MacBook 16-inch Fan Noise (2019)
discussions.apple.com
discussions.apple.com
However:
> gfxCardStatus v2.3 and above actively prevents you from switching to Integrated Only mode when any apps are in the Dependencies list (or if you have an external display plugged in). This is because if you were to do this, your discrete GPU would actually stay powered on, even though you've switched to the integrated GPU.
https://gfx.io/switching.html#integrated-only-mode-limitatio...
My current RTX 20xx card can drive two 4k monitors at low clocks, but the 9xx series really struggled and the 10 series still needed to clock up some. I suspect something similar is probably happening here with the AMD GPU if you're running the laptop's integrated retina display along with a 1440p60 external display, it's probably forced to clock up to drive that many pixels. I'm not really sure how AMD could get around basic hardware limitations here unless they have a really clever way of driving displays at a low memory clock.
I tried out the five different "Looks like" scalings the Display Preferences allow for and then eyeballed the "Radeon High Side" wattage readouts via iStat Menus:
1280x720: 18W
1920x1080: 6W
2560x1440: 6W
3200x1800: 6W
3840x2160: 6W
So it looks like it might (also?) be related to the display resolution scaling.
On my low-spec laptop from a while back, running Rising Thunder set to 720p was faster than native, but it was even faster to first set my desktop resolution to 720p because the overhead of the game engine scaling its 720p framebuffer up to native 4k was measurable. Setting the desktop resolution down also improved battery life.
This seems to be excessive GPU use when simply connecting an external monitor at its native res.
When I had a MBP 2015 I rarely had the fan come because it only had and and used an integrated GPU.
With a 2018 MBP the fan frequently kicks on because it switches to the Radeon high perf GPU when doing things like connecting to an external monitor.
Not a sound.
Newer versions of Win10 actually have an odd variant of this that works more like MacOS where it will sometimes rasterize at a higher DPI and scale down - it looks pretty nice but it's not compatible with all old applications, I only have it enabled for a couple.
In any case, I feel you on the system-wide lag. I basically just avoid using JetBrains products at this point.
I have absolutely zero lag.
My current issue is that I use an ultrawide curved monitor at work, and when I lock the screen and then unlock it, some of my previous window positions are changed on the external monitor. My large-but-not-fullscreened IDE that takes up ~85% of the external monitor is resized and shifted off screen, every time. I have to use the 4-finger swipe up gesture to see all windows, drag the now-visible IDE window into a new desktop panel at the very top, then minimize it from fullscreen, to get back to where I was before I pressed ctrl+cmd+q...
The fans sit just fine at the minimum speed under this setup, nice and quiet... until I start to do anything even remotely demanding, like, oh, open Ableton Live. Used to be I could run dozens of tracks and plugins with no fan noise. Now I can't even have a blank project open without the fans spinning up to audible levels. So much for recording vocals!
The fix? Unplug the external monitor.
Look at that single skinny heat pipe, it will get saturated very fast. Second to that, look at those tiny radiators, they are clearly not capable to discharge the full heat flux.
I simply don't see any signs of proper thermal engineering there.
Apple says "we are listening now, and here is a new cooling design," then it comes out to be even less adequate that the old one. I can't think of anybody else capable of trolling up their customers like that.
If anybody wants to dish out something on an order of $1.5m to do a contract manufacturing run for a properly designed full sized laptop, give me a note. I do have some tricks in mind how to make 40W+ CPUs work in a relatively compact case.
Whenever I see a laptop with a >15W TDP CPU in a super slim package with a tiny heatsink/fan unit, no matter if it's from Apple or another vendor, I'm very suspicious. At least the 12 inch Macbook from a few years ago which was truly fanless uses an appropriately low powered CPU.
disclaimer: used to do systems engineering for a server manufacturer a long time ago, after you've gone through a dozen iterations of ways to mount skived copper heatsinks on dual socket motherboards in 1U cases, with various fan solutions, you realize that everything that is not acoustically terrible is some sort of compromise. People are trying to put CPU+GPU+RAM packages that are anywhere from 25W to 45W TDP in laptops that are physically too small for them.
Seems like that wasn't working fully, since they report having GPU issues after stress testing the computer (external GPU worked fine). And that is worrying. Is the thermal stress shutdown from OS, or onboard the GPU/CPU?
I worry that it might actually be a software issue. GPU clock starts running slowly, software assumes that it will be running faster, two commands are issued but only one is processed, driver gets confused, driver crashes.
This way, when I buy the integrated version, I know the chassis has been designed with the heavier airflow of the discrete-GPU version in mind. If I'm lucky, my integrated-GPU config might even use the identical size heat-sinks as the discrete-GPU version.
