It's summer now and as soon as I plug my MacBook Pro 2017 in to charge, it starts throttling itself due to the heat of the charging battery. Same thing happened to the 2012 I had before.
These things just don't have adequate cooling.
These things just don't have adequate cooling.
I think throttling in this scenario is a reasonable tradeoff, much more so than overengineering the cooling solution to handle it and thereby increasing cost, weight and bulk. Sit in the shade.
Other laptops work in the sun.
EDIT: Yes, I checked, the MacBook Air has an operating temperature of 10-35c and a storage temperature of -25-45c, which means that it's technically unusable or out of warranty if you use it in a hot country on a hot day. Like in the tropics on a beach for example.
> you cannot use your laptop unless you're indoors in air conditioned comfort
Maybe it's just me being used to colder climate, but I feel that laptop's thermal throttling is going to be a relatively small issue if trying to work in sunlight when air temperature is +35C out there.
I'd really seek some shade even when it's merely +25C...
I typically work from a hammock, in the shade, until it gets to 90-95ºF. The throttling happens even when the temperature is in the range of 80-85ºF and CPU load make it much worse. It's not uncommon for me to have to seek air conditioning if I'm running a large test suite or rebuilding docker containers, else my machine throttles to the point that I can't even use Safari.
I've never had this problem with any other laptop I've owned, including previous generations of MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
I do not expect the manufacturers to overbuild the thermal capacity such that this isn't a problem, not when we're talking about portable devices which (appreciably) prioritize compactness and lightness.
In the past I would have to shade my laptop while using it to play MP3s from the passenger seat with the convertible top down while on road trips through Nevada, to prevent if from overheating in the direct sunlight. It never crossed my mind that this was some kind of failure on IBM's part, the machine was already pushing the limits of what was possible at the time in the interests of being small and light.
As for the daylight, the sun is not the same as daylight. Devices have tolerances for heat, tropical heat in Miami is not the same as daylight in Chicago.
To be clear, I don't make a habit of working in direct sunlight. Screen glare makes that impractical, even if the temperature warrants it. I do generally work from a hammock in the shade, and I deal with thermal issues constantly.
Even in the shade, at around 85ºF, I find that I start throttling noticeably when I run large test suites, recreate complex python environments, or build docker images. I keep a close eye on my system's sensor temps through iStat Menus, and try to tailor my laptop's workload around it. For example - I use Slack on my iPhone or iPad instead of on my laptop, and keep Safari closed unless I'm actively testing something in it.
Still, it seems like my machine throttles to uselessness right around noon. That's when my battery hits 20% or so unless I've been plugged in to my external battery, and about the time the temperature hits 85-90ºF.
I'm going to try using my linux desktop when it happens next, that at least has adequate cooling.
I've found Intel Power Gadget [1] which looks like it might help, however, I'm not really sure what these graphs should look like when throttling vs not.
[1]: https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-power-gadget...
On Intel chips with a 1 to 4 core boost, no cores will rise above the base clock when thermally throttled, voltage may increase, and frequencies will be lower. You can run a CPU bound benchmark until temps rise and note when the performance begins to decrease.
On desktop Intel processors, this usually happens between 70-80°C.
That’s literally the entire case. There is no part of a laptop designed to never touch human skin.