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Comment by qrohlf | Hacker News Reader

Funny that they clearly use a macbook as their "generic spinning laptop" image in the product video since this is sort of the one category of general computing device in which thermals seem to be more or less a solved problem due to the characteristics of the Apple Silicon chips.

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They're solved and not solved. I love my M1 MacBook, but I also know that Apple worries a ton about thermal design. One of the big problems with the iPhone mini was dealing with the thermals in such a tiny package. While The M1 and M2 chips are allowing Apple to create great fanless and fan-lite designs, I'm sure Apple would love to be able to squeeze more CPU power into a MacBook Air or be able to offer even faster processors in a MacBook Pro by using more power.

Intel has been showing off "laptop" chips that are faster than Apple's. I put "laptop" in quotes because Intel often benchmarks their 45W "laptop" processors that would never fit in anything like a MacBook Pro or most other laptops.

Still, I'm sure Apple would love to be able to increase the thermal limit on their designs. Maybe even an iPad Pro could accommodate one of these (it looks like they're around 2mm thick).

Apple has done wonders to create processors that work extremely well within low power/heat constraints. I still think they'd love to be able to remove more heat and give them more room for their designs.

I thought the main difference between the studio and mini was the size of the heatsink allowed higher performance. It seems like if they could get the thermals better, the studio could shrink down to a mini size.

Responding to the (surprisingly passionate?) comments below – this word choice was poor, I should have probably said something along the lines of "this is one of the products on the market that is least subject to major thermal throttling issues, relative to any other laptop that they could have chosen for this demo video."

The main point being, out of all the laptops out there, I thought it was entertaining that they picked the one high-performance laptop brand I am familiar with that does not get hot when I use it.

Thermals are never a solved problem. System designers simply use up what is available (and usually won't stop there).

It's like saying processing speed is a solved problem. Engineers/scientist don't have any problems finding productive ways to use more processing speed.

> thermals seem to be more or less a solved problem due to the characteristics of the Apple Silicon chips.

I am actually at a loss for words. So I'll ask a question instead.

Do you really believe what you just said or do you have no clue how CPUs work and passive cooling works?

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