Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlex | Hacker News Reader

This feels like something that should always be enabled when you're plugged into AC power (maybe only automatic when you're at 100% battery).

View on HN

Not at all, actually. You're forgetting the heavy use of MacBook Pros by recording engineers and musicians. For them, having a machine that is fast without generating the incredibly annoying constant fan noise of the vast majority of PC laptops is a crucial feature.

So no. Definitely not. The user should be able to toggle this. As Apple has wisely chosen.

Indeed, having this as a opt-in feature is best

Nothing worse than trying to concentrate on something when "helicopter mode" suddenly kicks in :)

I like the option for both! Or even customizable. I had a laptop with a dedicated Nvidia card, and I could tell which programs to run on it, or whether i wanted to always on or always off. I loved it, was super easy to configure out the box as well!

Yeah, I kept my old fanless G3 PowerBook long beyond it’s apparent sell-by date for live performance stuff, where a fan was a non-option.

Some enjoy reduced fan noise, so lower power settings have value even when plugged in.

To add to this, apple probably already tuned the chip so that any additional power wouldn't meaningfully improve performance. You're not trading 10% more power for 10% more performance, you're trading 50% more power for 5% more performance (numbers made up).

While the graphs are vague, apple’s performance v power graphs show this phenomenon. The highest performing laptops in the market are more like portable workstations rather than mobile devices - while on battery their performance is significantly throttled to provide a useful battery life. This contrasts from apple’s designs for the reason you’ve stated: they are capable performers while on battery.

Most of the time I'd rather have lower fan noise and a less hot chassis when I'm plugged in.

Dunno, I think I’d rather wait in blissful silence.

If you really want silence, you're best off with the fanless MBA. Though Apple noted that in non-intense use the MBP should be silent, you can also see from their performance graphs[1] that the M1 is more efficient than the M1 Pro and M1 Max at low power levels. (<12 watts or so, from eyeballing the chart.)

Makes sense when you consider that the M1 has more efficiency cores than the M1 Pro/Max.

I'd actually like to build myself a home NAS/server with only Gracemont cores if we ever see Alder Lake-L available in a mini-ITX form factor. (Was going to try with Jasper Lake, but that seems to have been effectively cancelled with the chip shortage.)

[1]. https://www.anandtech.com/show/17019/apple-announced-m1-pro-...

IIRC MBPs circa 2010ish would auto switch the GPU just like this.

Lower heat lengthens battery life span

Reply on news.ycombinator.com