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For what it’s worth, this does not seem to present itself in all current 15/16” chassis models. I use my 2018 2.6GHz i7 15” MBP with two 4K monitors plus the laptop monitor. It’s fine for me. (But I do believe you!)

If it’s useful: It’s fine here including reasonable loads on the video card, like a lot of GPU-accelerated terminals and pretty heavy use of a tiling window manager and Exposé window swishing. Or, say, Sketchup in a browser? Plus a pretty serious IntelliJ setup with the JVM’s stops pulled out, running ReasonML and C++ source compilation, and use of Docker.

It is sensitive to setup, and I can get it to spin its fans up. Docker is especially prone to wasted cycles. And I did seem to have to do some SMC resetting at one point because the fans were a little eager to get going. I also think it makes a bit of difference if I charge through the right-side ports rather than the left.

But the main point I’m attempting to make: I do think your case is solvable.

That said, I have felt that Apple are losing their way in some respects. The fact that there are fan issues with some machines and that it’s not clear how to solve them is a problem with these machines.

> this does not seem to present itself in all current 15/16” chassis models

I think they're referring to the thermal throttling, and not the MBP forcing the discrete card when an external monitor is connected. As far as I know, there is no way around using the discrete card for external monitors (on my 2015MBP at least, I'm pretty sure the HDMI port is wired direct to the M370X).

I've solved the thermal issues by using an eGPU (like GP suggests)

I have a 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro connected to two displays via USB-C and DisplayPort through a Thunderbolt dock and it seems like it also forces it to discrete graphics. I'm not sure if I've ever seen it use integrated graphics when I'm docked.

16" rMBP Pro with beefed up graphics running Dual LG 5K monitors

When it works, its great which is about 50% of the time. When it doesn't and for no apparent reason, it will often reboot a couple of times (just when plugging in the displays).

Sometimes the banding issue that the M1 Mac owners have described appears on one or both of the displays.

A pretty frustrating experience.

do you have powernap enabled? i had this issue with random reboots when plugging/unplugging displays and disabling powernap fixed it for me.

I do. Just disabled it, thanks for the suggestion.

Already running discrete graphics all the time so no auto-switching.

I own MB Pro 16 (i9, 64GB RAM) and M1 Mac Mini (16GB) and I am still perplexed why do so many people ignore or not mention the sluggishness of the macOS on M1.

Switching apps is often plagued with at least noticable up to utterly annoying lag. Starting even optimized apps sometimes feels surprisingly slow. If the CPU is even under the light load (20 % reported by Activity monitor), these issues happen more frequently and overall responsivness gets much worse. It is not due to the low memory which I try to spare on Mini.

Yeah, Safari is fast, even faster than on the iPad Pro. But I am developer, often use multiple browsers, many docker containers, might spin up IDE and I am certainly not the one who they made it for.

Are you sure there isn't something wrong with your setup? Switching apps is near instant on my 8GB MBA M1, app startup is sometimes a bit laggy, but overall responsiveness is much better than on my 16GM MBP 2019.

From all the reviews and comments I've seen nobody else with an M1 is seeing that kind of sluggishness. Are you maxing out memory?

On my MPB M1 everything feels exquisitely responsive with the exception of the first time that apps that need to be translated by Rosetta. So it appears something might be off on your install.

That seems strange to me -- are you sure there's nothing wrong with your machine?

For reference, I just opened every application that's installed on my M1 MBP (16GB) and was able to switch between them with basically no lag.

I am a developer too, but I haven’t noticed any of these issues on my 16GB M1 MacBook Pro. macOS has been nothing short of zippy.

I wonder why you believe that everyone’s ignoring the issues you experience? Could it be some local phenomenon, instead?

Never heard of that before, are you running any background apps?

The only sluggishness I noticed, and was unexpected, was generating a SSH key.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

This was considerably slower on the M1 Mac Mini than my 2017 iMac.