You can buy them from the manufacturer with no discrete graphics cards.
I have one with a card which is physically turned off for the same trick.
If you go to dell.com and select one of the more entry level varients you can customise more things:
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/9ohpyo/psa_t470t4...
Note that to this day it's magnitudes of order cheaper to build a desktop for crunching numbers. There's no beating the thermals of that, and thermals = cost either in money or time in this very physically-underpinned market.
Why can't laptop engineers just find a way to break physics, it's not that hard, Einstein did it...
edit: /s
I ran my 2011 MBP hot and it eventually bricked. The logic board "post-recall" also eventually bricked too.
The Apple support thread for that issue ran hundreds of pages, so the 44 page thread for the 16" MBP is just giving me bad flashbacks.
If that was the gamble, you'd assume that the laptops would thermal throttle way below the physical Tjunction limit. As a matter of fact, they're still allowing themselves to reach very high temperatures even in common usage, despite an undersized (hence, to some extent, less reliable) cooling solution. That's kinda hard to explain as a sensible choice.
Well, they did make the 16" a fair bit thicker than the previous models.
Is Apple ignoring this? Or just assuming these workloads are short/bursty enough to not worry about sustained utilization?
This doesn't have to be a bad path. Most peoples' CPU use is intermittent, and there's a decent amount of thermal mass around. I'd rather be able to go fast for 5 seconds and then be throttled to speed X by ability to move heat than to be throttled to speed X all the time.
They also keep at "oh, look how thin it is" even though the vast majority of people stopped caring 5-7 years ago. Make it thicker, but with better cooling, better storage, better GPUs etc.
Worse still, they do it across the line. "We painted ourselves into a thermal corner with MacPro" says Apple and keeps releasing iMacs (and iMacs Pro) with sealed aluminum enclosures, and making them thinner and thinner.
They literally did all of that in 16 inch.
I don't recall my 17" Powerbook G4 ever having thermal issues but how many people would buy a ~$5000 base spec MBP today? See Mac Pro.
Well, would be a wonder if they would still be using 2017s i7, wouldn't it? So, accepting natural or following common improvements should be nothing to brag about.
Besides that they obviously still fail with the second point, otherwise this whole issue would not exist.
Retina Macbook Pros were 1.7cm (0.71 in) thick.
Touchbar Macbook Pros, 1.55 cm (0.61 in) thick.
And they "made it thicker". They are now a whopping 1.62cm (0.64 in) thick.
> I simply don't see any signs of proper thermal engineering here.
I hope you're joking. If not, you have a nauseating level of conceit.
Something tells me that Apple spent more than $1.5M designing the recent MacBook Pro.
It is a bit presumptuous to say "well i could do it better" when referencing an entire team of qualified electrical engineers at one of the largest corporations in the world that has near limitless resources.
Especially coming from such a qualified background as "a person somewhat close to electronics engineering".
> It is a bit presumptuous to say "well i could do it better" when referencing an entire team of qualified electrical engineers at one of the largest corporations in the world that has near limitless resources.
Well, they still clearly screwed up. Challenge that.
I does not take to be a genius to understand that this scrawny cooling system could've performed much better if it had adequate heatpipe size, radiators, and air pathway optimisation.
As far as “clearly screwed up,” I’m not sure how clear that is. A few people on a forum complaining about something out of hundreds of thousands of those computers sold. In all of the rigorous professional reviews, this “screw up” hasn’t been mentioned. Not sure exactly what the screw up was, that fans turn on? On a huge, high end, powerful laptop?
Where I think the MacBook Pro could do better is if they adopted more of a vapor chamber strategy for the heatsink, but as you mentioned the radiators are probably going to be the limiting factor, seeing as there's really not a huge temperature delta going on here.
I suppose one strategy could be to perhaps up the fan speed yet again, maybe at the cost of a little bit more noise, and use heat sinks with fins as finely pitched as the MacBook Air. Of course this will make the heat sink more heavy and expensive, but given the robustness of old Thinkpads that did not go easy on the copper, it could work.
One of the confusing issues is that people say, "I'm only using 15% of my CPU, the fans should not be coming on."
What they don't realize, is that using 1 core running at turbo speeds is only going to show up as 15% of the CPU, but draw enough power and create enough heat to trigger the fans!
Another thing that some of these posters are not aware of, is that running these temperature/fan speed monitoring applications can use quite a bit of power! They're drawing all these fancy graphs, the applications are usually poorly optimized. Even the Mac OS Activity Monitor is a hog in Catalina for some reason and can take 15-20% of a CPU all by itself.
