[HN Gopher] An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       An app for M1 Macs that plays the sound of a fan as CPU usage goes
       up
        
       Author : spideymans
       Score  : 412 points
       Date   : 2021-07-18 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (fanfan.rambo.codes)
 (TXT) w3m dump (fanfan.rambo.codes)
        
       | post_break wrote:
       | Whats funny is I had an app crash in the background taking up 80%
       | of my cpu on my M1 macbook pro, and only noticed because I
       | happened to launch activity monitor for something unrelated. You
       | can't do that with any other laptop.
        
       | akraut wrote:
       | This reminds me of the old Nullsoft Beep. Some of it was just
       | fun, but the hum based on cpu usage was unexpectedly useful.
       | Archived here: https://www.1014.org/code/nullsoft/nbeep/
        
       | halotrope wrote:
       | It makes me a bit sad that for ten years I took it for granted
       | that Moore's law is dead and notebooks are constantly overheating
       | incapable computers just to learn that the whole issue was Intel
       | messing up their process nodes.
        
         | mlyle wrote:
         | It's both. It's harder and harder to grind out progress (and if
         | you compare M1 to where the 90's-early 2000's exponential
         | progression, we're not so close).
         | 
         | As it gets harder, it becomes more capital intensive and the
         | probability of success on any given process node decreases. The
         | marginal utility of a doubling of computing is likely
         | decreasing with time, too.
         | 
         | At some point, these factors are going to compound to slow
         | progress. Or: exponential progressions never continue forever.
        
           | brokencode wrote:
           | I don't think the marginal utility of doubling computing will
           | diminish any time soon. As we gain more computing power, we
           | just start doing more and more computation heavy tasks that
           | weren't possible before.
           | 
           | For example, VR games are notoriously demanding on today's
           | hardware, especially if you want to put that hardware in the
           | headset.
           | 
           | And many applications get slower over time, not faster, as
           | new features are added. This is especially true in an era of
           | cross platform frameworks that are convenient for developers,
           | but are much slower than native.
        
             | Justsignedup wrote:
             | Also old programs had to hyoeroptimize because it either is
             | that or it's too slow.
             | 
             | Today the speed of the computer makes it incredibly
             | forgiving.
        
       | blunte wrote:
       | Haha! I sort of need this. It's amazing how the only time I
       | realize I have a runaway process is if my laptop heats up.
       | 
       | It's truly incredible how much serious heavy work I do on a
       | "little" M1 Air.
       | 
       | MySQL and Postgres, Redis, Sidekiqs, Mailcatcher (small, but
       | still), a couple of Rails apps, Spotify, Spark mail app, Firefox
       | with dozens of tabs, Safari, Calendar, Photos in the background
       | hopefully identifying faces, etc. etc.
       | 
       | I do three times as much on this machine as I could do on my 32GB
       | i7 Dell. There's some magic in here.
       | 
       | I still cannot build some older versions of libraries. So I do a
       | little of my work on an old Intel Mac. But that's not the
       | architecture problem, that's a problem of fragile builds.
        
         | sgt wrote:
         | Makes me want to replace my i7 MBP sooner than I was planning!
        
           | blunte wrote:
           | I thought this Air would be a placeholder until the M1 MBP,
           | but unless you need a real GPU, I find this more than good
           | enough. I won't need to upgrade.
        
       | akmarinov wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | bentcorner wrote:
         | Honestly I believe that as developers we don't use audible
         | feedback enough in our tooling.
         | 
         | Imagine diagnosing your app health like you could diagnose your
         | connection speed of a dial-up modem.
        
           | morcheeba wrote:
           | I've been feeling just the opposite - I've been using an IDE
           | from the mid-2000s for a legacy project, and it's amazing how
           | things have changed. The search function dings a bell if
           | nothing is found, and it does it in real-time as you type...
           | so it gets annoying really quick (no auto-complete, and not
           | even ctrl-v to paste in to the search query)
        
           | samat wrote:
           | remember ping?                    -a      Audible.  Include a
           | bell (ASCII 0x07) character in the output
           | when any packet is received.  This option is ignored if other
           | format options are present.
        
           | function_seven wrote:
           | Agreed. I usually laugh at TV shows and movies that use a
           | bunch of beeps and boops in their computer scenes.[1]
           | 
           | But sometimes I actually _want_ that! Like, if there was a
           | switch I could flip to turn on audio cues every time a window
           | 's contents are updated, or new lines appear in a terminal
           | window. And every window update would be tagged with a
           | different sound for error, warning, info, success, etc.
           | 
           | I know you can configure your terminal to play a BEL sound,
           | but I'm looking for something system-wide. I want it like the
           | movies, so I can pay attention to something else and not have
           | to check in on the progress of my compilation or transcoding
           | or long download.
        
           | cesarb wrote:
           | > Honestly I believe that as developers we don't use audible
           | feedback enough in our tooling.
           | 
           | Allow me to point out a very cool project I saw in the early
           | 2000s, which unfortunately seems to have been abandoned and
           | forgotten: http://peep.sourceforge.net/intro.html (Peep (The
           | Network Auralizer): Monitoring your network with sound).
        
           | jareklupinski wrote:
           | i stick the OS's equivalent of `bell` at the end of long-
           | running scripts :)
        
             | bangonkeyboard wrote:
             | && say 'All done, come get some'
        
               | lucb1e wrote:
               | For the Linux users                   && espeak "job's
               | done"
        
         | jheriko wrote:
         | jesus wept. are your builds that slow, or your inability to add
         | notifications that real?
         | 
         | not sure if programmer, or just troll...
        
           | stephencanon wrote:
           | The fan _was_ their notification. Why would they have wasted
           | time adding another?
        
             | pasc1878 wrote:
             | Because the fan will continue for some time after the
             | compile finishes. So you can do work before the fan stoos
        
               | yoz-y wrote:
               | Depending on the cooling solution the temperature can
               | drop like a brick. On my desktop I can go 75deg to dead
               | silent in about three seconds.
        
             | mirekrusin wrote:
             | ./build && say "done"
        
               | sgt wrote:
               | You wouldn't be able to hear that when the fan on my MBP
               | is blowing at its peak :-)
        
       | deepkerenl wrote:
       | This is a joke, right? I've had my M1 for almost a month, and I
       | have zero complaints about the LACK of sound from the fans.
        
       | danieldk wrote:
       | This is funny, but I prefer my computers silent.
       | 
       | Semi-related: I can hear the inductors on my NVIDIA GPU, which is
       | somewhat useful. When I am training deep learning models, the
       | coil whine follows very regular patterns. Also, the pattern
       | changes between training and validation. So, I can literally hear
       | when an epoch is done.
       | 
       | (Of course, TensorBoard for the real monitoring.)
        