Interesting; possibly running under Rosetta? I could see crypto operations being very poorly emulated, and if it had to be translated first (if you only ran it once), that would obviously be even worse.

Did you perform a system migration or a fresh install?

If you have an external SSD, you could potentially try a fresh install on it and see if the problem persists, then try to drill down to the offending driver/application.

I for one, have had no issues, but that's not to say they don't exist. Could be a process that is blocking or anything.

My M1 Mac Mini destroys my 2019 16” Macbook Pro (i7). both machines have a 16 GB memory load out and 500 GB of SSD. I haven’t seen any of the performance issues you’re talking about. I do Python and Angular development.

> I am still perplexed why do so many people ignore or not mention the sluggishness of the macOS on M1.

Conspiracy? Or...something up with your setup.

You are swapping.

But the M1 ALSO can't support an eGPU, which is kind of the problem. I'm more than happy to pay for an eGPU dock (have one sitting in the corner from when my main workstation was a macbook). I know not everyone wants to HAVE to pay for an eGPU, but that's a better solution than "You can't have two monitors".

My solution was to dump Apple laptops entirely (which I know a lot of people won't want to do). This Asus G14 has no issues powering 2x 4K displays without even breathing hard. No throttling in games or videos, and it supports 40GB of memory on top of a replaceable NVMe SSD.

Last I read, there is potential for the M1 to get eGPU support. Other USB-C to PCIe cards have worked so it seems to be a driver issue and not a hardware limitation. Now whether Apple can work nicely with Nvidia & AMD to get drivers, that is a big question.

GPU over USB if 3rd party drivers can be had is certainly a technical potential (hell PCIe over Ethernet has been a thing for a while) I just don't know if I'd call it a realistic one or one worth using for this use case if it did arrive. Especially since it seems extremely likely the scaled up iterations will be able to do this properly in short order.

I am curious about the other "USB to PCIe cards" though. I know there are NVMe to USB (non TB) adapters these days but I think that's largely due to the NVMe protocol being transport agnostic not that PCIe is actually interacting over the USB connection.

I was under the impression that Thunderbolt and the latest USB protocols actually are PCIe under the hood. This is why you had to have Thunderbolt security, because essentially you can tap deep into the hardware via a simple external port.

Ah yep you're right it supports Thunderbolt 3/USB 4, for some reason I had it in my head the ARM version just had plain USB 3.x type C.

Drivers are an untenable problem. eGPU on regular Macs is helped by there being existing x86 drivers needed for first-party Apple hardware. There’s not much incentive for Apple or the third parties to write drivers targeting Apple silicon for external solutions that aren’t widely used. The cost would far outweigh the income.

>My solution was to dump Apple laptops entirely (which I know a lot of people won't want to do)

I think several will trade their M1 laptops due to the memory, architecture limitations creeping up after long-term usage and realizing they're compromising their previous workflow's productivity benefits. The excellent performance (CPU/power) and surprisingly well built Rossetta 2 has overshadowed potential limitations with memory and IO in the reviews.

Lightning fast opening of apps is great, but it's not much use to people like me who don't close their apps at all! I keep at least 3 browsers(for different projects) with several dozen tabs(with hibernation), Note taking apps, IDE and a VM with a browser open in it. So what's important to me here is the memory, at least 32GB is bare minimum.

> I think several will trade their M1 laptops due to the memory

They'll trade them for new M1 Macs that don't have those limitations, which are estimated to be released this year. This obviously isn't a "forever" limitation. And Apple will release Apple Silicon Macs with more memory long before any other Laptop maker releases a laptop that can compete with all the advantages of the M1.

> They are completely unsuited for multi-monitor workloads without an eGPU.

I use an Intel MBP13 inch with two external monitors and it works pretty well. What am I missing?

I have a few year old MBP 15 with discrete GPU and a more recent MBP 13 without and neither of them break a sweat with 2 4k monitors @ 60Hz.