And that doesn't even take into consideration all the other apps people have running. You can see in their screenshots or menu bar they have Dropbox, 3rd party wireless keyboard/mouse programs, they might have 10 things running in just their menubars! They need to look in the Activity Monitor's Power section to see what the real culprit is.
Plugging an external monitor into your MacBook will enable the dGPU and that will create more power draw, this is nothing new:
https://i.imgur.com/9KmLPMX.png
It's the workload, not the monitors you have plugged in.
I posted a picture in the MacRumors thread with 4 externals (4K, 2x1440, 1x1080) plugged into my base model 16" and it idled in the 50 degree range with no audible fan noise. Once I started streaming video and opening apps, the fans then started, as expected.
Perhaps it's time for Apple to admit defeat and just build a watchdog service that runs every 30 seconds and if things aren't working: kill and restart whatever process and/or driver that runs the touch bar.
regardless of what is really happening to take that 15% load, if the fan comes on that strong, it is not a proper thermal design. As a contrast, I have an 8 core iMac Pro. It can run full throttle and I rarely if ever hear the fan and it is much quieter than my 2018 6 core macbook pro. Of course a 27" home chassis has much more room to dissapate heat, but that is the point. Shoving oversized processors with multiple cores that generate lots of heat is at odds with Jony Ive's add more thinness campaign. I am now in a position where I use my macbook for dev and more intensive uses and its so damn annoying that Im seriously considering getting rid of it. I was at a client site this week, and my laptop was constantly the but of the joke, and disruptive to 5 other people working in a conference room. Sorry, but that just sucks...
Other than that, it shouldn’t do that unless you’re doing something that obviously requires a lot of CPU/GPU.
> We DID NOT notice this on our 2015 MacBooks...
So, if a much older laptop with lower specs wasn't engaging the fan while performing the same tasks, something may very well be wrong (at some level: I have no diagnosis for what the issue could be).
It doesn't take any special qualifications for a person to hear the the fan turning on more often on their new MBP than with their old MBP running the same work loads.
Just built a Ryzen 3600 desktop with 32 gigs of RAM for about 1/4th the price as the cheapest 16 inch Macbook. Windows with WSL2 has been extremely good and I'm satisfied with my development environment. Key things were disabling automatic updates via group policy, setup autohotkey to keep all my MacOS keybindings, use X410 to display emacs and using the new windows terminal. Development is super fast, compilation is fast, git is fast, everything just works. Attempted to switch with WSL1 awhile a year ago or so and while it was okay, I wasn't very happy with it.
My mac just sits there now mainly being a coaster until I need to test iOS builds.
the computer weighs a lot, and it won't run osx. but as someone forced to work all day at a desk on a heavily-throttled macbook, that looks like a lot of hardware for the money in comparison.
Total 720
If you already own a case, psu, storage, gpu, you can upgrade for like $400.
You could even get a 1600AF or 2600X for $80 or $140 respectively
1680 to go from 16 to 32 GB of RAM. The total I spent on my 16gb x 2 corsair vengeance LPX 3200 DDR4 RAM was no more than 650 AED. What false claims am I making? You do the math.
I've become extremely dissatisfied with Apple's direction and felt frustrated being locked into the MacOS ecosystem because until recently there was no alternative that I was happy with. If they'd just make a new Macbook Pro with sufficient cooling and a normal keyboard I would have been satisfied.
I built it to replace my dying 9 year old gaming PC, having absolutely no idea that it would become my primary development machine. I just gave WSL2 a shot with pretty low expectations from my experience with WSL1 and just kept using it.
My main point to make was not about just about the hardware itself, but about Windows finally becoming a viable alternative for the work I'm doing.
Powerful, portable, cheap. Pick two.
After attempting to be part of the solution; spending a ton of time testing, providing information in the community, communicating with Apple Engineers and Apple Business Team, our most recent post was deleted as "Speculative".
We have spent over $300,000 on Apple hardware over the years both business and consumer and now our voice has been muted. How can we move forward using Apple? Instead of deleting our posts, how about send it to management?
Could it be the posts were deleted legitimately?
Some people in that thread are pretty angry and may have let it get the better of them.
They might have an excuse that fans can believe, but the real reason is to suppress bad press.
Yes, and sort of the reason why most people discuss these sort of issues in other forum to gain support and evidence before posting it in the Official Forum.
Negative Post there, whether they are Hardware or Software are regularly deleted.
And I thought it was quite well known.
Is there an article or some source you can link to so I can read about it?
Your assertion doesn't match the plain facts though.
