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M1 CPU consumes up to 30W of electricity. That’s impossible to do with minimal or no active cooling. Instead of designing good cooling, Apple does aggressive th

M1 CPU consumes up to 30W of electricity. That’s impossible to do with minimal or no active cooling. Instead of designing good cooling, Apple does aggressive thermal throttling. The problem is not specific to Apple, many other companies are offering ultra-thin laptops with similar tradeoff. As a consumer, I don’t like that tradeoff. I’m already paying for a fast CPU. Yet due to the lack of a proper fan assembly (a low-tech and cheap component, compared to CPU) I’m only able to get good performance for brief periods of time. While usually that’s OK, sometimes I want sustained performance for minutes or hours, even on a laptop.

foldr 6y ago
The M1 Macbook Pro has active cooling, if that's important to you as a matter of principle. However, real world tests show that the performance gains from actively cooling the M1 are pretty marginal. More broadly, it seems that you prioritize performance over everything else when it comes to laptops. Apple doesn't – especially not in its 13" range. What they are providing is a small form factor with crazy good battery life and performance that's more than good enough for most people. Thermal throttling is not inherently a bad thing – it's a sign of a balanced design. If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with, then you want a processor that uses more power at peak loads than you can dissipate (so that you can take full advantage of the cooling off periods provided by non-peak usage).
- Const-me 6y ago
  > you prfioritize performance over everything else More or less. I’m a programmer, and I want computers to compute things. If I only wanted them to play youtube, I’d get a tablet instead. If I only wanted a laptop to run a word processor, I would look at these MacBooks or equivalent Windows devices. > If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with In case of ultra-thin laptops like macbooks, the primary reason why it’s fixed to just 10-15W is to look good on marketing materials. Technically, it’s easy and cheap to make it fixed to the value several times higher than that. After all, 10 years ago mainstream laptop CPUs were dissipating 35-45W: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Mobile_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Mobile_platform
  - foldr 6y ago
    It's not fixed to 10-15W in the Macbook Pro. I'm also a programmer, but don't find performance particularly important once it reaches an acceptable level. I would rather have a thin a light laptop (as would most people, judging by sales).
    - Const-me 6y ago
      > I'm also a programmer I should have noted I specialize on desktop and embedded development. I can always find uses of faster CPUs, more cores, and more RAM. > I would rather have a thin a light laptop I agree, but to an extent. I don’t have a gamer-targeted laptop because heavy to carry around. But still, I believe these unupgradable ultra-thin laptops are a bad deal. They only saving a few millimeters of thickness and ~0.2kg of weight, for a huge performance cost. BTW, I have installed 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD in my reasonably thin (2cm) and reasonably light (1.6kg) 13” laptop. > as would most people, judging by sales Judging by sales, most people don’t need a computer at all, they prefer phones and tablets. On the internets, more than half of page views are now from mobile devices.
      - foldr 6y ago
        >They only saving a few millimeters of thickness and ~0.2kg of weight, for a huge performance cost. Can you point to a laptop that's only slightly larger than the M1 Macbook Pro and has much better performance?
        Const-me 6y ago
        If I wanted a new one, I'd look for something like HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 with AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U CPU.
        foldr 6y ago
        But there’s no indication from benchmarks that it would have much better performance then the MacBook Pro. Indeed, it would be expected to perform less well on some common tasks - and it has half the battery life. I can’t even find a benchmark comparing that particular laptop to a MacBook Pro. Did you find one somewhere?

foldr 6y ago

The M1 Macbook Pro has active cooling, if that's important to you as a matter of principle. However, real world tests show that the performance gains from actively cooling the M1 are pretty marginal. More broadly, it seems that you prioritize performance over everything else when it comes to laptops. Apple doesn't – especially not in its 13" range. What they are providing is a small form factor with crazy good battery life and performance that's more than good enough for most people. Thermal throttling is not inherently a bad thing – it's a sign of a balanced design. If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with, then you want a processor that uses more power at peak loads than you can dissipate (so that you can take full advantage of the cooling off periods provided by non-peak usage).

Const-me 6y ago
> you prfioritize performance over everything else More or less. I’m a programmer, and I want computers to compute things. If I only wanted them to play youtube, I’d get a tablet instead. If I only wanted a laptop to run a word processor, I would look at these MacBooks or equivalent Windows devices. > If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with In case of ultra-thin laptops like macbooks, the primary reason why it’s fixed to just 10-15W is to look good on marketing materials. Technically, it’s easy and cheap to make it fixed to the value several times higher than that. After all, 10 years ago mainstream laptop CPUs were dissipating 35-45W: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Mobile_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Mobile_platform
- foldr 6y ago
  It's not fixed to 10-15W in the Macbook Pro. I'm also a programmer, but don't find performance particularly important once it reaches an acceptable level. I would rather have a thin a light laptop (as would most people, judging by sales).
  - Const-me 6y ago
    > I'm also a programmer I should have noted I specialize on desktop and embedded development. I can always find uses of faster CPUs, more cores, and more RAM. > I would rather have a thin a light laptop I agree, but to an extent. I don’t have a gamer-targeted laptop because heavy to carry around. But still, I believe these unupgradable ultra-thin laptops are a bad deal. They only saving a few millimeters of thickness and ~0.2kg of weight, for a huge performance cost. BTW, I have installed 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD in my reasonably thin (2cm) and reasonably light (1.6kg) 13” laptop. > as would most people, judging by sales Judging by sales, most people don’t need a computer at all, they prefer phones and tablets. On the internets, more than half of page views are now from mobile devices.
    - foldr 6y ago
      >They only saving a few millimeters of thickness and ~0.2kg of weight, for a huge performance cost. Can you point to a laptop that's only slightly larger than the M1 Macbook Pro and has much better performance?
      - Const-me 6y ago
        If I wanted a new one, I'd look for something like HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 with AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U CPU.
        foldr 6y ago
        But there’s no indication from benchmarks that it would have much better performance then the MacBook Pro. Indeed, it would be expected to perform less well on some common tasks - and it has half the battery life. I can’t even find a benchmark comparing that particular laptop to a MacBook Pro. Did you find one somewhere?