So whatever a “multi-monitor workload” is (video editing or something?) — it’s certainly not universal.

I have one 4k TB3 display, and my old Thunderbolt Display chained off of that one. The second monitor plus the laptop monitor add up to about the same number of pixels as the 4k.

When I'm on a video call, the CPU fans are consistently on at what I believe is the lowest RPM.

I would classify that as 'not breaking a sweat'. I suspect you might as well. I'm not sure if OP expects to be able to use all of GPU memory using only passive cooling, or if they have something else is going on.

Are they 4K? My 13 inch MBP sounds sometimes sounds like a jet engine when connected to a single 4K display, dropping frames like crazy, even when I’m doing nothing on the system.

I have a 2017 nTB 13" Pro, connected to a 4K LG (the USB-C one released with the USB-C Macs), and it runs just fine. It doesn't get warm (not quite, but pretty warm) until I fire up a Zoom meeting

That's... fascinating. I'm using the exact same setup as you and the fans randomly spin up for extended periods of time, even through several reformats and OS reinstallations over the years. I haven't been able to pinpoint any logical reason for this behaviour.

It might be related to the connection used. I've heard that the issue doesn't present when using DisplayPort as opposed to HDMI, but I have tried different dongles.

And it's not terribly bad, just that I pretty much draw the full 92W the power adaptor supplies and get the mentioned thermal throttling much sooner than without.

Running a bunch of docker containers, slack, and general everyday workflow. Doing all the good stuff like ad-blocker and checking process monitor.

Our solution isn't the most lightweight, but still the end result is that plugging in an external monitor (1080), my productivity goes down dramatically which is the opposite of how multiple monitor setups are supposed to work. :-)

I have a MBP13 from late 2013 connected to 2 1080p-monitors. One using a thunderbolt-hdmi cable and the other a thunderbolt-dvi cable. No thermal throttling or any other issues at all.

The 13 inch MBPs don't have a dedicated GPU and the Intel integrated graphics draws significantly less power. Does anyone know why the 16 inch MBPs power on the AMD GPU for external screens?

The AMD GPU is wired directly to all the video outputs

Same, I've worked with 2 4K displays on both with a 2018 MBP15 and 2020 MBP16 for the last year, I've never noticed any of these problems. 1 connected with DP, the other with HDMI.

> When M1 finally supports docker

I've been using the preview beta of Docker on M1 for some time now. It works fine for me; some people have reported issues in the corresponding Docker Slack channel, but they usually stem from the particular images in use rather than Docker itself.

> It's got to the stage that I prefer to use my 13 inch M1 over a top of the line 16 inch provided by work.

I agree. It's really quite difficult to go back to x86 laptops. If they manage to fix the external monitor limitations with the next generation--and I'm sure they will--it will be really hard for me to justify spending money on anything else.

I’ve tried _everything_, 5 different docks, refresh rates, different displays using different interfaces.

The problem is the vram using full power.

The only solution I’ve found under OSX is using an eGPU. I have both the Core X and the Core X Chroma, and the Chroma works fantastically both as a fully fledged docking station and keeping the output wattage / fans at bay. I’m almost exclusively using my 16” stationary with an external display.

Another solution, albeit expensive, is buying the 16” MBP with the 5600m graphics. That card uses HBM2 memory which uses around a 4th-5th of the wattage of the GDDR6 memory of the 5500m. Around 4w instead of 19w.

You can buy a 27" iMac together with an M1 Air for the same price as a 16" MacBook Pro and an eGPU.

I don't understand why people insist on trying to convert laptops into desktops.

> I don't understand why people insist on trying to convert laptops into desktops.

I finally bought a desktop again over Thanksgiving after a decade of having a laptop that functioned as a desktop. It's been a great experience.

I don't do anything taxing, so I just got a little Intel NUC i5 with a 24" monitor. Having an actual desktop setup is just head and shoulders better than the "laptop as desktop" I'd been living with.