We know Apple isn't suppressing this issue because there's a long, detailed thread about it on their own discussion site. If they wanted to try to suppress it, they would surely include that but didn't.
Also, suppressing information about problems to prevent bad press can't work anyway, since Apple only controls its own litter corner of the internet. If Apple didn't allow discussion of this issue on their board, it would be discussed elsewhere and generate the same bad press. If we suppose Apple tries to work in its own self-interests, they wouldn't bother with deleting posts to prevent bad press since it can't possibly work.
Meanwhile, there are obviously legitimate reasons to moderate postsm, so the fact that posts are being deleted doesn't seem nefarious on its own. There are angry people in that thread and angry people tend post things that need moderation.
I mean, I don't know. I'm open to the possibility that Apple is doing something bad. But so far, there's really no smoke, much less any fire.
They ignored the problem for 4 years.
And why should they? What's wrong with trying out something like Thinkpad X series[1] instead? Or Thinkpad P series, which can now come with Ubuntu LTS pre-installed. I wonder, if they would have invested so much time in fixing Dell's issues for Dell. Probably not. Why? Because there is no Dell's lock-in.
[1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/c/t...
Suggesting a ThinkPad or Dell as a replacement is naive.
If an organization wants to change the computers it gives it's employees so dramatically, it will take some transition time, and a lot of fighting. We're not just talking about your personal laptop here.
And more relevant to this post, Apple still sold people a multi-thousand dollar device, and those people are entitled to question why the device doesn't perform as expected.
Instead of pretending to be surprised by another of Apple's non-reactions, they should use this as an opportunity to reconsider the whole picture.
At least, if Dell starts sucking, they can switch to HP or Lenovo, and the other way around. If Apple stars sucking, they have no other option but to keep complaining online.
Because despite all of its problems, sadly Apple's product is still very often the best on the market.
You sort of wish Microsoft to do better, both hardware and Software, along with HP and Dell. But the market is polarised with one group who dont care or understand quality, or another group who demands absolute perfection and are willing to pay for it.
Otherwise anything an Apple product can do, a competitor does cheaper and better.
Also, did you take advantage of handoff or airdrop?
I imagine if you were strictly using cloud services, it was a relatively painless transition.
How on earth does your personal experience compare to any of that? You don't even cite what made it easy.
Ok well, that was more than one reason, but you get the drift.
So what? Take it lying down?
[1] https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-tvs
[2] https://kodi.tv/
Not at Apple.
And maybe spyware is a standard industry practice like you said. In fact, I’d agree that’s very true. But this is a MacBook thread and I’ve yet to see such a practice on Apple laptops.
A single anecdote, of course, but advice to switch to Linux is naïve. Most people aren’t software developers. Many people use their computers for things like graphic design or media editing. How do you run Final Cut or Logic on Lenovo with Linux? How about Photoshop? MacOS and Apple hardware is superior for a wide variety of use cases. Maybe not yours, but for many people the pluses of Apple far outweigh the minuses.
That says nothing without knowing what percentage of people were using each brand.
Also, Lenovo's consumer hardware is of a much lower quality than Lenovo Thinkpads, which still maintain the standards of IBM.
> A single anecdote, of course, but advice to switch to Linux is naïve. Most people aren’t software developers.
I have switched all of my non-technical family members from Windows to Ubuntu over 5 years ago, and haven't received a single complaint from them yet. A single anecdote, of course.
> Many people use their computers for things like graphic design or media editing.
That's a minority of computer users. Most people use computers for web browsing, media consumption, and editing of Office documents.
> How do you run Final Cut or Logic on Lenovo with Linux? Photoshop?
Bitwig Studio[1] runs on all platforms and is in many ways superior to Logic Pro.
Adobe Photoshop can be installed on Linux[2], but for professional graphical and video editing I would still choose MacOS.
In other words, the only market where iMacs and Macbooks are clearly above competition is creative industry.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitwig_Studio
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7ql4kl/the_screensho...
I simply hate that unnecessary Touch Bar, was hoping Apple will remove it but didn’t. Thought then of getting 16-inch as they have an esc key.
Waiting for this kind of review, I will put on hold purchasing it until get a clarity on fan noise. My current old MacBook fan do make some noise but only under load of games.
Hope Apple can go back to basics and redo the MacBook Pro to make it similar to 2014 with new hardware.
It is an upgrade, but not by much...
The touch bar gets in the way, but I use external keyboardS 90% of the time, so it isn't that big of problem. I would have gladly payed extra for F-keys.
The larger track-pad also gets in my way often.
Fan noise is significant compared to the old model.
USB-C-only is quite annoying. I never missed a port on the 15", whereas now ... well...
