8 ms·

100% agree. The last generation of MacBook pros with intel processors were virtually unusable for zoom calls or any intensive processing power tasks.

Spooky23 4y ago
Companies always solve their own problems first. Apple uses WebEx, which is probably the most piggy of the videoconferencing solutions that I use in terms of cpu and memory.
furyg3 4y ago
This is downvoted, but my intel MacBook Pro (maxed out specs) from 2015 really was dying on zoom / MS teams calls. Probably says a lot about those two apps, but this was one of the main reasons I upgraded to an M1 Mac during corona.
- drcongo 4y ago
  I'd forgotten, because I've had an M1 Pro for a while now, but Slack video calls on my last gen, maxed out Intel MBP could heat the thing enough to burn through to the earth's core.
- theodric 4y ago
  Yeah, same, that's why I resorted to water-cooling :) https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/so-i-water-cooled-my-macbook-pro.2290339/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/so-i-water-cooled-my-ma... It's pretty much silent now, even with the CPU governor pegged to max.
  - bartread 4y ago
    Thank you! I've been looking for a water-cooled laptop solution. I've tried the fan based laptop coolers and they're basically a waste of time (plus they add to fan noise). This is what I wanted. Nobody sells it, but I don't mind a bit of fabbing.
    - DonHopkins 4y ago
      I had to rub a plastic bag of frozen peas on the bottom of my overheating x86 MBP to make an important zoom meeting one time. It made the peas inedible.
- bartread 4y ago
  Same, and same spec machine (2015 15" maxxed out everything). I did manage to make it handle Zoom just fine by opening it up and blowing it out with an air duster, which I've been doing about every 6 months since 2018 or so. The interior is a magnet for dust in a way that my Dell work laptop just isn't (even though that thing is a PoS in many other ways, most of which I suspect are down to Windows rather than the hardware). After a periodic dusting it runs a whole lot better - no lag or dropped frames - even when the fans come on. It's still a nightmare for fan noise compared with my 2011 17" MBP (again, maxxed retail specs, but then replaced internal drive with SSD - which made it a new machine - and upgraded to 16GB RAM because you can replace at least some stuff in machines of this vintage), which then unfortunately died due to the GPU desoldering issue (I've already "fixed" it once by reflowing the solder, but this only held for a couple of weeks before it died again). I think I'm going to wait for M2 MBPs and then splurge - hopefully get 7 years out of the new machine as well.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  The only thing my 2015 pro had trouble with was Teams. No problem with Zoom for me. But Teams was a nightmare of dropped sound and video in both directions.
  - maliker 4y ago
    I have had luck running Teams in the safari web app instead of the native (ahem Electron) app. Cuts the CPU usage down to 25% instead of 75%.
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      Interesting, as an engineer, I wonder what explains that.
      - maliker 4y ago
        My guess is that the Electron app is using a generic video codec that they got working reliably across Windows/Mac/Linux, but Safari is forcing a more efficient one that's well-optimized for Mac only.
- chrisweekly 4y ago
  Bizarre how my 2012 mpb15r (16GB RAM, SSD) is still usable and maybe preferable to models 3 or 4 years newer.
  - smartbit 4y ago
    Which os & version are you running?
    - chrisweekly 4y ago
      Catalina (10.15.7)
  - jhugo 4y ago
    It's almost like different people have different expectations from their computer. (Different workloads, different environmental conditions, etc.)
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  Yes, mine too. I actually set up a large desk fan pointed at the keyboard to help dissipate the heat. Got so hot I would burn the tips of my fingers if I let them rest on the keyboard. It was not a well designed laptop.
ineedasername 4y ago
Zoom kills the battery on my (non Mac) laptop as well, why the heck does a simple video conference app have this kind of power draw?
- duped 4y ago
  Software video code/decode is extremely expensive. It's actually a serious issue for sales these days, we have a compute expensive product that can't be demo'd effectively over zoom.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    It does depend a lot on the software and I don't get why zoom is falling behind here. I'm dealing with this problem a lot on a recent Intel MBP and in my experience: Hot jet engine: Meet on Firefox, slack video, zoom. Works well: meet on Chrome, AWS chime, pop. Is totally on MBP for being an odd one, but also on the software since we have counterexamples of good performance.
    - eastbound 4y ago
      I do my Zoom calls happily with by 2013 MBP 15”. But I haven’t upgraded macOS for 3 years, partially because BigSur dropped support for these macbooks. Might it happen that more recent versions of macOS are extremely slower for Zoom? I’ve always thought they tune macOS for bigger L2 cache and it keeps paginating, but you’re telling me recent hardware is slower too.