I remote into a desktop from a laptop so the power is always there and I can be portable if i need to. Also has the benefit that I can work on any device that has an rdp client (android, ios, rpi, etc)

The laptop only needs to drive the display(s) so anything made in last few years should suffice. Currently using a surface go.

> I don't understand why people insist on trying to convert laptops into desktops.

They want to have just one computer without worrying about synching or other coordination.

I'm running the 5300M, that might explain why.

I can imagine that when it came to configure the machine the decision was `Put more RAM in it, he's a web-dev, doesn't need a fancy graphic's card!`

Which I don't as I'm not going to gaming on my work PC, but if that 15W is pushing it above the thermal limits of the chassis, then that would have been a decent upgrade.

I'd prefer it without a heavy-lifting graphics card in that case, but that doesn't seem to be an option.

The 5600m is a BTO option that arrived in the second half of 2020, so it wasn’t available when I bought mine.

> The M1 has been the first laptop I have been truly happy with as a desktop user.

I also would be, if there were not some annoying bugs. Like external display flickering after waking up from sleep (interestingly, not when cold booted). Sometimes reconnecting the cable fixes it, but it is still an annoyance.

I've experienced something like that as well. Depending on what you can do, try a different monitor and/or different cable and/or different dongle. I've managed to find a combination that doesn't do that anymore.

Could you share your combination?

I have my problem with OWC TB3 dock and Dell P2715Q. I will try an older dock that I have in the office (Kanex TB2 Express; as the name says, it is TB2, thus extra dongle needed); but playing around with different TB docks can get expensive...

I use a Dell XPS 13 with 3 external monitors via a Dell TB16 dock (which uses external power). I wonder if that setting solves these M1 issues (via the extra power) or not. I understand CalDigit docks also have external power but don't know if there can be a subtle difference.

The OWC TB3 dock I'm using is also powered externally. Docks by CalDigit are different docks than OWC, but I think they are all using the same chipset underneath.

It also does not happen with Intel Macs, which use Intel TB implementation. With M1, the TB is brand new, so some issues are to be expected. I suspect that with sleep and wakeup, there is some state mixup with previous link training, so it doesn't talk to other side the way the other side expects. This might be - or might be not - fixed with firmware updates.

Is the flickering display an Apple Thunderbolt Display by any chance? They put out a firmware patch ages ago to fix that (in the monitor itself).

This might be the one: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204450

> Is the flickering display an Apple Thunderbolt Display by any chance?

No, OWC Thunderbold 3 dock and Dell P2715Q.

I also have older, 2015 Macbook Pro, with Thunderbolt 2 and Apple TB2->TB3 adapter, connected to the same setup. This laptop does not flicker.

Is your external display on the intel mac in scaled mode? MacOS has to do a lot less work if it is in its default display resolution.

FWIW I use catalina on a 2009 core 2 duo mac mini hooked up to a 1440p monitor in native mode, and the fan remains at idle when just clicking around the desktop.

Why not just slap the thing on a cooling stand? As a developer with XCode maxing my CPU 90% of the day, I consider any Apple laptop unusable without additional cooling. Whenever I'm plugged into a monitor, I also have two fans to go by the vents. Runs better if you download a program like iStat Menus and force the fans to always be high too.

Does it suck? Yes. Are fans only $10 to save a $2000 machine? Yep. Apple simply doesn't design their kit to run hard and run often. It's like those internet services that sell higher speed than they can actually give every customer. They depend on you not using it all.

I just ditched my maxed out 16” for a “low end” M1 13” because my actual benchmarks of my day to day node compiling is seconds faster on the M1.

For docker I plan on using a pi 4 or another PC to just run stuff over the network.

What's the point of using Pi 4 when it is also ARM cpu? You can use the Docker beta on your M1 mac and it's going to be a better experience.

1) problem isn’t arm. It’s m1 support. The developer preview still has some kinks.

2) free up memory on my mac. I’m working at home so using a networked computer isn’t a big deal.