         | Scene_Cast2 wrote:
         | Do you do anything special for cooling the GPUs? I mounted a
         | giant CPU heatsink to my gtx 1080, and it still has to turn on
         | the fans when running ML workloads.
        
           | semi-extrinsic wrote:
           | If you have something that produces ~300 W of heat and you
           | want to keep it from becoming hot, you're going to need
           | either fans or liquid cooling (which also has fans, on the
           | radiator).
        
         | abledon wrote:
         | When I'm training a model on a RTX 2070, i have a 'ticking'
         | coilwhine that ticks every 1second... kinda funny that it only
         | happens when i do that
        
         | savant_penguin wrote:
         | I can relate 100%
         | 
         | I could literally hear the minibatches running, they sound more
         | or less evenly spaced treek..treek.. and when it's at the end
         | of the epoch, the larger batch for validation begins, it's a
         | much longer treeeek
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Do you also hear this when your speakers/audio system are off?
        
           | HPsquared wrote:
           | I'm not GP, but yes: coil whine is audible as a high
           | frequency whine/buzz, caused by power supply components
           | (inductors) physically vibrating at high frequency.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | Certainly, I was just curious if they were hearing coil
             | whine.
        
       | yoz-y wrote:
       | Hm. How about a nice colored Touch Bar widget that would change
       | depending on temperature and load? At least it would make the bar
       | useful.
        
         | mlajtos wrote:
         | I don't get the hate for TouchBar. I have the one with the
         | physical Esc key and it proved useful number of times. Fast-
         | forwarding ads on YouTube was nice until I discovered good
         | adblock. Screenshot shortcut always ready. Emoticons ditto.
         | Shortcut to format my code or comment a line of code in Xcode?
         | Yup, thank you.
        
       | JoeAltmaier wrote:
       | I've long thought an auditory cue would be helpful when my
       | computer is chewing on something. Maybe it could hum tunelessly,
       | or breath harder when it was working hard. Or get excited and
       | sigh when it finished. Something human.
        
       | wrboyce wrote:
       | Currently sat in my home-office, mid British heatwave, and my
       | trashcan Mac Pro has been the primary noise for days; I wish I
       | needed this.
        
       | gchamonlive wrote:
       | Just like the turn signal clicking for cars
        
         | radley wrote:
         | Or more like fake engine sounds for electric cars.
        
       | bsharitt wrote:
       | Outside of work provided computers, I've not been a Mac user for
       | many years, but the M1 Macbook Air brought me back and it's been
       | great. It's basically the laptop I've been waiting years for,
       | silent with no moving parts and very little in the way of
       | compromises(I don't personally have any need for super long
       | running CPU intensive tasks). It's weird to see it compile code
       | or encode video without fans ramping up, and even if does start
       | to throttle toward the end of the longer tasks, it still beats my
       | fairly recent i7 work MacBook Pro and my Ryzen 7 4700U Windows
       | laptop most of the time.
        
       | jmkni wrote:
       | 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 compromising a bit.
       | 
       | I got an M1 Macbook Pro recently and it just doesn't have these
       | issues, I fire up my whole dev environment and get busy, and it's
       | still quiet and (mostly) cool, and I can't notice anything
       | slowing down.
       | 
       | I don't care so much about the architecture differences, x64 vs
       | ARM etc, but the fact that I can finally use a laptop like a
       | desktop is massive.
        
         | seanalexander wrote:
         | I'm eager to see what can be done with the desktop tower
         | workstation post-M1. I don't think anyone actually wants to
         | have a slim laptop and use "the cloud" to "download more
         | memory" but here we are in 2021 where people are saying 16gb
         | max ram is good.
        
         | enlyth wrote:
         | A bit of a tangent but I am quite impressed how Apple's
         | marketing campaign was so effective that they've managed to
         | redefine what PC (personal computer) means
        
           | alisonkisk wrote:
           | PC originally meant "IBM PC desktop clone". Apple was
           | different because it's hardware wasn't compatible with PC
           | software (for mainstream users).
        
             | wumpus wrote:
             | > PC originally meant "IBM PC desktop clone".
             | 
             | You're misremembering history. It eventually evolved into
             | that, yes.
             | 
             | Apple didn't really buy into that until the "I'm a Mac/I'm
             | a PC" ads.
        
             | enlyth wrote:
             | The only reason I mentioned it is because OP's usage caught
             | me off guard. Most of the time in colloquial usage I've
             | seen PC used as an acronym to mean "computer with Windows
             | installed as the OS", especially when being compared to
             | Apple's products.
             | 
             | But in this case it was used as "desktop computer", which
             | sounded strange to me as I consider laptops, however
             | portable, to be personal computers.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | hollerith wrote:
               | I agree with all of that -- and regret the recent trend
               | of using "PC" to mean desktop as opposed to laptop -- but
               | what does any of that have to do with Apple's marketing?
               | 
               | You don't think Apple's marketing is behind the
               | aforementioned recent trend; do you?
        
               | enlyth wrote:
               | My understanding was that Apple's marketing created the
               | initial deviation from the original meaning which led to
               | the current one, but yes seeing what other people are
               | commenting now it's not that simple and I was wrong on my
               | assumption
        
             | reaperducer wrote:
             | "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.
        
               | Aaargh20318 wrote:
               | Wasn't 'home computer' the generally used term before the
               | IBM 5150 ?
        
               | wumpus wrote:
               | I don't think so. Comparing use of these terms in books:
               | 
               | https://books.archivelab.org/dateviz/?q=home+computer
               | 
               | https://books.archivelab.org/dateviz/?q=personal+computer
               | 
               | Personal computer was used a lot more when books were
               | eventually written about the era.
        
               | chairmanmow wrote:
               | This is the correct answer - and PC originally, or
               | "Personal Computer" is more of a distinction from old
               | school mainframe computers that lived in a lab or
               | wherever and took up entire rooms.
        
           | Shorel wrote:
           | By being actual PC compatible hardware for about a decade.
        
         | monkaiju wrote:
         | I've been on a ThinkPad X1 Extreme for almost 2 years (gen 2
         | with the i9) and never had any noise or throttling issues. I
         | sit next to my partner (also a dev) and their i9 macbook pro
         | regularly spins up then throttles the cpu a ton. We've seen it
         | regularly throttle down by 70-82% (measured with pmset -g
         | thermlog)
         | 
         | Just saying, I definitely get the feeling Apple values form
         | over function. His biggest issues happen when he's using Docker
         | (the annoying Docker for Desktop version) but I also use Docker
         | all day and dont have any issues...
        