I bought it to get a performance boost (compiling/ML-training/etc.). The performance upgrade isn't really that significant.
I recommend waiting a little while longer...
Thanks for pointing that feature out though. Have replaced Siri with the play button :)
Edit: Just playing around with this a bit more I noticed the expanded view now has all the normal icons. Either I missed it before or I changed something. Is there a way to make the expanded view the default?
Most reviewers dont even want to touch on the topic as if Apple told them to do so. The so call new Magic Keyboard doesn't felt anywhere close to the Magic Keyboard used on iMac or iMac Pro. In fact they felt more of the same as the old butterfly, and it is awful.
I am on early 2015 ( brought it in 2017 if I remember correctly because I cant stand the MBP 2016+ ), and I pray it wont break down. It is already getting some strange lock up for no apparent reason.
I would even pay for a brand new 2015 MBP for the same price during its time in 2020.
Not sure what people are going crazy about regarding the keyboard, it is one of the most amazing ones on a laptop I have used.
Who are you defending the keyboard against? No one anywhere complains about the keyboard on the new 16”. They complain(ed) about the butterfly keyboards on the older MBPs. Apple themselves implicitly agreed they were garbage by offering free replacements and abandoning the butterfly design.
Your comment and the motivation for posting it is very confusing.
I have recently bought the 16" (max GPU, max CPU, 32GB, 2TB disk). It's way better. There's still stuff wrong with it for sure. Some takeaways:
- The keybord is better than recent models, but still not as good as the 2014. I can live with it though.
- The touch bar is still there, but there's an escape key which was my main gripe. I would still prefer an option to not have one though.
- I hate USB-c so so much. The mental overhead of trying to work out what will work with what cable is horrible.
- I had to buy a £250 dock to make everything work as it did before (the TS3 caldigit one on the Apple site). Apple would not recommend a USB-c to mini displayport adapter, and the first one I bought didn't work.
- The screen is lovely.
- The speakers are a massive improvement.
- The trackpad is too big. I hit it accidentally way too much.
- I have it plugged into two external 4k monitors and I keep the lip open, so it's driving three screens. It does this with seemingly no problem or cooling fan use.
I'm definitely keeping it. There's still issues, but it's now simply a much better machine overall (taking speed into account) than my 2014.
- popping sounds coming from the chassis that drive me crazy
- bunched up arrow keys that are occasionally unresponsive at least in X11 emacs
- it seems like the touchbar has potential but is difficult to customize
- I find it lame you need an adapter for USB or HDMI.
I agree, go back to the 2014 style.
In 2019 I felt like things are not going to get any better, so I bought a MacBook Pro 2019. Was quite unhappy that I didn’t wait a bit longer after I saw the 16inch version coming out a few months later, because it had an escape key (which I really miss on mine), but now I am kind of happy that I have the 2019 15 inch version where the heating problem does not appear.
The touch-bar really is completely useless, I find myself tapping the wrong "keys" all the time. Changing volume was so easy before, now it became really hard. But most of all I miss the escape key. If it wasn’t for macOS I had long picked a Windows laptop.
Not everything can be measured, or measured practicably. Qualitative judgments are valuable.
Looking at things too much through the lens of metrics can make you blind to many things.
Yes they do. If they're not visionary, then they're just a manager.
Apple grew because of a visionary, and now it shrinks because the best a manager can do is try to maintain the status quo in the face of changing factors. It's fundamentally a losing battle.
They've degenerated to minmaxing profits and running focus groups to tell them what to do without any overarching vision or long term plan, just like GP commenter said. It's sad. Steve Jobs is spinning in his grave.
Jobs was a business man and manager, and Apple hasn’t had ‘visionary’ product release every single time, some of them were run-of-the-mill upgrades. Arguably, iPhone may be the only major visionary achievement after Mac 1. Anyway, all of the Apple hecklers talked about how Jobs wasn’t a visionary, or had lost his vision, with every single product release, every Mac change, every iPhone, tablet, watch. Claiming that Jobs was the singular visionary and Apple is doomed without him has a long history, somewhat buys into a pro-Apple narrative, and views Jobs with rose-colored glasses. It’s a nice thought, but not exactly accurate.
> and now it shrinks
By what metric is Apple shrinking? They just reported their best quarter ever.
It has run out of energy. If AR doesn't pay off, it's all downhill for Apple from Q4 this year onwards.
This is just another take on the tired argument that Apple is only successful because of a core group of fanboys/girls who will buy anything just because it’s Apple, despite Apple’s customer base being an order of magnitude greater today than it was back then.