> I had just as many issues with the Dell XPS, where even basic video games would become unplayable after 15 minutes due to CPU throttling down to 0.8 Ghz.

Serious Q: Have laptops ever been decent for gaming?

I don't game much, but I think the form factor would seriously crush thermal capacity.

I have a 15" MBP and it's fine for most dev work save Node and Typescript occasionally cause the fans to spin up for extended periods of time. Getting rid of VSCode in favor of more memory/ CPU friendly editors helped a bunch.

Does your work involve a lot of 3D or graphics?

They are good for gaming when manufacturers use a good cooling system. Which is, almost never.

HP, Dell/Alienware, Lenovo, all of them have had overheating CPUs for over a decade. GPUs are fine half the time, surprisingly.

Their testing is garbage, what they call normal use seems to be completely different from what power users call normal use. And I'm talking about "workstations", not cheap consumer laptops.

Oh, but the design constraints, you'll say. OK, that's forgivable for Ultrabooks/thin-and-light laptops. Not workstations. And before the thinness fad, they were still overheating. And not because of design constraints.

As an example, I'll bring the Elitebook 8760/8770w/ZBook 17 G1/Zbook 17 G2 series, all of which have the same internal design and layout.

All were overheating after a while, due to thermal paste going bad (and being shit from the factory, but I digress).

With the ZBook G2 it got very, very bad. Those Haswell chips with FIVR were mini nuclear reactors. HP realized they weren't "just overheating", but "extremely overheating".

Their solution? The same heatsink with an extra heatpipe. Just like that, poof, problem solved. One extra heatpipe!

That can't cost more than $2 in the factory. I don't know any buyer who wouldn't have paid an extra $5-10 to have a proper working $4000 workstation.

Whoever is saving money on copper and screws in these companies needs to be fired and banned from ever working in companies making hardware.

I'm not even going to talk about Apple, everyone knows their stuff has a ton of problems. But they're selling people on design and software, not quality engineering.

And they actually solved the heat problems by going in the opposite direction with the M1 (ultra low power usage while maintaining performance instead of a good cooling system).

It's a better solution IMHO. A cooling system does nothing to increase battery life. Otherwise you have a creeping race that leads you ever closer to 'fake-desktop' laptops.

I do watch Louis Rossmann about Macs, and how terribly they are designed, but this is universal across many devices.

I had so many issues getting low latency audio to work on my 2 year old XPS, I just plain replaced it with a 5 year old mac and had better performance and stability out of the box.

No company is perfect, but Apple does get consistently close. I'm glad they don't focus on the specs and focus on experience. Who really needs a 4k screen on a laptop?

> They are good for gaming when manufacturers use a good cooling system. Which is, almost never.

Ok, this is more or less what I thought.

This does seem solvable, but also seems like the sort of thing the bean counters would cut early.

From what I recall, pre-Dell Alienware did a decent job at it.

Nah, I just wanted to play some basic 2D games like Cogmind, Factorio, Slay the Spire and Pyre whilst abroad. It was one of the main selling points of the XPS, that it was an ultra-light that you could play a few games on.

I certainly didn't fancy a gaming laptop that's all compromises and no upsides just to play mindless AAA titles.

But the problem with the XPS is they jammed as much processing power as they could. It's great in theory having a Nvidea card as well as an i7, but it just can't handle both running at above half capacity.

> When M1 finally supports docker, I might even consider not using the 16 inch at all. It crashes due to thermals about twice a week due to the constant high temperature and eats through batteries!

I guess it would be better to wait for M2 or M3 rather than jump on a new system that has a work-in-progress developer ecosystem or un-optimised software (Even if it is faster on M1 than Intel Macs).

By the time that Apple Silicon software support is optimised, the M1 Mac would already be out of date and superseded by M2 or M3 Macs.

While there is definitely a risk that M1 Macs will have the same fate as the first-gen Intel Macs (they supported only 32-bit mode, thus the support was cut quicker), the usability and usefulness is surprisingly high.