         | __MatrixMan__ wrote:
         | The uncomfortable heat/fan issue is what ultimately pushed me
         | over the edge to become familiar with Kubernetes. Now I just
         | offload the compute heavy tasks to a desktop in a different
         | room.
        
         | Rd6n6 wrote:
         | I just looked up some benchmarks. Apparently a m1 is 2-4x
         | faster at many tasks than my wife's gaming desktop from 5 years
         | ago. It's comparable in many benchmarks to my ryzen cpu as
         | well?
         | 
         | What's the catch?
        
           | RandomWorker wrote:
           | The catch is that you are using untested hardware. You have
           | no idea if this will last, who will support what, and
           | potentially risk money and your data. Thing is the upside for
           | us as a consumer is insane. Tbh buy a MacBook is 20/30% more
           | expensive than equivalent type specs on windows. But in the
           | case of the air that's 200/300 dollars. Just to try and test
           | this new hardware if it's your main device. It's a lot of
           | risk.
           | 
           | I feel confident running the system for a while now. Seeing
           | more software come on board. Even for the extra money, I say
           | go. I'm a dev/product designer, most of my work is coding,
           | product development, product management and graphical design.
           | It does everything I need faster, no lag.
        
           | Retr0id wrote:
           | The only real catch is that you're currently limited to only
           | 16GB of RAM.
        
             | minusf wrote:
             | and big sur and up... unfortunately the quality of the OS
             | is not keeping up with the quality of the hw.
        
               | EugeneOZ wrote:
               | The best OS of existing.
        
               | seanalexander wrote:
               | Surely you're joking here.
        
               | Rd6n6 wrote:
               | How so?
        
               | minusf wrote:
               | let's not go there :} life is too short to compile bug
               | lists for macos.
        
               | toxik wrote:
               | I feel like the critical bug list being short is
               | basically THE reason power users would go for Apple
               | laptops.
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | Is this a "hardware have gotten fast enough" situation?
         | 
         | My latest laptop (Ryzen 7) takes a lot of beating before
         | putting the fans at an audible speed. I've never seen this
         | happen in laptops before either. (But well, my last one didn't
         | slow down either, it just started making some noise.)
        
           | johnebgd wrote:
           | My Core i9 laptop has fans on just about as soon as it boots.
        
         | rambambram wrote:
         | Must be nice, using a fresh machine that's so silent. I
         | recently switched from a powerful desktop PC with noisy fans to
         | a passively cooled RPi4 running Ubuntu Mate. I just feel my
         | productivity and focus going up now I don't hear the equivalent
         | of a small fighter jet taking off. The RPi4 is still a fighter
         | though, very quick and powerful for it's size, price and specs.
        
           | rbanffy wrote:
           | I like my 15" MBP, but the fans are extremely annoying. I had
           | to switch IntelliJ to power save mode so I can hear what I'm
           | thinking.
           | 
           | It's quite surreal the big Xeon server (an actual server,
           | with optional rackmounts) with lots of spinning rust under
           | the desk is still much less distracting.
        
         | porknubbins wrote:
         | As a hardware nerd I always kind of like that moment when the
         | CPU starts really working and you hear fans spin way up. The
         | auditory feedback is like a throwback to a more mechanical age,
         | like a manual transmission vehicle where you can judge when to
         | shift by engine speed.
        
           | wumpus wrote:
           | ... and then you get an electric car, and the only time you
           | have any auditory feedback is when it's very hot out and you
           | supercharge.
        
           | thelopa wrote:
           | When I replaced all my spinning disks with SSDs and fans with
           | ultra quiet ones I realized just how much I relied on fan
           | noise to signal things. E.g. if my computer isn't visibly on,
           | the fan/disk noise tells me whether I need to power it on or
           | just wake it. I've had to start changing my habits as a
           | result.
        
             | laurent92 wrote:
             | And it dates back from 1988 for me. I'd always rely on the
             | nice scratching sound of the HDD and the LED to know
             | whether my computer had crashed or was just loading. There
             | was no need for a spinning wheel when you could hear the
             | data getting loaded ;)
        
           | skavi wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | freeone3000 wrote:
             | Web browsing isn't a light activity anymore. Web pages
             | consume more memory and more CPU than my text editor
        
               | skavi wrote:
               | That's why I specified "light web browsing".
        
         | alienalp wrote:
         | M1 mac is also my first Apple product. And now i bought magic
         | mouse 2 and fuck Apple. It is like laggy.
        
         | forrestthewoods wrote:
         | 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 fricken wait to see Apple build a beast of a
         | desktop with their silicon. I just really really hope the GPU
         | doesn't suck. Lack of good GPU on Mac is a huge problem for
         | certain lines of work.
        
           | moreira wrote:
           | > Or I'm docked and the fact that it's a laptop isn't
           | meaningful.
           | 
           | You might be underestimating the value in that. I've been
           | working off of MacBooks since 2011, and for almost all of
           | that time I've had them docked and hooked up to multiple
           | monitors, and working just like a desktop.
           | 
           | But if I ever need to go anywhere, meet a client, travel, go
           | to another room/office, I just unplug and go. If power goes,
           | I don't lose anything, the laptop is still running. Whatever
           | happens, it's all there with me, always. It's not as
           | comfortable when it's on laptop mode but it's better to have
           | a less comfortable experience than not having it available at
           | all.
           | 
           | It's a portable desktop. And I love it. But yeah if you're
           | looking for workstation-level specs, then yeah, a laptop is
           | never going to be enough.
        
             | forrestthewoods wrote:
             | My primary home computer for several years was a docked
             | laptop. Overall I was disappointed and went back to a full
             | desktop.
             | 
             | > If power goes, I don't lose anything, the laptop is still
             | running.
             | 
             | What kind of monster doesn't use a UPS!? =P
             | 
             | I mostly work in games and VR. Maybe someday there will be
             | a laptop that doesn't suck for game development. Sadly that
             | day has not yet come.
        
         | grumpyprole wrote:
         | I think this is an Intel "feature". They can't upsell you
         | faster CPU's without trading heat and noise. Glad to see Apple
         | is following a much more sensible approach.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | RandomWorker wrote:
         | 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 touch the track pad and
         | things move. Independent of the load I'm running. Now, that
         | many applications are moving to M1 compatible I'm thinking of
         | replace my windows box with a mini+two external hard drives. I
         | can't imagine what will happen when they release a new
         | processor. This one does more than enough.
        