sliken 4y ago
I got a late model MBP 16" i9. Zoom, Teams video confs, backups, and anything else even mildly intensive and it would ramp up to impressively loud levels, enough for people in the next room to ask what the noise was.
- nevi-me 4y ago
  I had a laptop that did that (got people noticing), I went to IT a few times to tell them that something was wrong with my laptop, as colleagues' were a bit quieter. I wish that I'd have been more firm with getting a replacement. I now have tinnitus after a year of a really loud laptop. I'm in my early 30s. I can't even tolerate my desktop with relatively quiet fans. One day in the office, I shutdown my laptop for the day after the air conditioners turned off at 5pm. There were about 6 people left in the room, everyone noticed that "something had just turned off". Be careful that your laptop doesn't damage your hearing.
  - emkoemko 4y ago
    come on now... damage your ear from a laptop fan? can't even damage your ear from the crap speakers laptops come with let alone a fan...
  - sydd 4y ago
    hmm while I do believe that your laptop is pretty loud, I seriusly doubt that it could damage your hearing. Ear damage occurs over 90-100 decibels, this is akin to leaning close to a loud vacuum and magnitudes greater than any laptop.
  - pudebe 4y ago
    You more probably became your tinitus because of being stressed that your laptop was so loud. No way it could physically harm your hearing ..
    - guenthert 4y ago
      afaik tinitus is not necessarily damage to the (inner) ear, but could as well be psychological or physical damage to the brain (blood flow). Have a doc check that out.
soperj 4y ago
This is really funny considering how high people were about their MacBook pros during this era.
- darkteflon 4y ago
  Funny, I remember we all complained about this issue ceaselessly.
  - soperj 4y ago
    I remember hearing people complain about their keyboards, not that they couldn't video conference.
    - darkteflon 4y ago
      In just about any HN thread on Apple’s Intel-powered laptops, you’ll find plenty of actual users complaining about excessive fan noise and getting heat-soaked under load - compilation and video calls being a big one - with the problem being greater for the higher-powered i7 and particularly i9 machines. We were definitely complaining.
      - KptMarchewa 4y ago
        I can believe in the conspiracy theory that i9 models were released purely to show how bad Intel processors were and to make Apple Silicon look better.
        darkteflon 4y ago
        Haha, I probably wouldn’t go that far, but yeah. I had a 15” i9 and they definitely weren’t worth the premium. Doesn’t help that it had what was probably the worst Pro chassis in the past decade or so.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      With COVID lockdowns a huge population of people suddenly started video conferencing with Zoom/Teams/etc. If pre-COVID you only conferenced occasionally with those apps or used FaceTime or some other conferencing better using hardware encode/decode the keyboard was likely your biggest problem.
KptMarchewa 4y ago
This was true for me. pmset -g thermlog was showing below 30% CPU limit with only Zoom. I swore I'll never buy MacBook again. Here I am with new 14' MBP... I have zoom, 10 IDE windows, slack, Spotify, Firefox with tons of cards, docker with ARM images and that thing barely turned fans to inaudible speeds. Only way I can make them relatively loud is by running heavy x86 docker images.
JohnBooty 4y ago
This hasn't been my experience. How many CPU cores we talking here? Haven't really run into Zoom perf problems since running it on a dual-core 2015 i5 MBP. Since 2019, I have been using Zoom multiple times per day on an early 2019 and a last 2019 Intel-based Macbook. Both are 6-core Intel i7 based. One with 16GB, one with 32GB. Roughly speaking, Zoom eats a single CPU core or so. This is far from ideal but the machine remains plenty usable. No insane fan noise, etc. No problems doing pairing sessions, etc. This is not a defense of Apple, Zoom, or Intel for that matter. Not really a fan of the latter two myself. It's just interesting that your experience is "virtually unusable" while mine is "fine" -- I'm curious what the difference is.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  I honestly wonder if parent plugged their MacBook into power on their left? I’ve found my meet conferences are unbearable when my MBP is plugged into the wrong side and then overheats and throttles the CPU.
ungamedplayer 4y ago
Its interesting that Apples "premium line" at the time can't handle zoom, whereas my mid level lenovo ( Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8665U CPU ) has no issues with zoom. Feels like poor design, not architecture issues.
urthor 4y ago
Last generation? Without too much unkindness, MacBooks have been like this since the 1990s. Many people I know wouldn't have considered them for one second before the M1.