Docker and Virtualbox (this one is not coming) are the only two apps that do not work for me, and worked on Intel Mac. Sure, there are many apps that run in Intel mode, but the user won't notice, unless interested in that detail.

That was only because Intel purposefully delayed 64 bit core duo.

Why? (I’m too young to know)

I would not say that it was purposeful.

Intel at the time was shipping P4 Netburst CPUs. They had all the features, like multiple cores and 64-bit support, but also one huge disadvantage: they were power hungry, and it dissipated all that heat. Definitely not something you could put into laptops.

So the next generation, Core Solo/Duo, was not continuation of Netburst, but Pentium M, their mobile line which itself forked off P6 (Pentium Pro). They were released in January 2006, and were indeed 32-bit. The reason was time to market, they were basically throwing away their current arch and forking from an older branch; for the majority it was not a problem, most people were running 32-bit XP anyway, with PAE if you happened to have more than 3,5 GB of RAM (pre-SP2 XP supported that). Then, the 64-bit Core 2 Duo was released in July 2006.

The unfortunate part is, that Apple announced transition to Intel in mid-2005, and shipped the products across all lines in January-August 2006, i.e. hitting the window when only the 32-bit version was available. That means, that they had to define and maintain i386 ABI for their OS just because they ever shipped Core Solo or Duo machines. If they were able to ship C2D from the beginning, they could have skipped i386 and just use amd64 ABI from the start.

Thanks! I appreciate the history lesson

Same issue with the XPS and throttle, you can bypass the throttling manually through an app - and disable speedstep and one other thing...

I can't recall, but I never could finish Persona 4 on my XPS. :( 9350.

Agree 100% w/ 16" MBP.

If you're still having this throttling problem (I have also, for about 2 years now) I finally found a solution. Open up ThrottleStop, click FlVR and check "Disable and Lock Turbo Power Limits". Finally an end to the constant 0.8 GHz throttling!

I think Dell must hijack those TurboBoost power limits as a way to massively underclock the processor and try for better advertised battery life.

I had problems with older (Intel) Mac Pro and usage of monitors on both HDMI and display port at once. That wasn't an Intel thing, and that sort of thing could happen with any hardware that isn't tested with every combination of other hardware.

I'm excited that the M1 is good, also- that it seems fast with everything, even the old Intel-specific code via Rosetta. I don't subscribe to Apple NIH[1] philosophy, but what they have made historically, barring the problem I mentioned above and a few macOS and iOS issues over the years, has been awesome. The M1 seems to follow Jobs' philosophy of making the best product.

[1]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here

Um. There are more options beyond PowerPC/Intel/ARM Macs. There's a whole world of PCs out there that aren't built out of corner cutting proprietary bits.

This ain't my first rodeo.

I've had the following in my life

* Pentium 4

* 21.5" iMac

* 27" iMac

* Another 27" iMac

* Self built 2700K Intel

* Dell XPS 9560

* Self built 2700X Ryzen

* 2015 15" Macbook Pro

* M1 Macbook Air

For my work PCs, I had a Dell Desktop, a Asus Laptop and 2 Macbook Pros.

If selecting a PC for work, I would never go for a Windows PC nowadays. You'll get the cheapest option available, filled with all the corporate crap you don't want, and locked down to oblivion.

Macs have a minimum quality bar, and don't tend to get hamstrung quite as easily by company policy. It's just not worth it unless you know for a fact you'll get to choose the machine and software yourself.

As for at home, I'm flexible, but I wouldn't go for Mac if I wanted to game, and now in 2020, I wouldn't go x86 if I needed battery life.

>If selecting a PC for work

Well there's your problem. Don't define your choices by what you're coerced into using at work where you only go because they pay you. Define yourself by what you choose freely as a person.

It sounds like you've self built before, so why not again? It'll be far more compatible and with fewer proprietary bits than using something from Apple.