           | lukevp wrote:
           | 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
           | stylus. I had a 120hz android phone for over a year, and
           | while the frame rate when scrolling is slightly worse on iOS,
           | overall the OS feels more fluid to me. On a 120hz iPad it's
           | no comparison.
           | 
           | I am speculating here as I don't know for sure, but I
           | remember iOS started as a derivation of OSX so this may be
           | the case for macOS as well. So I think it's not your
           | imagination, it's a different input and render architecture
           | than windows or android.
        
             | happytoexplain wrote:
             | >the render loop of the OS is decoupled from the app
             | 
             | Can you elaborate on this? If you do too much work on the
             | main thread in iOS, it's going to hang the UI. Isn't the
             | main thread the "render thread"? Do scroll views have some
             | kind of special escape hatch to get off the main thread for
             | continuing to scroll if the main thread is blocked with
             | loading the content?
        
               | user-the-name wrote:
               | UIView animations do not run on the main thread, and will
               | not be blocked if the main thread is blocked. This does
               | help a bit with keeping the OS feeling smooth, but it is
               | far from the only reason.
        
               | ubertoop wrote:
               | I believe the point is that the "main thread" for your
               | iOS application, is not the main thread of the OS.
               | They're totally decoupled.
        
               | IAmLiterallyAB wrote:
               | Err, same with Android? And every OS ever. That's just
               | standard process isolation. Or am I misunderstanding
               | something?
        
               | brianwawok wrote:
               | There's some deep dive articles on the way the input loop
               | works. But OP is correct, and the reason iOS feels
               | smoother. Android has a lot more UI lag.
        
             | ocbyc wrote:
             | I'm sorry, I have an Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with 120mhz.
             | Using my girlfriends iPhone 12 makes me dizzy.
             | 
             | 120hz is something you don't notice much when you enable
             | it, but you definitely notice when it's gone.
        
             | ajconway wrote:
             | This is not entirely accurate. iOS indeed uses a client-
             | server UI model, kind of similar to X11. Along with
             | submitting "widget" hierarchy updates, it also supports
             | submitting "animations". The downside is that the animation
             | states are not truly accessible by the actual app after it
             | submits them.
             | 
             | The scrolling animation is 99.9% of the time implemented as
             | a client-side animation timer submitting non-animated
             | hierarchy updates to the server. It's common to have janky
             | scrolling.
        
               | skavi wrote:
               | > 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?
        
             | gambiting wrote:
             | I wonder what made apple give the iPad Pro such an awful
             | screen though, considering all the software optimisations
             | that they do. I got the M1 iPad a month ago, and the screen
             | has absolutely horrendous ghosting issues, like, what is
             | this? An LCD from 2001? Just open the settings app, and
             | quickly scroll the options up and down - white text on the
             | black background leaves such a visible smudge, it bothers
             | me massively when scrolling through websites or apps in
             | dark mode, it honestly doesn't feel like an apple product
             | to me. Honestly haven't seen this issue on any screen in
             | the past 10 years, and here this brand new(and very
             | expensive) iPad with 120Hz screen has something that looks
             | like 50-100ms gray to gray refresh time.
        
               | ideamotor wrote:
               | I'm worried the upcoming upgraded MBP will only have this
               | option. Although I read they released an update that
               | should minimize this issue. Have you tried that?
        
               | baybal2 wrote:
               | Display on microled Ipad pro is Apple's first more or
               | less own display. The panel itself is LG's I believe.
        
               | parasubvert wrote:
               | This is a very interesting anecdote considering the m1
               | IPad Pro is supposed to have one of the best screens
               | available on any device that form factor, the same XDR
               | display technology as their $5000+ monsters. Every
               | reviewer has mentioned the display as the selling point.
               | I have looked at them in person and have debating buying
               | one, but Next time I'm at an Apple Store I'll want to see
               | if I can replicate what you're seeing.
               | 
               | You might be experiencing the mini-LED effect where the
               | back lighting is regionalized, which isn't ghosting but
               | can be noticeable.
        
               | gambiting wrote:
               | It's on the 11" model, so definitely not a mini-LED
               | issue.
        
               | skavi wrote:
               | Edit: the parent commenter does not have a miniLED iPad.
               | 
               | If you have the 12.9" M1 iPad, the ghosting is likely due
               | to the new miniLED backlight which was introduced with
               | that model.
               | 
               | This backlight is not static, but tracks to content in
               | order to increase effective contrast (similar to FALD
               | backlights on higher end LCD TVs). If the backlight does
               | not track the LCD content fast enough, there can be
               | ghosting.
               | 
               | In addition, since the LEDs are large compared to pixels,
               | you can sometimes see haloing, particularly in small bits
               | of white on a black background.
               | 
               | Overall, while the display is great for video, especially
               | HDR video, it has some problems with UI and (white on
               | black) text.
        
               | gambiting wrote:
               | It's on the 11" model, so regular old LCD model, not the
               | new fancy microled.
        
               | tshaddox wrote:
               | I'm guessing it must be an issue with those new miniLED
               | screens, or some other significant generational problem.
               | I have two older 12.9" iPad Pros, one 1st generation and
               | one 2nd generation (the first with the 120hz display).
               | They are both excellent displays with no such issues with
               | motion or ghosting.
        
           | testfoobar wrote:
           | Typing lag is such a sad result of all our modern computing
           | abstractions.
           | 
           | https://www.extremetech.com/computing/261148-modern-
           | computer...
        
             | willyt wrote:
             | Sounds broken? Return it.
        
             | grishka wrote:
             | Hm. I've always thought it was more of a result of our
             | current display technology? Digital displays buffer an
             | entire frame before they display it. Sometimes several
             | frames. And the refresh rate is usually 60 Hz so each
             | buffered frame adds a delay of 16 ms. CRTs on the other
             | hand have basically zero latency because the signal coming
             | in directly controls the intensity of the beam as it draws
             | the picture.
             | 
             | Anyway, is it any better on displays that have a higher
             | refresh rate? I feel like it should make a substantial
             | difference.
        
               | dreamcompiler wrote:
               | CRTs are potentially worse. It takes the electron beam 16
               | ms to paint the screen. If the electron beam is halfway
               | down the screen and you change a pixel right above where
               | the beam just painted, you'll have to wait 16 ms before
               | you see anything change.
               | 
               | All CRT displays attached to computers in the last 40
               | years were driven from memory buffers just like LCDs, and
               | those buffers were typically only allowed to change while
               | the electron beam was "off", i.e. moving from the bottom
               | of the screen back to the top. Letting the buffer change
               | while the beam is writing results in "tearing" the image,
               | which was usually considered a bad thing.
        