Unless Apple's AR play succeeds, they're going to be left in the dust by Chinese offerings with better functionality at half the price.
Cook has had the better part of the decade to come up with something new, and has failed to deliver anything except incremental minor updates which are increasingly convergent on competitor offerings. There is clearly no vision.
“Minor updates”. You have to be joking.
There are headphones with better spec than airpods at half the price available right now. They're not locked to any ecosystem. Apple has no idea how to continue competing in the envelope of modern hardware because competitors either beat them or match them on every move but without the premium.
Save my comment. Check back in a year. It'll be a good lesson.
The definition of meaningfully competitive is growth, revenue, and market share. You're implying they're not competitive, which implies you think they're not making money. By what metric are they not competitive?
> There are headphones with better spec than airpods at half the price available right now. They're not locked to any ecosystem. Apple has no idea how to continue competing in the envelope of modern hardware because competitors either beat them or match them on every move but without the premium.
This claim has always been made, for 35 years, and has always been true of all Apple hardware. Yet they compete and make a lot of money. What you're demonstrating is you don't understand what Apple is making or why people buy their products. What you're demonstrating is that better spec cheaper hardware isn't enough to beat the competition.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Watch and AirPods were entirely Tim Cook and that’s one of their biggest successes in the history of the company. You don’t think Jobs had significant misfires? The hockey puck mouse, the Cube, the iPhone antenna issue, etc.? People are mad because the thermal properties of their computer are perceived to be less than perfect and somehow Cook is a failure? That’s ridiculous.
That does not compute.
The guy at the top will always get more than his share of blame and more than his share of credit.
Additionally, the Swiss watch industry is not being subsidized by the US health insurance industry.
And the US health insurance industry isn’t buying watches in any great numbers (yet.) The US health insurance interest isn’t driving the demand, the demand is driving the interest.
Give me a break. Tim Cook is more engineer than 90% of people who call themselves one.
I'm at a loss for what I'm going to do for my next laptop. Windows 10 still has performance issues that Macs don't have, but Windows laptops clearly have better hardware.
Anyone make the switch back to Windows? (Every time I try Linux it feels like a dumpster fire, even though I want to like it.)
It's not perfect, but it does just work.
With windows I have no love for Windows specifically but would appreciate access to a wider selection of games. For work, all I need is docker and access to linux/unix tooling. Homebrew and docker for mac cover my needs but I've been hearing good things about windows and the linux subsystem. Obviously that kind of stuff works great on Linux as it all runs natively there.
IMHO the big problem with Linux is that people are still thinking about distributions like it is the early nineties. It does not make sense to me for small (or even bigger) linux distributions to even pretend to be able to maintain huge software repositories with distribution specific builds of all OSS known to mankind. What's needed here is people just agreeing on how to package up binaries such that they can be run on any linux distribution after their developers test, sign and release them.
I saw this in action when one of my favorite OSS tools released a major version a few weeks ago and I was able to install the mac build while world + dog was complaining about a lack of pre-packaged binaries for their favorite Linux distros (pretty much all of them). I'm talking about Darktable, which is one reason I'm seriously considering a move to Linux because I absolutely love it and it runs best on Linux. I installed it within 2 hours after it was tagged on Github. That for me sums up the problem with Linux: the application ecosystem remains a mess of incompatibility and middlemen adding dubious value (mainly verifying it does not clash with their other customizations for other packages).
IMHO this is a reason why the most widely used consumer versions of Linux are basically things like Android, ChromeOS, and a wide range of software for TVs and other embedded hardware; none of which involve a mainstream Linux distribution or package manager. The only package managers you need on a mac are for installing OSS software. Normal software is just a simple drag and drop to install and move to trash to uninstall. Apple nailed this already with OS 9 before Linux was a thing. MS with its need for custom installers never figured this out either.
Docker is kind of doing this for servers these days and snaps look promising but still a bit flaky. I think it's telling that the hope for gaming on Linux is basically Steam doing the hard work of providing a way to install software on Linux that is compatible with the goals of software developers that want to release software directly to users instead of to some middlemen that need to repackage, modify, an tweak a custom package of your software.
At my previous job I was lucky to use a workstation. It was running a plain Ubuntu LTS provisioned by my IT using Puppet. Zero maintenance on my end.
For the handful of applications where I wanted the latest versions, getting upstream or PPA packages was usually enough. I don't know why you think Snap packages are flaky, they're great for things like Jetbrains IDEs. Never had a problem.
I admit Homebrew gives me access to the latest binaries quickly, but it's also the slowest and most brittle package managers I've been using.
