Correctness of this statement is only notional.
All of their current models can have much better thermals without increasing their bulk if they actually tried to make it so. Quite number of other makers have superior thermals in even thinner packages, and, more importantly, cheaper ones.
So far, none of their recent models show a single sign of thermal engineering being being done as such. Their 16 inch model has a thermal solution I would only see in a $300 white label laptop. Yes, they added few extra millimetres to fans, but at the same time they still use the same single skinny heatpipe, and tiny radiators.
And all of that is when they have access to the best parts, and fabrication services on the market. If you look closely on their BOM, they have many surprisingly low spec parts, and very minimalistic, spartan design decision.
Which "$300 white label laptop" has equivalent thermal design to the 16" MBP?
Which "other makers" actually have "superior thermals in even thinner packages" that are "cheaper"? That sounds like bullshit to me, given what I've seen and experienced in the PC market, where loud fans that run all the time are very common.
And even when the Aero is running games or training a neural net, it's only ~70°C
1: The thermal solutions in macbooks are comparable to some $300 laptops
2: Other companies do laptops that are just as thin and powerful as macbooks but have much better thermals.
The list they posted is 2, not 1.
The relevant comparison is to the $2400 MBP base price.
Thermal zones in servers is a good example of low physical footprint and high density power consumption that cools quite well. The engineering effort being spent on a good thermal solution can cause a device that is thin to outperform a thicker device.
It's just that Apple does not seem to be spending the resources there.
It's not just that they haven't put enough engineering effort in - they consciously made a design tradeoff.
But yeah it's all trade-offs.
But the same design constraints were used in a mini-itx gaming PC on the linus tech tips channel a few months ago.. I can't seem to find the video now though. The thermal performance was amazing.
For contrast, I've got a Sun Fire T2000 at home that's louder than the airliners flying overhead (my current and previous apartment both happen to be under airport flight paths, for SFO and RNO, respectively). For obvious reasons (at least until I can figure out how to get a reliable network connection to my garage) that one gets run pretty sparingly, lol
The Microsoft Surface Books also have a 1060 inside, but they are whisper quiet.
Yes. And it's not even a subtle marketing feature. Reviewers ogle over internal designs.
But it's also partly in their dna. Landing on the wrong side of compromise is something they've been doing for a long time even in desktops.
Unfortunately, some conditions force the discrete GPU to activate - one of which is "being plugged into an external monitor." Even if you've only got terminals open, the GPU runs real hot with 1% load, and the fans ramp up to match. (This may only be true for some monitors - my work-provided monitor is the Apple Thunderbolt Display).
Sometimes Slack forces the discrete GPU to turn on, for example when clicking on an embedded youtube video. The discrete GPU will remain in use until Slack is restarted. Other applications sometimes behave similarly - I use https://gfx.io/ to see what applications are forcing it on.
Perhaps the cooling engineering is better, but the practical effects of it make me miss my 13" laptop.
Had something similar with AMD (desktop) GPU some years ago. It wouldn't go to the lower power states if my desktop refresh rate was set above 119 Hz. So it would be hot and fairly loud. So I ended up using 119 Hz on the desktop and configure games to use 144 Hz.
I also noticed that the video card wouldn't decrease the RAM clock rate significantly, but when on the desktop reducing the RAM clock a lot had a very noticeable impact on heat and no measurable performance degradation. The answer I got for that was that it was tricky to dynamically scale the RAM to such a degree (IIRC I set it to half normal speed). I ended up using an overclocking tool with profiles, worked fine.
It's frustrating that this problem is present with all-Apple hardware.
However, I'm not sure whether that's due to a recent software update or the fact I recently switched the cable I use from HDMI to DisplayPort.
My XPS 15 had a similar issue where turning on the GPU made it heat up and become loud - actually the discrete GPU offered no performance increase because the heat made everything throttle....... sad! At least I could use an external monitor with that one though.
It's just a limitation of the laptop form factor. My desktop has a 45 watt processor, same as the i7s, and it has a huge block of metal and a 120mm fan to keep it cool quietly (but still audible under load). There's no way to fit a 45w CPU and 45w GPU into a laptop and make it work.
I'm frustrated because the fans often spin up loud when GPU usage and CPU usage are both below 10% - when I'm literally just reading my email.
I manually disable Intel Turbo boost now though. And for some reason when I start up my laptop it can reach around 90 degrees C if I have a bunch of things open (I guess it turbos when it is restoring previous apps open) but that makes sense though.
Corollary: when in doubt, don't.
This ability will be removed in 10.16
/s
I also recall the patches people had for things like Jazz Jackrabbit that ran a busy-loop some number of times in hot code because timing was execution-dependent in games like that. Faster CPUs made the game unplayable!
I wish they’d make a thicker laptop with more room inside, but that’s just not what they do.
Apple aren't stuffing a third party CPU into an inadequate cooling solution with the iPhone because there isn't one. If there was an equivalent to i7/i9 in terms of mindshare in the mobile market I wouldn't be suprised if Apple released a phone with a low clocked and badly cooled one of those too.
Some releases have been worse than others, this would be my favourite example: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Core-i9-s...
It might have escaped your notice that (1) third party ARM CPUs for mobile devices are not exactly difficult to find and (2) Apple was in fact using one before they decided to take the design in-house.
See also: Intel labeling middling 2c/4t cpus as 'i7' a few generations ago despite them not being at all comparable to the desktop equivalents because they know people will buy them based off the model number and not the actual performance. (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/95451/i...)
And NVidia giving all their mobile GPUs the same names as the desktop cards (pre 10XX gen, they're actually the same cards with slightly lower clocks now) despite them being entirely different hardware. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_900_series#Products)
Actual performance doesn't sell nearly as well as perceived performance.
(Also I guess it's all about marketing for everyone)
I think I saw a bit of that phenomenon with Snapdragon variations and # of cores.
> Apple says "we are listening now, and here is a new cooling design," then it comes out to be even less adequate that the old one. I can't think of anybody else capable of trolling up their customers like that.
Apple's thermal engineering is simply bad, and doing it bad is a company policy.
There are no other believable explanation to me. Apple been promising to fix their thermal design for years on end, with each year's model being supposed to have better thermals than the previous one, but in reality all their designs were consistently crappy.
The only explanation to that for me is that they took thermals as a subtle marketing feature, just like makers of laptops with crappy batteries always find ways to draw battery life from thin air.