               | Terretta wrote:
               | > _CRTs are potentially worse._
               | 
               | Video game aficionados would like to have a word with
               | you:
               | 
               | https://www.wired.com/story/crt-tube-tv-hot-gaming-tech-
               | retr...
               | 
               | To be fair, much of this is the color and shape
               | rendering, where pixel art had been tailored for CRTs.
               | 
               | Twitchy gamers do swear by "zero input lag" but are
               | perhaps just nostalgic, difference is likely to be 8ms
               | vs. 10ms:
               | 
               |  _"Using the industry-standard definition of input lag,
               | 60Hz CRTs don 't have 0ms input lag. 60Hz CRTs have 8.3ms
               | of input lag..."_
               | 
               | https://www.resetera.com/threads/crts-have-8-3ms-of-
               | input-la...
        
               | vbezhenar wrote:
               | I don't think that LCD buffer anything. I've experienced
               | screen tearing which should not happen with buffering.
               | Most applications implement some kind of vsync which
               | introduces buffering and related delays indeed.
               | 
               | Best option is to use adaptive sync and get rid of vsync.
               | But support for this technology is surprisingly not
               | mature, it works mostly in games.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | Screen tearing happens when the software swaps buffers on
               | the GPU while the GPU is in the middle of reading out a
               | buffer to send to the monitor. That tearing has nothing
               | at all to do with whatever buffering is or isn't
               | happening in the display itself, because the
               | discontinuity is actually present in the data stream sent
               | to the display.
        
       | shrimpx wrote:
       | The temperature of the laptop is an accurate enough replacement
       | for fan noise (if you use it normally, not in clamshell mode). I
       | notice that I've become far more sensitive to subtle temperature
       | changes in my M1 than I used to be in prior fan-cooled laptops.
       | Probably because the fan tends to come on before the machine
       | heats up to the touch, so temperature was a weak, secondary cue.
        
       | ranrotx wrote:
       | I mean, how else are we supposed to know the CPU is busy?
        
       | cowmix wrote:
       | https://www.motor1.com/news/520409/ford-mustang-mache-gasoli...
        
       | maxdo wrote:
       | It's like when person drive tesla, it drives fast, but no ugly
       | vibration and noise that most of the people used to associate
       | with performance car. But some people crave for these sounds. I
       | saw some modes doing that lol :) Kind of cargo cult. They pray
       | for uncomfortable attributes but not actual speed.
        
         | spacedcowboy wrote:
         | Not sure about that. The ride I took in a model X was pretty
         | uncomfortable for a $100k car. Turned me off Tesla as an
         | option.
        
       | panda88888 wrote:
       | Is there a version with engine sound instead? :)
        
       | habibur wrote:
       | Reminds me, 10 years back, battery cars suddenly seemed so much
       | silent, that they added engine noise played on speaker to alert
       | pedestrians.
        
         | alisonkisk wrote:
         | "suddenly" was because that's when they started existing in
         | noticeable numbers.
        
           | kube-system wrote:
           | No, it's because vehicles before then were not required to
           | meet minimum sound requirements by law. Check the spec sheets
           | of HEV/PHEV/EV vehicles made before then -- they don't have
           | acoustic alerting systems. Now they _all_ do (in the
           | jurisdictions that require it).
        
         | Someone wrote:
         | In both the USA and the EU, that's more or less (doesn't have
         | to be engine sounds, I think, but sounds are required) by law.
         | See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_warning_soun
         | d....
        
       | jheriko wrote:
       | how about an actual fan to improve performance? :)
        
       | mortenjorck wrote:
       | Guilherme Rambo's famed skills at discovering unannounced
       | features and products may be a thorn in Apple's side, but this is
       | inadvertently the best ad he's ever made for them.
        
       | hackathonguy wrote:
       | Wondering if it's just me: I bought an M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of
       | RAM, based on reports saying that RAM management is much more
       | effective than with Intel CPUs. Ever since, I'm really struggling
       | with load management. I typically have Chrome open with 20-30
       | tabs, plus a couple of Electron apps (Notion, Slack, Google
       | Calendar), and my MacBook frequently slows down to a crawl or
       | gets stuck entirely. Simple commands - "close all tabs" in Chrome
       | - can take 50 seconds to execute. Is anyone else experiencing the
       | same?
        
         | Shorel wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | wffurr wrote:
           | And if you want the separate window so you can pretend
           | they're apps, use the "create shortcut" option in the menu.
        
         | owenversteeg wrote:
         | Hmm. I've never ran into that myself and I've used a lot of
         | swap on my 8gb M1 Air, so you may be running into another
         | issue, but one thing I have noticed is that performance is far
         | better with native Apple apps. I switched to using Slack in the
         | browser and Safari as my main browser and battery life and
         | performance have been amazing.
        
         | megablast wrote:
         | Nope. Got the 8gb too. I have xcode, firefox, safari, mail and
         | a lot more. No issues, apart from xcode because it sucks, and
         | has sucked for years.
         | 
         | Chrome is your problem.
        
         | varispeed wrote:
         | Are you using an AdBlock? If not, maybe that's why Chrome is
         | struggling. All these adverts eat resources like crazy.
        
         | ryanSrich wrote:
         | Can anyone explain to me the psychology of having 30 tabs open?
         | Why not just bookmark the URLs to an ephemeral folder or
         | something? Having more than 10 tabs open is beyond stressful
         | for me, and honestly I can't see how having more open would
         | make anyone more productive. Really curious to learn about
         | other workflows and excessive tab use is one I'm morbidly
         | curious about.
        
           | Tsiklon wrote:
           | Personally on my phone and work computer I keep legion number
           | of tabs open. On my phone, it's because using bookmarks is
           | slower than opening the tab menu. Plus the OS will swap out
           | tabs that haven't been used in a while
           | 
           | With a work perspective in mind I have one window set up per
           | task, I use tree style tabs on Firefox, and at a glance I can
           | see the complete context of a task I'm researching, just from
           | the decision tree the tab branches show. Every potentially
           | interesting link that'll help me with my task gets opened on
           | a branch below the parent, then reviewed and filtered. This
           | is tremendously useful when it comes to writing up
           | documentation or updating tickets and the like.
        