I couldn't deal with the Wayland/X, not playing nice with Nvidia, etc bullshit on Linux. Since I really only care about the terminal WSL has been great.
Yes but those were the era of Mac. When Apple were trying to make Mac like an Appliance. But we dont need that anymore. We have a Fanless design that is capable of 90%+ of most consumer's work. It is called iPad.
Without Steve Jobs, the iPad didn't know where to go next.
But now the Mac is mostly a Prosumer Product. And those workloads require fan cooling. Steve just dont like the idea of a consumer product with constant fan spinning.
We also had Macs with heat related problems back then. Most of the fanless designs were 'bad'. G4 Cube, Trashcan Pro...And even though they had fans, does anyone remember how hot the first few Intel MacBook Pro's got? Yowza.
To be fair, my Thinkpad fans come on quite often (more in Windows than Linux which is strange), and they are higher-pitched and generally louder and more annoying than any of my Mac fans are.
When using opened Macbook with an external screen power usage by discrete GPU is not less 19W almost no matter what (resolution, screen size, etc.).
In my case, with new LG 5K, GPU power usage in clamshell mode is near 5W and with the lid open – 19.5W (and the laptop is too noisy to be usable as an additional screen).
[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an...
I had one of those i9 2018 MBPros and it was always super hot. Much happier now with a 13" 4 core MBpro, it runs quite cool and without any fan noise most of the time.
Built a separate AMD 3900x PC with an Nvidia GPU for heavy lifting, and can use that remotely with the MBpro if needed.
My 16” i9 is MUCH quieter than my 15” 2015 Macbook pro, and it’s not like i’m browsing Facebook: i’m constantly compiling and running tests on every file save.
My macbook feels warm but not hot, even when I touch it at the fan exhausts. I do notice my battery only lasting about 2,5 hours though.
Playing games it runs great and while you can hear the fans, it’s much better compared to my 15” 2015.
Personally i’m really impressed with the cooling and performance of the 16”
It seems like the combination of the form factor, components and thermal solutions that Apple uses just don't add up.
It’s basically a different computer in a lot of ways, despite looking similar on the outside.
However, when I watch a 1080p movie, no matter what player, on just the laptop display, the mouse cursor feels sluggish and my fans are on 50-75% at all times.
Perhaps this is a driver bug that hits some configurations or situations?
The thermal design of the 16-inch seems adequate especially when compared to outgoing 15-inch models, so I think it’s something they can fix in software.
Something to note: all recent discrete GPU MacBooks will switch to discrete graphics as soon as you plug in any external monitor. Higher power consumption and heat should be expected to a reasonable extent (everyone’s definition of reasonable is different).
Not seeing any of the heat / performance problems mentioned by other people, the only really weird thing I've seen is that the color palette was way too dark getting out of sleep until I minimized and maximized brightness. That helped until the next sleep where it was too bright this time and the brightness trick didn't work anymore. Finally fixed it by switching between another color profile and back.
Otherwise TouchID was pretty good, don't really notice the touchpad in any way good or bad and the touch bar goes largely ignored just like the row of keys it replaced. Keyboard action is nice, it's slightly more clicky than the 2015 but still has about the same travel.
I really doubt anybody still on a 2015 or older will regret getting the 16". Probably the software problems get ironed out over the course of the next months.
The one comment in that thread:
"Bottom line, the combination of using the GPU and CPU is pushing the MBP into heat conditions causing the FAN issues and in our case, possibly damage to the GPU."
But this one is is comes with extra revolution for every USB-C port you use.
"Purifier and fan. Not wifi compatible."
*sold separately
I use Firefox and my machine is silent. Typing on it now. 20+ tabs open and about 20 others apps open. I can't hear my machine without putting my ear against it.
Funny thing is, when I do eventually get a machine that isn't faulty, I still have to deal with Catalina, since the new macbooks can't be downgraded and Catalina has a lot of sleep bugs that restart also: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250826263
Every single 2019 16" macbook owner has also experienced the speaker popping issue, which after 2 system updates has simply lowered in volume instead of being loud and noticeable.
PopGate. GPUgate. KernelGate. T2Gate. It is actually far beyond a joke, this was the true cost of apple become the world's first 'trillion dollar company'. They cut so many corners all they can produce are lemons now.
Owning Apple products nowadays is a bit of a masochistic endeavor in many ways - a year ago my local Linux group had me write a funny book on "Escaping the Cult of Mac" that talked about this (https://github.com/jasoneckert/CultOfMac).
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207018
There are tools that can measure some sensor temp and control the fan speed according to that on Mac. I was using it on my older MacBook Pro and the fan usage was relatively better than when it was set to auto.