Spooky23 4y ago

Companies always solve their own problems first. Apple uses WebEx, which is probably the most piggy of the videoconferencing solutions that I use in terms of cpu and memory.

furyg3 4y ago

This is downvoted, but my intel MacBook Pro (maxed out specs) from 2015 really was dying on zoom / MS teams calls. Probably says a lot about those two apps, but this was one of the main reasons I upgraded to an M1 Mac during corona.

drcongo 4y ago
I'd forgotten, because I've had an M1 Pro for a while now, but Slack video calls on my last gen, maxed out Intel MBP could heat the thing enough to burn through to the earth's core.
theodric 4y ago
Yeah, same, that's why I resorted to water-cooling :) https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/so-i-water-cooled-my-macbook-pro.2290339/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/so-i-water-cooled-my-ma... It's pretty much silent now, even with the CPU governor pegged to max.
- bartread 4y ago
  Thank you! I've been looking for a water-cooled laptop solution. I've tried the fan based laptop coolers and they're basically a waste of time (plus they add to fan noise). This is what I wanted. Nobody sells it, but I don't mind a bit of fabbing.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    I had to rub a plastic bag of frozen peas on the bottom of my overheating x86 MBP to make an important zoom meeting one time. It made the peas inedible.
bartread 4y ago
Same, and same spec machine (2015 15" maxxed out everything). I did manage to make it handle Zoom just fine by opening it up and blowing it out with an air duster, which I've been doing about every 6 months since 2018 or so. The interior is a magnet for dust in a way that my Dell work laptop just isn't (even though that thing is a PoS in many other ways, most of which I suspect are down to Windows rather than the hardware). After a periodic dusting it runs a whole lot better - no lag or dropped frames - even when the fans come on. It's still a nightmare for fan noise compared with my 2011 17" MBP (again, maxxed retail specs, but then replaced internal drive with SSD - which made it a new machine - and upgraded to 16GB RAM because you can replace at least some stuff in machines of this vintage), which then unfortunately died due to the GPU desoldering issue (I've already "fixed" it once by reflowing the solder, but this only held for a couple of weeks before it died again). I think I'm going to wait for M2 MBPs and then splurge - hopefully get 7 years out of the new machine as well.
jrochkind1 4y ago
The only thing my 2015 pro had trouble with was Teams. No problem with Zoom for me. But Teams was a nightmare of dropped sound and video in both directions.
- maliker 4y ago
  I have had luck running Teams in the safari web app instead of the native (ahem Electron) app. Cuts the CPU usage down to 25% instead of 75%.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    Interesting, as an engineer, I wonder what explains that.
    - maliker 4y ago
      My guess is that the Electron app is using a generic video codec that they got working reliably across Windows/Mac/Linux, but Safari is forcing a more efficient one that's well-optimized for Mac only.
chrisweekly 4y ago
Bizarre how my 2012 mpb15r (16GB RAM, SSD) is still usable and maybe preferable to models 3 or 4 years newer.
- smartbit 4y ago
  Which os & version are you running?
  - chrisweekly 4y ago
    Catalina (10.15.7)
- jhugo 4y ago
  It's almost like different people have different expectations from their computer. (Different workloads, different environmental conditions, etc.)
throwaway09223 4y ago
Yes, mine too. I actually set up a large desk fan pointed at the keyboard to help dissipate the heat. Got so hot I would burn the tips of my fingers if I let them rest on the keyboard. It was not a well designed laptop.

ineedasername 4y ago

Zoom kills the battery on my (non Mac) laptop as well, why the heck does a simple video conference app have this kind of power draw?

duped 4y ago
Software video code/decode is extremely expensive. It's actually a serious issue for sales these days, we have a compute expensive product that can't be demo'd effectively over zoom.
- viraptor 4y ago
  It does depend a lot on the software and I don't get why zoom is falling behind here. I'm dealing with this problem a lot on a recent Intel MBP and in my experience: Hot jet engine: Meet on Firefox, slack video, zoom. Works well: meet on Chrome, AWS chime, pop. Is totally on MBP for being an odd one, but also on the software since we have counterexamples of good performance.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    I do my Zoom calls happily with by 2013 MBP 15”. But I haven’t upgraded macOS for 3 years, partially because BigSur dropped support for these macbooks. Might it happen that more recent versions of macOS are extremely slower for Zoom? I’ve always thought they tune macOS for bigger L2 cache and it keeps paginating, but you’re telling me recent hardware is slower too.