           | barrkel wrote:
           | Bookmarks are like a bin things get thrown into and
           | completely forgotten about. I open a bookmark maybe once a
           | week, and then it's usually for something like accessing the
           | wifi router, or a bookmarklet for adapting a web site.
           | 
           | Tabs are like a TODO list. If something needs to have
           | attention paid to it, and then dismissed, I open a tab for
           | it.
           | 
           | (Of course, I use Firefox & Tree Style Tabs. I find Chrome
           | almost unusable due to its tabbing idiom.)
        
             | ryanSrich wrote:
             | Interesting.
             | 
             | I'd never be able to use Tabs as todos because I personally
             | use tabs very ephemerally. Closing out of chrome with 3
             | profiles and 10 tabs each open is nothing to me because I
             | don't care what tabs are open. If they're important links
             | then I've already written them down in Roam and/or
             | bookmarked them.
             | 
             | question - how do you find anything? Maybe it's the fact
             | that I've never used tree tabs, but finding the link you
             | used last week or last month to complete a task sounds like
             | a nightmare without bookmarking it. Contrast this with my
             | workflow, which doesn't rely on tabs, and I can easily find
             | it in my notes in less than 10 seconds.
        
               | leppr wrote:
               | Firefox suggests open tabs by default when typing in the
               | address bar.
        
           | megablast wrote:
           | 30 tabs is like 30 apps. Once might be a word processor,
           | texting, image editor, etc...
        
           | matznerd wrote:
           | How can you do research without going beyond 10 tabs? I
           | typically go horizontal. If i'm trying to solve problem, will
           | middle click on top 5 results etc and go through them until
           | problem solved. Then there is research on various topics that
           | require deep dives into papers, those papers then have
           | citations that require other papers or open up other queries.
           | Then going through email generate various links that I need
           | to see, via google alerts, groups etc, and that doesn't even
           | get started with links generated out of hn/reddit etc. How do
           | you get away with less than 10 tabs? I also use multiple tab
           | managing plugins not just for memory, but for searching
           | between open tabs, and then to manage and collapse entire
           | windows etc...
        
             | ryanSrich wrote:
             | My workflow for research is like this:
             | 
             | - open link, determine if it's relevant or not. If it's
             | relevant, but not relevant right now, I'll dump it into my
             | notes.
             | 
             | - then I close the tab. Pretty simple.
             | 
             | - when the time comes where that link is relevant again,
             | I'll find it in my notes and open it.
             | 
             | - I really don't find any value in having tabs open that
             | aren't immediately relevant to what I'm doing. 10 seems
             | like the upper limit of focus for me.
        
           | leppr wrote:
           | Tabs are like temporary bookmarks. I use 1 window per task
           | and usually open links in new tabs. I don't need to do
           | anything to pause a task: simply minimize the window and the
           | tab unloader extension does the work of automatically keeping
           | my RAM from overflowing.
           | 
           | When returning to the task, I just focus the window and
           | instantly have a picture of my previous progression. In case
           | of a computer crash or restart, it's been years since the
           | Firefox session restore function ever failed me. That step in
           | booting up the computer is quite painful though, the browser
           | can take a good 60 seconds to restore the previous session.
           | 
           | When I'm done with a task for good, I just close the window.
           | Workspaces help in keeping my Taskbar and Alt+Tab workflow
           | clean as well. I often have 1000+ tabs "open".
        
         | LASR wrote:
         | Yes. The M1 is not magic. Or at least it has limits.
        
         | klohto wrote:
         | Well it definitely is more efficient but RAM is still RAM...
         | Swapping whole 8 gigs will make your system sluggish no matter
         | what. I feel like 8GB is fine if your usage is really light,
         | but swapping more than 70% will slow it down extensively. On
         | the other hand there is a whole camp of people who run heavy
         | dev suites on 8GB and don't have these issues, so it might
         | really be a faulty line. It's the first version in the end.
        
         | dstick wrote:
         | > plus a couple of Electron apps
         | 
         | I'm afraid that might be your problem right there :(
        
           | hirako2000 wrote:
           | I confirm. Embedded nodes each take a few hundreds of
           | megabyte. It looked cool when we had 2 electron apps out
           | there, now with so many of them good by ram.not mentioning
           | apps developed in a few months rather than years, packed with
           | features to become more memory hungry than the OS. MS Team is
           | a particular offender.
        
             | lukevp wrote:
             | 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 technologies, it's just the current
             | implementation that was needed to make everything work on
             | our existing platforms.
             | 
             | Mac will be a holdout because they heart native but
             | hopefully will concede at some point because more and more
             | people are going to deploy apps this way from here on out.
             | It's not worth it to employ native app developers for each
             | platform except for the largest of the large companies.
        
               | hollerith wrote:
               | >It's not worth it to employ native app developers for
               | each platform except for the largest of the large
               | companies.
               | 
               | Programmers have ported Emacs to the native GUIs for
               | MacOS, Windows and Linux (and 80% of respondents to a
               | recent Emacs survey prefer to use one of those GUIs
               | rather than Emacs's TTY interface), so "largest of the
               | large companies" is going a little too far.
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | > Programmers have ported Emacs to the native GUIs for
               | MacOS, Windows and Linux
               | 
               | That doesn't mean it would be commercially worthwhile to
               | employ them to do so; volunteers do lots of things that
               | wouldn't worthwhile to employ people to do. OTOH, wanting
               | volunteers doesn't make it happen.
        
               | Klonoar wrote:
               | 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 Electron.
        
         | qeternity wrote:
         | Anecdotally, the M1 feels very performant with 8gb (I have MBP
         | and Mini 8gb variants) compared to my 16gb Intel MBP and my
         | 32gb Hackintosh.
         | 
         | That said - it's not magic. 30 tabs in Chrome is a lot if
         | you're not using a tab suspender extension. But one thing I do
         | notice is that when a Rosetta 2 app is running, the entire
         | machine seems to take a hit. I would check the architecture of
         | your apps and see if you have any x86 apps running.
        
           | matznerd wrote:
           | Lol 30 tabs is a lot? I'm running 32 gb ram on windows
           | i7-6700 3.4 ghz on mini ATX and currently have 883 tabs open,
           | using marvelous suspender and few other tweaks, but still
           | have 95 windows opens (1 tab typically alive in each window
           | minimum excluding my suspension blacklist...). Also have
           | photoshop, notion, and a few other apps going and am running
           | smoothly at 40-70% cpu utilization and 85% memory...
        
             | geerlingguy wrote:
             | I think the "if you're not using a tab background
             | suspender" part was important there.
             | 
             | Not sure if Chrome is still this way, but it would allow
             | background tabs to still run things like JS even after
             | hours of not being focused.
        
