" MBP. Long meetings (heck, even short) with colleagues make it extremely hot to the touch (keyboard and frame) and destroy the battery. Same with streaming netflix or youtube videos. Microphone seems fine but not great quality. It wasn't my decision to purchase this computer, it was my company's, but I'm very disappointed in its performance at simple two way audio video comm…

My 15" Retina MBP gets extremely hot after just a few mins of waking up.

I've checked the activity monitor and the CPU is barely active when this occurs. I just opened it a few minutes before writing this comment, and touching between the top of the keyboard and the screen is almost too hot to touch.

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#48

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

I've used Skype on my iPad to do one-on-one video calls lasting about two hours and not had any issues with audio/video quality, overheating, etc.

Now, I know that iPads and MacBooks are completely different beasts, but it's puzzling that something that works so well on an iPad can work so poorly on a MacBook.

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#49

Post by steffan »

smaili wrote: post #21

I'm very curious how the new Macbook compensates for overheating when there's no fan. Anybody know?

It throttles the CPU to a lower energy state when using the chassis as a heat sink becomes insufficient to maintain the temperature within some thermal operating envelope.

Re: New Macbook overheats in Hangouts and Skype, microphone input garbled

#50

Post by spiralpolitik »

rayiner wrote: post #8
eropple wrote: post #5

This is one of the reasons (along with a discrete GPU) that I stick exclusively to the 15" rMBP line. Yes, fans are unsexy and all that, but it's got two of them, they're very good and fairly quiet, and the shell is big enough to serve as a decent heat sink by itself.

The 15" rMBP will apparently throttle if you load the CPU + discrete GPU at the same time. That said, I have no use for GPU, and I've been pretty impressed by how cool it stays given the thin profile and quad-core CPU.

The key part is to make sure you don't block the intake vents where the hinge is. If you make sure there is good clearance then it stays cool. If you are using it on the bed then its very easy for the sheets to block the vents and the temperature and fans ramp up very quick if you are say playing World of Warcraft.
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