I ordered a mac. I’m conflicted on multiple points about it. Apple, walled garden, lack of repairability, T2 chip, telemetry data, lack of practical ports. But I just spent too many hours this week looking at every candidate I could find for a laptop that might be compatible with linux without issues, against what fits my needs/wants, against staying within a laptop pc budget. The hardware interface was an important aspect, i.e., good display resolution and size without stupid scaling issues, decent keyboard and touchpad, decent speakers. Next was polished software availability (some day, linux). And decent cpu and gpu power. None of this would have been difficult to find if I would accept running Windows, but I won’t. And I could have went for one of a handful of reportedly linux compatible machines with good cpu and gpu, but all of them fall down hard somewhere in the hardware interface or go too far outside the budget, + the lack of polished applications on linux. So I went for a gently used macbook pro. I’m already regretting it to some extent, but I got it well under market value. So I could easily change my mind and flip it after trying it for a while and seeing how things go.
Apple know how to squeeze the biggest battery possible into a chassis, that’s for sure. Tiny sliver of a mobo and all battery in them. But do try and watch out for any inexplicable hankerings to order pumpkin spiced lattes after it arrives!
Man, I don’t know. Aside from what I mentioned above, I’m reading that the 16" macbook pros (intel) have a serious design flaw that causes overheating. The design flaw: Using an intel cpu that is specced beyond it’s practical thermal design and putting it in a thin chassis that doesn’t have adequate airflow for the design. Will definitely be running some tests with a furrowed brow when it arrives.
Apparently this pushing of the specs of intel cpu’s has been going on for quite a few years. You running an intel or an M1? If intel, any overly loud fans or thermal issues? A bit on it here, as well as many other places:
That is reddit though, so read with a suspicious eye.
I have a 2017 Macbook pro so intel.
I could imagine if I did video editing the fan would be constantly on but for what I do with audio and watching youtube it’s fairly silent
I do have a spitfire kontakt library or 2 that will bring the fan to life and after30 mins will have it quite hot
You can make any laptop avoid throttling like a desktop.
You just make it bigger and heavier, with more cooling, and a bigger power supply system, and job done!
But then it isn’t an easily portable device.
Expecting a chip to perform as well as it does in a desktop system without any compromises on size, weight, or price, is unrealistic.
There is always a limit somewhere.
I’m not saying that better engineering can’t improve things, but if you want a chip that can hit peak performance in short burst workloads, and you want it small and light, eventually you’ll hit limits in sustained performance.
Chips could just not allow for bursts of non long term sustainable performance levels, but why would you throw that capability away?
That just makes a lot of little things take longer than they otherwise would.
Some people want a device that leans heavier toward ultimate portability, giving up sustained performance. Others want a device that leans heavier toward sustained performance, in trade of ultimate portability. Marketing pushes very hard the idea that a given device has both. The most powerful <insert device> ever, thinner and lighter, with smaller bezels. Even going so far as to put inappropriate chips into a thin and light chassis.
If the argument is for burst performance, then that performance should still be limited within thermal safety so as not to push the device into premature failure. And at a bare minimum, the device should have an adjustable thermal governor with a message relaying the risk of premature failure. But none of this helps to sell more devices, where pushing the idea that a device has both, ultimate portability and high performance, does sell more devices.
That depends on the cutoff, I don’t think anybody could say with a straight face that adding an extra 5mm of thickness to an Apple laptop would not make it an “easily portable device”. It’s the battle for razor thin that’s doing this, essentially marketing.
It’s Apple laptops with the Macbook Pro branding that are having the throttling problems, because they are too think to have adequate cooling for some of the included processors to run at max in. I’m talking about adding 5mm to whatever the problem laptop happens to be.
Adding 5mm does not make something less easy to move around.
I’m conflicted on multiple points about it. Apple, walled garden, lack of repairability, T2 chip, telemetry data, lack of practical ports. But I just spent too many hours this week looking at every candidate I could find for a laptop that might be compatible with linux without issues, against what fits my needs/wants, against staying within a laptop pc budget. The hardware interface was an important aspect, i.e., good display resolution and size without stupid scaling issues, decent keyboard and touchpad, decent speakers. Next was polished software availability (some day, linux). And decent cpu and gpu power. None of this would have been difficult to find if I would accept running Windows, but I won’t. And I could have went for one of a handful of reportedly linux compatible machines with good cpu and gpu, but all of them fall down hard somewhere in the hardware interface or go too far outside the budget, + the lack of polished applications on linux. So I went for a gently used macbook pro. I’m already regretting it to some extent, but I got it well under market value. So I could easily change my mind and flip it after trying it for a while and seeing how things go.