           | __float wrote:
           | Seconded. I have 30+ tabs open (though in Firefox), alongside
           | VS Code, Obsidian (a notes app, but with web views), Spotify
           | (web views), and I don't frequently run into serious
           | performance issues.
           | 
           | I do try to avoid Rosetta quite a bit though (right now I
           | have no Intel processes in Activity Monitor).
           | 
           | Also check Messages.app hasn't run away with the CPU.
           | Sometimes it seems to do that :(
        
         | miguelrochefort wrote:
         | Same here (although it's more like 200 open tabs across 10
         | virtual desktops). It still feels slower than my cheap Atom
         | netbook, but the battery life and hardware quality more than
         | makes up for it.
         | 
         | This might be an opportunity to tweak my browsing habits.
        
         | kccoder wrote:
         | The 8GB M1 I bought was constantly fighting the limited RAM, so
         | I exchanged it for a 16GB model, which has been perfect. For
         | those looking, the MicroCenter near me has 16GB MacBook Air
         | models available at a discount, other MicroCenter locations
         | might have the same.
        
       | bangonkeyboard wrote:
       | Fan noise and hard drive clicks were very useful indicators of
       | processes doing things they shouldn't.
        
       | sachamps wrote:
       | I'll wait for the Pro... But honestly - the last Airs and Pros
       | are a joke especially while using a second Monitor. The Pro has a
       | known bug and can get pretty slow. The Air - unresponsive as hell
       | if a second monitor is used and u are in a virtual conference
       | with screencast and cam on. We must always look at the price
       | value tag and at that point Apple really disappointed recently.
       | Don't get me wrong... I am a Dev and i appreciate the same things
       | as you do. But I am not hyped by the M1... I just think at that
       | price point apple should get things sorted out finally and if the
       | M1 works out... Well, than thanks Apple and thanks for let me
       | buying all this expensive crap upfront ;)
        
         | seumars wrote:
         | I've been using the Mini for 7 months without a single hiccup -
         | daily routine requires several Adobe apps running
         | simultaneously and a couple of dev node servers plus browsers,
         | mail and the like, on a 4k/5k double monitor setup.
        
       | ashdev wrote:
       | Nice idea. You can also have a CPU usage monitor in your app bar.
        
       | traspler wrote:
       | This means I can finally upgrade, thanks! Not having the fans to
       | scream against during my Teams calls was a real dealbreaker for
       | me ;)
        
       | dpedu wrote:
       | I don't want to download it, is there a clip of the sound
       | anywhere?
        
         | latexr wrote:
         | > I don't want to download it
         | 
         | In case what you mean is that you don't want to _run_ it, an
         | alternative: right-click the app, followed by "Show Package
         | Contents", and navigate to Contents /Resources. You'll find a
         | couple of WAV files.
         | 
         | Don't expected pleasant _woosh_ noises, they sound like rough
         | recordings of computer fans.
        
       | rbanffy wrote:
       | Not quite as useful as this, but
       | https://github.com/rbanffy/selectric-mode also makes your
       | computer sound more serious.
        
       | casey wrote:
       | This is awesome! I built a similar open source version a few
       | years ago for a friend with a fanless Air, but it foolishly used
       | system notifications and a menu bar icon instead of sound:
       | 
       | https://github.com/caseymrm/notafan
        
       | varispeed wrote:
       | In 10 years' time we gonna get an app that simulates the battery
       | going off.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | This is funny. For the last ten years I've used Mac laptops as my
       | primary machine. Of course the fan noise was a great auditory
       | clue to tell me to check out Activity Monitor/top for rogue
       | processes and help me optimize which tasks took too many
       | resources.
       | 
       | I didn't realize how much I relied on that cue until I
       | temporarily switched to a Mac desktop machine during the pandemic
       | when I didn't need to travel. The desktop fans pretty much stay
       | at 1200rpm all the time. I think I've seen them spike once. I'd
       | forgotten how much better desktops can be for some things.
       | 
       | Now I'm looking for a better remote access solution so I can
       | consider sticking with a desktop at home and then maybe just an
       | iPad for travel with good remote access and file sync.
        
         | alisonkisk wrote:
         | is it better to have rogue processes silently wasting energy
         | and creating heat?
        
           | lukevp wrote:
           | I think this is a case where the meaning of the parent can be
           | taken multiple ways, and one of the HN rules is to take the
           | more generous case. My interpretation is that they are saying
           | they see the purpose of needing some type of cue when CPU
           | usage is high, but didn't realize that they were using the
           | fan speed as a proxy for CPU utilization until this was
           | posted, at which time, they put 2 and 2 together. That's not
           | saying that the product is bad or not, just an anecdote.
        
         | DenseComet wrote:
         | 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 about that either.
        
           | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
           | 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 sync tool. I have used it with a PC, Macbook,
           | Android setup. Never have I not been able to get it to work.
        
           | read_if_gay_ wrote:
           | MEGA has been working pretty nicely for me also with Git. I
           | use it on a macOS desktop and a Linux laptop. Only thing is
           | the mobile app isn't the most polished compared to Apple's
           | Files for example, but I don't need it often.
        
         | zitterbewegung wrote:
         | I remember using hard disk drive sounds for disk usage and or
         | capacitor noises to debug issues. But, I really like the
         | MacBook Air M1 because its so quiet and it helps me concentrate
         | much better and if you are talking to others or recording a
         | talk it is silent. The other thing is that it has no moving
         | parts so it should be very durable.
        
           | philistine wrote:
           | I use one too and there are still some moving parts. The
           | keyboard keys, the speakers, the display hinge and the Taptic
           | Engine. Those are the parts I'm looking at intently as the
           | ones that will fail on me, especially the hinge.
        
             | zitterbewegung wrote:
             | The most likely thing to break on a computer is the fan
             | itself. Apple has revised the display hinge and the keys
             | have been redesigned. I don't know of any reports of the
             | Speakers breaking or a Taptic Engine (other than people
             | using Bootcamp on Intel MacBook Pros but that isn't an
             | option anymore) but since there is no long term data on all
             | of those components the only thing that I would question
             | would be the redesigned hinge and the keyboard.
        
               | tomxor wrote:
               | Annecdata: I've never had a desktop or laptop fan fail on
               | me, and I'm the kind of person who keeps them for a
               | decade.
               | 
               | Spinning HDDs (Toshiba bearings), keyboards and hinges on
               | the other hand have all failed on me multiple times, in
               | macs. but the fans kept going. The keyboards were the
               | last thing to fail in the 2009 design, they last about 10
               | years.
               | 
               | Also while were at it, mechanical failure isn't always
               | the biggest concern these days, Apple has had nVidia GPU
               | issues (soldier and fab issues) in the past where they
               | ended up underclocking them in a firmware patch in order
               | to push failures out of warrantee.
        
