Hacker News Reader

Comment by samatman | Hacker News Reader

I remember when I got my first Retina laptop screen, it was nice but I quickly just got used to it.

Then, I found myself using the earlier machine, without the high DPI. That learned me. It was hard to imagine all the work I'd done staring through a screen door at those pixels.

Similarly, I've been using the M1 MPB since I got it. I only remember that it never makes noise when I'm reminded of it, such as in this conversation.

At some point, I'll end up using an Intel laptop of any sort, and I'll hear that whirring noise. It will be jarring, I've grown used to laptops not making sound they way phones and tablets don't.

View on HN

I thought my M2 MBA was making noise today, but it turned out it was the neighbor's HVAC unit. With my Intel MBP, I wouldn't have been able to even hear the neighbor's HVAC through our closed windows. Life is good!

I got the M2 air recently as a DJ and was really exited for it to have no fam or loving parts. I don’t mind fan noise too much but my old 2010 MBP would constantly increase and decrease the fan speed which was extremely annoying for me.

Anyway, I’m so focussed listening to the lack of fan noise that I sometimes hear a ‘phantom’ fan noise. Like the lack of fan noise doesn’t seem right so my brain makes it up.

I love this m2 Air so much.

> it turned out it was the neighbor's HVAC unit

The problem is everywhere. The HVAC industry really cheaps-out on rubber grommets.

The problem is rubber grommets??

Outdoor unit makes noise, but noise travels up and out, not over. Problem is vibrations. Screw a metal vibrating thing into a concrete pad, vibrations travel through pad into ground, across the ground, vibrating the foundation, walls, glass, etc. of neighboring home. Rubber grommets between the metal and the concrete pad mitigates vibration. It's actually supposed to be there for all metal feet screwed into pad, but you rarely see it, causing unnecessary low frequency noise pollution, and the vibrations themselves, as far as vibrations go, are bad vibrations.

How could i diy good grommets for my house safely?

I suppose you have to cut costs somewhere....

Oh man, I'm sitting with an M1 Mac mini and an M1 Pro MacBook Pro on my desk, and until I read your comment, I'd completely forgotten that computers used to make noise!

I had to put blocks of ice under my previous MacBook Pro when compiling.

Will never forget that era of the Mac.

> Similarly, I've been using the M1 MPB since I got it. I only remember that it never makes noise when I'm reminded of it, such as in this conversation.

I take a lot for granted about my M1 MBP.

And it all becomes noticeable when using anybody else's computer.

The screen, the speed, the battery life, the fan, the heat. Its all so... crippling on other people's machines.

That's the same feeling I have when I step outside my Tesla and into just any other car.

It isn't that it is superior in every single way, but it is the balance of features that hits a sweet spot, making other cars feel like they have noticeable bugs.

I had the opposite feeling stepping into a Model 3 every day while my 4 series was shipped across the country.

Things that I thought had been solved decades ago, things like how to make basic switchgear that doesn't feel like it's going to break off in my palm*. How to indicate a turn signal in the center of my field of vision rather than where non-essentials like HVAC normally go. How to let me change HVAC settings without feeling around on a touch screen. How to support Carplay like a base model Corolla. The most basic mitigations for NVH so highway speeds don't sound like a mouse sneaking cheese in a wind tunnel. How to make ACC intuitive rather than a song and dance of checking what color a piece of text is. All suddenly were suddenly lost.

* I guess now we know why the OG Model S needed Mercedes window switches.

This right here. My work requires me to jump back to a Windows machine occasionally (but not for a good long while), and while I always appreciated the silence of the ARM MacBook Air - it's only in firing the windows box back up that I was hit with just how obnoxiously loud it was.

I've had to rip the dGPU out of the machine and cut the fan thresholds back to virtually nothing just to make the machine tolerable now. A lot of what Apple does is stuff you don't need, but it definitely spoils you.

Most laptops have the fan speeds set overly aggressive. I bought a Asus Zephyrus last year and by default the fan was coming on and off every few seconds, I tweaked the fan profile and boost policy so now it rarely comes on at all for regular day to day work. CPU temperatures stay under 55C.

And that's how Apple spoils you.

There are M1 machines with fans, but you can rest assured they did the tuning so that you don't end up paying thousands for a machine with poorly thought out fan curves that don't incorporate basic hysteresis.

No. Apple just has their own poorly thought out fan curves just with different priorities. You can see this really easily on the Intel models where they don't even bother to turn on the fan until it hits something dumb like 90C. Quieter sure but I doubt good for long-term life of the hardware. It also had a negative impact on performance.

My M1 handily outperforms my old hot, loud Intel MBP, and the M1 doesn't even get warm to the touch doing the same workloads that would make the MBP turn into a jet engine. It's not just fan curves.

I'm using the Intel 12th gen and I don't hear noises even when compiling Rust projects. The only time I hear noises is when some Electron web app burns my CPU for no reason.

I also get 7-8 hours of work (that is compiling code during these hours) and something like 12 hours without compilation work.

I'm using Archlinux with Sway and enable/disable GPU as needed. It's not as perfect as Apple's new M2 but it's close to competition.

FWIW I've got Linux running on an 11'th gen Intel i5 thin-and-light and the fan only spins up if I do some big number crunching program. And this is with all the extra fat that Ubuntu drags along. I think fan noise is a very specific Window problem, maybe?

> That learned me.

That taught me?

You were just learned a new slang

I learned a learning is I was taught a lesson and both those slang words at the start are stupid.

It's idiomatic slang. Same thing.

> That taught me?

That larned me?

So, basically the Retina display didn't do anything except spoil you for tech that was okay before. That's good for the manufacturer, but this sort of hedonic treadmill seems like something to avoid?

Apple improves some things that users don’t strictly need. Like the speakers on their laptops, I don’t really need them to be as good as they are but it sure is enjoyable.

It's not just Apple of course, everyone who can afford it uses high DPI screens now.

Pixels aren't there to be seen, there is literally no display which wouldn't be, ceteris paribus, better at high DPI.

It's like speakers which hiss: easy to ignore until you spend time with ones which don't.

The notion that I care about a clearer picture on the screen I use to make my living, for hedonic reasons, is pretty comical actually. It's straightforward ergonomics which pays off in a lot of ways.

Pen and paper used to suffice. I think reducing it to hedonism is lacking nuance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com