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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

#81

Post by rasz_pl »

arcticbull wrote: post #38

The 'garbled microphone input' seems a bit of a red herring, it's likely that the thermal throttling is kicking in which is causing the audio recording app to get slowed to below real time making it sound like garbled. I've had the laptop for about a month now, and yes, Hangouts will bring it to its knees, but for some reason Hangouts will bring just about any laptop to its knees. Battery life is as advertised, you d…

>Hangouts will bring just about any laptop to its knees.

because Google insist on forcing their own codec and encodes in pure software bypassing hardware h264 encoder block on cpu/gpu.

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

#82

Post by achairapart »

larrys wrote: post #59
jbrooksuk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those interested, it's likely smcFanControl - https://github.com/hholtmann/smcFanControl

Doesn't turn the fan off but I found Temperature Gauge App to be very helpful in terms of monitoring what is going on with the fan and temperature. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/temperature-gauge/id46783052... Looks like they have another app which does have fan control: http://www.tunabellysoftware.com/temperature_gauge/

Also, iStats Menus: http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

I feel I can't live without it.

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

#83

Post by Cthulhu_ »

coldtea wrote: post #72

Mac or PC, the idea that laptops should not get warm, or that you put them directly on your naked legs or something and then you complain about their heat is completely alien to me...

And yet, it's not that strange; laptop should be used on the lap, hence the name, right?

High CPU usage, fine, but for regular things that should be perfectly optimized by now like watching videos or using Skype shouldn't cause as much heat as - apparently - it does.

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

#84

Post by marincounty »

wereHamster wrote: post #19
jsjohnst wrote: post #9

Hangouts over taxes just about any machine, it's ridiculous. FCP exporting a 4k video uses less CPU than Hangouts does to show a choppy video feed.

Are you using Chrome? Apparently under Safari Hangout uses much less CPU.

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro. Very little use. Never even got warm. I downloaded google chrome browser the other day, and it gets hot, fan goes on high, wheel spins like regret. I can't blame it on google chrome. My memory, and cpu aren't using a worrisome amount of resources?

I am wondering why Google chrome would cause this problem--if that's the problem? From a programmer's perspective?

(I did turn off Apple automatic update, and install.)

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

#85

Post by MichaelGG »

fenomas wrote: post #15
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…

I'm relatively new to Macs, but it seems like it's partially a cultural thing. When I first got a macbook for work, I found my fingertips got really uncomfortable from how hot the keyboard and mousepad got, and assumed there was a problem to be solved, but several Mac-centric colleagues said they just got used to it. I wound up downloading some random app that lets you control when the fans turn on - and voila, a coo…

I get extremely uncomfortable with any keyboard that's hotter than my fingers. Why do people put up with this? ThinkPads aren't great either, though a Broadwell CPU is fast enough that I can leave it throttled to 700MHz and day to day Visual Studio (except compiling) and Firefox usage is fine. This way it stays under skin temp.

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

#86

Post by justizin »

fenomas wrote: post #15
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…

I'm relatively new to Macs, but it seems like it's partially a cultural thing. When I first got a macbook for work, I found my fingertips got really uncomfortable from how hot the keyboard and mousepad got, and assumed there was a problem to be solved, but several Mac-centric colleagues said they just got used to it. I wound up downloading some random app that lets you control when the fans turn on - and voila, a coo…

It's possible that a lot of Mac users are simply not objecting to something they should. I have been using aluminum Apple laptops since they had a PowerPC G4 and were called PowerBooks, and there have been some models with known heat issues. It doesn't surprise me to hear this about the new 12", I think what they're going for is doable, but perhaps ambitious at this stage. There was a 12" G4 which wasn't fanless, but still crammed too much into too small a package.

I have a Unibody 15" MBP from 20011 or so that has absolutely no heat problems, have used several generations of 11" and 13" Air and both 13" and 15" Retina MBP and I don't have any substantial heat problems.

One thing a lot of people don't understand is the thermal design expects to be on a flat surface so that there is some air under the machine, in the small gap created by the rubber feet. If you use any of these machines on a bed, a couch, on top of a pillow, or on your lap, they'll get hotter. I keep a piece of cardboard handy for when I want to use my machine in bed.

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

#87

Post by ryukafalz »

pavlov wrote: post #80
wutbrodo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>yes, Hangouts will bring it to its knees, but for some reason Hangouts will bring just about any laptop to its knees. I've got a couple year old x1 carbon 13", and it handles hangouts fine, more or less everyday. That's with the (annoyingly high) cpu usage of a couple hundred tabs open as well. If a tiny couple pound ultrabook van easily handle hangouts, I highly doubt that hangouts would be difficult on most laptop…

I think arcticbull meant "just about any Apple laptop". That's my experience with Hangouts on Mac anyway.

Mid-2012 MBP here, haven't had any significant problems with Hangouts. (Aside from it being generally pretty terrible if your network connection isn't rock solid.)

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

#88

Post by justizin »

rasz_pl wrote: post #81
arcticbull wrote: post #38

The 'garbled microphone input' seems a bit of a red herring, it's likely that the thermal throttling is kicking in which is causing the audio recording app to get slowed to below real time making it sound like garbled. I've had the laptop for about a month now, and yes, Hangouts will bring it to its knees, but for some reason Hangouts will bring just about any laptop to its knees. Battery life is as advertised, you d…

>Hangouts will bring just about any laptop to its knees. because Google insist on forcing their own codec and encodes in pure software bypassing hardware h264 encoder block on cpu/gpu.

They insist on forcing, for HD as someone noted earlier, an open and non-patent-encumbered codec. h.264 is great, but it is an Apple-centric solution.

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

#89

Post by Implicated »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #47
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.

There's a handful of people in this thread reporting this experience.

I'm on a late '13 15" rMBP and I don't run into these heat issues until I introduce video. Youtube, vimeo, gaming, basically anything video related and things start warming up quickly... but when I'm just browsing, no fans, no heat.

(Ambient temp currently is 75f - MBP sitting on a table top, been using it for a few hours now, with a vagrant instances up. Almost zero heat from any piece of the body. But if I fire up a video... that will change to hand melting heat very quickly.)

The inconsistency of the reports of heat issues makes me very wary of buying a new MBP, purely on the 'lottery' chance of getting the issues so commonly reported that I don't seem to run into. (I also don't have Wi-Fi issues that most mention, or issues running external displays and coming out of sleep.)

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

#90

Post by justizin »

eropple wrote: post #63
copperx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari handles those cases like a pro.

It does! Safari is much better at battery life. But, for my use cases, it's an unusably poor browser outside of its rendering engine. My extensions don't work within it, I can't easily find equivalents, and there's no easy, good way to sync between Safari and browsers on Windows (Xmarks hosed my bookmarks so badly that I haven't yet even fixed all of them).

Overwhelmingly, I find FireFox with AdBlock and click-to-enable Flash much better than Safari without them.
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