       | hesk wrote:
       | Just say no.
        
       | techrat wrote:
       | But... why?
        
         | wlesieutre wrote:
         | It was an April fools joke app, but actually works because
         | that's much funnier
         | 
         | https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/01/april-fools-day-2021-cybermou...
        
         | Klonoar wrote:
         | Pretty sure this is a response to a joke on Twitter in the
         | Apple dev community.
        
         | guipsp wrote:
         | It's part of my workflow
        
           | spideymans wrote:
           | https://xkcd.com/1172/
        
             | w_for_wumbo wrote:
             | Came to the comments to ensure this had been posted!
        
         | abdusco wrote:
         | I keep having some rogue apps that are burning CPU for
         | (seemingly) no reason. When I feel some warmness, I check
         | `htop` and there it is, IINA (a media player) is pegging the
         | CPU again.
        
         | root_axis wrote:
         | It's a joke that's meant to ironically allude to the fact that
         | M1 computers don't generate fan noise.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ushakov wrote:
         | hype
        
       | CapriciousCptl wrote:
       | This is useful! Every so often Docker acts up or a Youtube video
       | hidden in a tab somewhere or some silly mistake opens tons of
       | Postgres connections on my M1. Previously the only cue was
       | hitting the critically low power (10%?) at 6 hours instead of 12.
       | Now there's this app. Thank you!
        
       | subroutine wrote:
       | One of my fav macOS apps is iStat. It lets you keep track of all
       | types of stuff from the menu bar...
       | 
       | https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
        
       | TacticalCoder wrote:
       | The M1 line up seems great but... I'm very surprised by all the
       | comments from people discovering what a quiet computer is like in
       | 2021.
       | 
       | I've been running PCs so quiet they're inaudible since, what,
       | nearly two decades now!? (since basically the first consumer SSDs
       | started hitting the market: don't remember when that was but it
       | was a long time ago)
       | 
       | An ultra quiet PSU, a gigantic CPU heatsink, a huge CPU fan
       | running so slow you can read what's written on the blades, a
       | passively cooled GPU (ofc not working if you do GPU heavy stuff)
       | and that's it.
       | 
       | Now it's great if, at last, it's coming to beefy laptops too. But
       | a quiet computer ain't anything new.
        
         | atonse wrote:
         | So you're comparing what sounds like a hand rolled custom build
         | with a no brainer laptop that's a third of an inch though.
        
         | breakfastduck wrote:
         | Quiet computers, not new, quiet high performance laptops
         | however...
        
         | Hokusai wrote:
         | Computers like the "HUAWEI MateBook X" are fanless with a
         | powerful CPU (10th Gen Intel(r) Core(tm) i5-10210U Processor,
         | 1.6 GHz 4 cores, Turbo up to 4.2 GHz).
         | https://consumer.huawei.com/en/laptops/matebook-x-2020/specs...
         | 
         | I have used also a Surface Pro for a long time, and not being
         | modern as this new Apple laptop, it is a full-fledged Windows
         | 10 machine that can run any programming IDE, virtual machines,
         | etc. and completely silent.
         | 
         | Can someone explain why the down-votes for TacticalCoder for
         | just stating facts? I really don't get, unless it is pure Apple
         | fandom and that would be just silly.
        
       | MiguelHudnandez wrote:
       | That's pretty hilarious. Until recently I didn't think of the CPU
       | fan as an auditory cue for how hard your system is working. But
       | now I can remember times that excessive fan noise has prompted me
       | to investigate the cause of excessive usage.
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | 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 doesn't work
         | because the fans are still turning.
        
           | criddell wrote:
           | 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?
        
           | lucb1e wrote:
           | Wait, why would the device get warm during suspend? Or do you
           | mean a different kind of sleep mode? I'm thinking of the
           | state where it just refreshes DRAM to keep its contents (this
           | does not produce much heat at all) and everything else is
           | off: that definitely does not require the cpu fan to run
           | because the cpu is not processing any instructions during
           | that state.
        
             | detaro wrote:
             | I assume not get warm, still is warm from running
             | beforehand.
        
               | lucb1e wrote:
               | Hmm if that were necessary, then all power states should
               | keep the fan on for a while after running, so a device
               | that was shut down would also keep the fans on and there
               | would be no need to put in a requirements document that
               | the fans must turn off to give the illusion of having
               | shut down? To my understanding though, if no new heat is
               | created (usually mainly by processors like CPU or GPU),
               | keeping the fans on is not necessary in regular laptops
               | or desktops.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | And this is how I ended up buying a second Nintendo Wii. They
           | turned off the fans and fried themselves.
        
         | megous wrote:
         | That would be useful for me today. Systemd again gone into some
         | of those inifinite loops consuming 100% CPU in one of its
         | daemons that try to replace what already worked before
         | (systemd-resolved) today, while I was sitting in the train
         | without AC.
         | 
         | I only realized something was wrong when the pinebook got way
         | too hot.
        
         | canjobear wrote:
         | Hearing the disk going used to be an auditory cue too, which is
         | now gone thanks to solid state drives.
        
           | reader_mode wrote:
           | Yes, I miss that calming crackle telling me that my PC didn't
           | lock up and it's just chugging along. And the floppy boot
           | sound. Objectively worse but still nostalgic.
        
           | ianlevesque wrote:
           | Occasionally with catastrophic results
           | https://www.extremetech.com/computing/239268-spotify-may-
           | kil...
           | 
           | That said, I don't miss the noise or slowness.
        
         | dbtc wrote:
         | I had a habit of touching the strip of metal above the keys on
         | my old macbook air, since that heats up before the fan becomes
         | audible.
         | 
         | The sensible approach, of course, is to add a load monitor to
         | the menu bar; now with my new m1 macbook, I can simply make the
         | appropriate noises myself, as necessary. This is the UNIX way.
        
           | MiguelHudnandez wrote:
           | "MenuBar Stats" has a versatile collection of widgets to add
           | to the menu bar. I'd prefer something open source though, if
           | anyone has recommendations, please share.
           | 
           | Once you're running a tool like that, it is interesting to
           | see the efficiency cores often saturated and the performance
           | cores usually sleeping.
        
       | uniqueid wrote:
       | Does it have an option permanently to scramble the video a month
       | after the warranty runs out?
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-18 23:00 UTC)