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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

Planning to buy a new MacBook for a family member I have some question to whoever is into the Apple wold: is that true that the next generation of MacBooks is going to have classic Esc&F# buttons, MagSafe, SD card reader and HDMI? When is it expected to be released? How is a MacBookPro better than a MacBookAir of the same specs (RAM&SSD)? We were going to buy a new MacBook now but the classic parts returning sound really motivating to wait.

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We don't know anything for sure, only rumors: https://www.macrumors.com/guide/14-inch-macbook-pro/

Thank you. This answer all the questions except the Pro-vs-Air difference.

The current macbook pro 13 with M1 does not differ significantly from the macbook air m1: https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/01/m1-macbook-air-vs-m1-macbook-... . You have one core more and active cooling with fan, but in daily use it is difficult to generate the load that will trigger this cooling. The situation will definitely change with the new Macbook Pro 14/16 to be shown in October or November.

The only difference between the current Pro and Air is that the latter can thermal throttle.

I got the Air and I have managed to make it throttle while running x86 games. However, it wasn’t by much. The games remained playable.

Overall, it’s great. Very fast and entirely silent.

You mean Pro can not throttle even when you want it to? It sounds nice to have a full power at my disposal when I actually want it but most of the time I want a laptop to run near its minimum power to prevent heating, avoid noise and save battery. Even when I run a computation-heavy task I still want to be able to force it to run slowed-down and take its time. Is this not possible with Pro? Even with 3-rd party tools?

Based on what people that have both say, when the Air would throttle the Pro’s fans become slightly audible.

I also prefer the design of the Air, so it was an easy choice for me.

I see. I personally am a PC user and I have a habit of controlling the throttle manually (it's not necessary but easy and handy). I have been doing this for almost 20 years, using handy 3-rd party panel applets and system's (both Linux and Windows) built-in tools. So I'm surprised to learn MacBooks still don't allow manual throttle control. I usually prefer to keep my thermal regime below of what the vendors pre-define.

All intel MacBooks I’ve used allowed controlling the fans manually, at least.

It’s not relevant for the M1 Air since it has no fans, of course.

I don't mean controlling the fans. I mean voluntarily throttling down the frequency of the CPU (and telling it it should not up-throttle even when the load goes high) so the computer actually stays cold even without the fans.

Sure, you could do that too at least on Intel ones. Generally it makes sense to do it indirectly with the fans.

It’s really not needed on the M1. The only time my Air got warm was in a game.

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