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Comment by apocalyptic0n3 | Hacker News Reader

They could focus on cooling, which would enable them to throttle the CPU less often. The recent firmware update helped with the throttling but it still runs extremely hot.

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There is a reason for Apple's position though. Many/most of these MacBook Pros are being used in professional work environments which expect your laptop to be silent.

I've been in quite a few meetings with the fans going to 100% and it's incredibly disruptive. So whilst you have options to increase the fan speed the defaults are understandably kept quite conservative.

This is a fair point. At the same time, though, they have very few exits for hot air and could improve passive cooling by making the MBP slightly thicker (gasp!) and adding larger heat sinks.

Alternatively, they could add first-party support for fan-profile configuration. The needs of a dev or designer or video editor do not match the needs of an accountant or an executive. The ability to easily switch between profiles to match task would be extremely useful, I think.

A bigger chassis with a bigger/twin heatpipe and bigger holes to vent the heat from are completely silent ways to increase cooling performance. In fact they could even be utilized to make the fans even more silent depending on the workload.

Fair point. I've been in a conference room where I had a video going on my 2013 MBP with headphones in and the guy next to me asked me to stop whatever was running my fans so hard. Those things can get loud.

I used to put two drug store ice backs underneath my 17" MBP so I could use it without the heat turning my legs red through my pants.

I don't think today's MBP's run quite that hot.

The most recent MBPs were being throttled after mere seconds of 100% CPU due to the poor heat management and poor fan profiles; Linus Tech Tips was able to go from sealed box to throttled CPU in under 20 minutes without even trying. A firmware update to address the fan profile issue improved this but it still has issues.

The MBPs were not really designed to handle the heat of an i9

> A firmware update to address the fan profile issue improved this but it still has issues.

I was under the impression that the firmware update essentially fixed the thermal issues?

This is fair. I don't have a ton of heat issues but they could allow me to easily bump fan speed earlier on in the process of heating up. Would be a welcome addition.

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