*Same setup and dev env on new MacBook as on the old
Things I dislike about the MBP 16:
- Still has the touch bar
- Screen size is awful. I like to work with windows size by size and the 16 inch screen size is awkward because most website won't re-size properly.
- Its heavy as hell, slightly thinker than the old ones.
- Its slow. Yes, all the RAM and CPU and the thing is laggy. I don't know why but it just has a bad "feel" to it.
- Touchpad is too big. Its gigantic and I often end up touching it by accident.
- Its crazy expensive
In the end, I will end up selling it and using my 10 year old Macbook Air until it dies. After that I'm not sure.. maybe I will try the newer Macbook Air and see if its tolerable. At least it doesnt have a touchbar.
- Yep touchbar just sucks, I've spent too much time messing around with with the default version, bettertouchtool, and pock, and I cannot find anything its good at. Worse yet, the volume slider often will freeze the touch bar completely.
- The screen size and format is wonderful. I hate how Dell and Thinkpad laptops I've used in the past, have these widescreen formats, where very few lines of code can be visible at a time due to the limited vertical space.
- I didn't realize this until you pointed it out, but it's definitely very heavy compared to my 15-inch 2018 model and thinkpad x230. This haven't bothered me at all, however.
- It feels significantly faster than my 2018 model, and the CPU temperature stays much lower under the same workloads.
- I know a lot of people have trouble with this, so if you've previously had this problem the 16 inch doesn't change that. Both my hands rest on the touch pad while typing, and I have not had this problem once. Your mileage may vary.
- I got mine discounted down to roughly 2k. Pretty ridiculous yeah!
- The battery life is insane. On a simple workload it will last me an entire day. On my full workload (Flutter development with android and ios simulators open) it lasts about half a day.
In the end I'm very happy with my purchase. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still using this laptop 8 years from now.
(Of course, you could possibly also lay a freezer pack on the bottom of the stand, and maybe it would wick heat away even faster, and still passively...)
A meta-analysis of this discussion would have been super interesting. A link to Apple’s equivalent of a Reddit post is not, especially from a throwaway account.
I feel bad for the people with fan noise but this is not the way to handle it. Please do better. Collect data, measure power draw, and most of all document how you performed your tests so that you can start asking others to perform those exact tests, to your specifications. More science, less complaining, please.
My name is Antal. K is the initial of my last name.
Glad we cleared that up.
But the last part of your message is noted, thank you. Next time I will do so.
Not an option if you are using it for your "work" workflow.
There must be a kill switch somewhere; I'll have a look.
I cloned it and then compiled it with xcode. I found one problem which is a badly encoded file, which I fixed using the file inspector to set the encoding and then saved it. After that it built and runs. On my 16' 2020 MBP it allows me to turn off my 5300M. When I open WOW it refuses to allow the card to be turned off, its web site says that's what it will do with an external monitor too.
With mobile, I think Android is close on software and far superior on hardware.
I wonder what happens to Apple stock if they don't get a new product line that takes off - cars, TVs etc. Will ApplePay eating PayPal and Stripe offset this downward trend enough?
I was considering the 16" MBP, but I think I'll just go ahead with my Hacking-tosh build instead! I spend 99% of my productive time at my desk. For anything on the move I'm more inclined to go "light", a 13" Air perhaps`. I was hoping iPad would cut it, but I'm afraid iPad OS is too limiting.
TL;DR: 1) It seems this is Intel's fault not Apple's 2) For fix - use TGPro (or something similar) to create your own fan speed profile (I use TGPro since many years without any issues)
I upgraded from a 2013 iMac to a 2019 model recently for two reasons, the primary being my 2013 used an Nvidia 780m chipset and Nvidia no longer made compatible drivers and Apple wasn't doing any real updates either. Second I wanted he higher resolution screen.
However, the fan which I rarely had come on in the 2013 is hyper active at times in the 2019 even with similar content. Oddly it is not consistent. Now I did go from i5 to i9 which do run hotter but they are very spiky as in the seem to flare a core or two enough to excite the fan logic.
The GPU while getting warm (Vega 48) will less likely cause the fans to spin up past 2k than a random cpu spike. So either the fan logic is wonky or the processor logic is. While I understand that core balancing is complex it just seems to randomly jump single channels far more often than load across the whole
I bought it open box; the buyer probably went insane from the noise before they could even set up Windows.
Boo.
However, I only get the low power usage when in clamshell mode. Driving the built in display plus my monitor makes it shoot up to 20W usage.
Anyone have any great recommendations for quiet cooling systems?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/02/dells-2019-xps-13-de...