sliken 4y ago

I got a late model MBP 16" i9. Zoom, Teams video confs, backups, and anything else even mildly intensive and it would ramp up to impressively loud levels, enough for people in the next room to ask what the noise was.

nevi-me 4y ago
I had a laptop that did that (got people noticing), I went to IT a few times to tell them that something was wrong with my laptop, as colleagues' were a bit quieter. I wish that I'd have been more firm with getting a replacement. I now have tinnitus after a year of a really loud laptop. I'm in my early 30s. I can't even tolerate my desktop with relatively quiet fans. One day in the office, I shutdown my laptop for the day after the air conditioners turned off at 5pm. There were about 6 people left in the room, everyone noticed that "something had just turned off". Be careful that your laptop doesn't damage your hearing.
- emkoemko 4y ago
  come on now... damage your ear from a laptop fan? can't even damage your ear from the crap speakers laptops come with let alone a fan...
- sydd 4y ago
  hmm while I do believe that your laptop is pretty loud, I seriusly doubt that it could damage your hearing. Ear damage occurs over 90-100 decibels, this is akin to leaning close to a loud vacuum and magnitudes greater than any laptop.
- pudebe 4y ago
  You more probably became your tinitus because of being stressed that your laptop was so loud. No way it could physically harm your hearing ..
  - guenthert 4y ago
    afaik tinitus is not necessarily damage to the (inner) ear, but could as well be psychological or physical damage to the brain (blood flow). Have a doc check that out.

soperj 4y ago

This is really funny considering how high people were about their MacBook pros during this era.

darkteflon 4y ago
Funny, I remember we all complained about this issue ceaselessly.
- soperj 4y ago
  I remember hearing people complain about their keyboards, not that they couldn't video conference.
  - darkteflon 4y ago
    In just about any HN thread on Apple’s Intel-powered laptops, you’ll find plenty of actual users complaining about excessive fan noise and getting heat-soaked under load - compilation and video calls being a big one - with the problem being greater for the higher-powered i7 and particularly i9 machines. We were definitely complaining.
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      I can believe in the conspiracy theory that i9 models were released purely to show how bad Intel processors were and to make Apple Silicon look better.
      - darkteflon 4y ago
        Haha, I probably wouldn’t go that far, but yeah. I had a 15” i9 and they definitely weren’t worth the premium. Doesn’t help that it had what was probably the worst Pro chassis in the past decade or so.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    With COVID lockdowns a huge population of people suddenly started video conferencing with Zoom/Teams/etc. If pre-COVID you only conferenced occasionally with those apps or used FaceTime or some other conferencing better using hardware encode/decode the keyboard was likely your biggest problem.

KptMarchewa 4y ago

This was true for me. pmset -g thermlog was showing below 30% CPU limit with only Zoom. I swore I'll never buy MacBook again. Here I am with new 14' MBP... I have zoom, 10 IDE windows, slack, Spotify, Firefox with tons of cards, docker with ARM images and that thing barely turned fans to inaudible speeds. Only way I can make them relatively loud is by running heavy x86 docker images.

JohnBooty 4y ago

This hasn't been my experience. How many CPU cores we talking here? Haven't really run into Zoom perf problems since running it on a dual-core 2015 i5 MBP. Since 2019, I have been using Zoom multiple times per day on an early 2019 and a last 2019 Intel-based Macbook. Both are 6-core Intel i7 based. One with 16GB, one with 32GB. Roughly speaking, Zoom eats a single CPU core or so. This is far from ideal but the machine remains plenty usable. No insane fan noise, etc. No problems doing pairing sessions, etc. This is not a defense of Apple, Zoom, or Intel for that matter. Not really a fan of the latter two myself. It's just interesting that your experience is "virtually unusable" while mine is "fine" -- I'm curious what the difference is.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago
I honestly wonder if parent plugged their MacBook into power on their left? I’ve found my meet conferences are unbearable when my MBP is plugged into the wrong side and then overheats and throttles the CPU.

ungamedplayer 4y ago

Its interesting that Apples "premium line" at the time can't handle zoom, whereas my mid level lenovo ( Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8665U CPU ) has no issues with zoom. Feels like poor design, not architecture issues.

urthor 4y ago

Last generation? Without too much unkindness, MacBooks have been like this since the 1990s. Many people I know wouldn't have considered them for one second before the M1.