Live data from Hacker News

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

fanfan.rambo.codes

341–350 of 454 posts

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

#341
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…

My old clevo laptop has an i7 in it with fans that sound like hair dryers. It never throttles.

I would never buy a laptop where throttling was a presumed solution to thermal issues, because I want to get work done. Pre-m1 macbooks were awful. Even worse than top of the line dell laptops.

I have always felt like a minority for expecting a 2k laptop to actually be able to get work done.

If I would ever be able to run Linux as a first class citizen on an M1 (not going to happen) I would buy one in a flash. I have been playing with my mother in law's MacBook air and the thing is pretty darn amazing.

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

#342
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Along with submitting “widget” hierarchy updates, it also supports submitting “animations”. Is that how all these third party iOS apps all have completely consistent “pop” animations on long press?

No, that would be OS-provided GUI components (or sometimes manual reimplementation), similar to how most win32 apps had the same right-click menu behavior.

Off-topic: I see the lack of standardized OS-provided GUI components in Unix/Linux distros as the main root-cause for low Linux adoption. I'm assuming there isn't such a thing since I haven't been able to notice any consistency ever in the GUI of any Linux distro and/or any GUI app that runs on Linux :P But I may be totally wrong.

On-topic: they should build an M1 app that simulates loud coil whine at low-CPU usage, so you can feel like you're using a Dell XPS.

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

#344

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 ma…

With the introduction of M1, it's hard to find any use of paper magazines these days.

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

#345
post #341
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…

My old clevo laptop has an i7 in it with fans that sound like hair dryers. It never throttles. I would never buy a laptop where throttling was a presumed solution to thermal issues, because I want to get work done. Pre-m1 macbooks were awful. Even worse than top of the line dell laptops. I have always felt like a minority for expecting a 2k laptop to actually be able to get work done. If I would ever be able to run L…

FYI, the one M1 MacBook which throttles under heavy load is the MacBook Air, which is actually a 1k laptop ($999).

The MacBook Pro has fans and basically never throttles as I understand from others.

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

#346
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it if the laptop only starts the fan up when the device actually is working. Not constantly turning it on and off during like light web browsing. My 2018 MBP 13” and the Surface Laptop I’ve tried did that well. An XPS 15 I’m currently using does not.

Web browsing isn't a light activity anymore. Web pages consume more memory and more CPU than my text editor

Has there been a time in history where web browsing was lighter than text editing, ever?

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 k…

This.

I think the main advantage with macOS is that it's above all else a system designed to be used interactively, as opposed to a server, so they don't have to put out a configuration "good enough for most things".

I also run Linux with a tiling window manager on an old machine (3rd gen i7), and it flies. One thing that made a huge difference in perceived latency for me was switching the generic kernel with one having Con Kolivas' patch set [0].

I'm using Arch and sign my own EFI binaries, so I don't care about out of tree patches, but for Ubuntu users and similar who don't want to mess with this, there's an official `linux-lowlatency` package which helps [1].

---

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Linux-ck

[1] https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=linux-lowlatency...

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that would be OS-provided GUI components (or sometimes manual reimplementation), similar to how most win32 apps had the same right-click menu behavior.

Off-topic: I see the lack of standardized OS-provided GUI components in Unix/Linux distros as the main root-cause for low Linux adoption. I'm assuming there isn't such a thing since I haven't been able to notice any consistency ever in the GUI of any Linux distro and/or any GUI app that runs on Linux :P But I may be totally wrong. On-topic: they should build an M1 app that simulates loud coil whine at low-CPU usage,…

Well, there are common components, it's just that there are multiple standards (Qt, GTK, wx, etc)...

I'm using a tiling window manager with mostly GTK apps, so pretty much all menus and such look the same. The worst offenders are Firefox and IntelliJ, although they have improved a bit lately.

However, I'm not sure that this is the reason for lack of adoption. Windows has always been a patchwork of interface design, every other app having their own special window decorations and behavior, including MS' own apps (thinking of Office in particular). Also, seemingly similar elements, such as text inputs, behave differently in different places. For example ctrl-backspace sometimes deletes the previous word, sometimes it introduces random characters.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a cheap M1 Air model (only the ram is upgraded to 16gb) at $1030 Apple-refurbished. My intent is to try and sell it a bit before the 1 year mark. For some of the reasons you mentioned (specially the last paragraph), but also the battery and the general non-reparability. It almost feels like a consumable item, compared to my previous Thinkpad. Here's the thing: all the other laptops I was looking at cost at l…

> Here's the thing: all the other laptops I was looking at cost at least twice the price. High-end Thinkpads, my second choice, almost 3 times. It shouldn't be this way, but most of the big enterprise retailers have ridiculous sticker prices. Unlike Apple, volume buyers get steep discounts, and individuals are expected to wait for a discount. Ask around online and you'll find it's fairly simple to get fancy Thinkpads…

It's highly dependent on the country you're at. I see people on r/thinkpad get new high-end ones discounted, the kind of discounts that you can't get in France.

What you can find in France is heavily discounted ones from people that resell their company-provided ones. I bought 3 T460 like that in the past, for me and my family. But no high-end models, nor much choice in the customization.

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

#350
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…

Yep, the touchbar is pretty horrid. It's my personal decision point for the question "linux or mac?" If Apple fails to provide a pro model without the touchbar, my next laptop will be Linux.
Post reply on HN