Best of both of worlds is:

- active cooling

- lack of a touchbar

I've been wondering if someone could make an active cooling dock for the Mac Book Air. I was even thinking the M1 wattage is low enough that you could have a thermoelectric cooler lowering case temp down to room temp.

I mean if you're desperate to get it to compile in 20 minutes instead of 25 for a particular occasion, you could just grab a bag of peas from the freezer and set the laptop on them.

Got $300 to spare? https://svalt.com/products/cooling-dock

That would be the Mac Mini.

But seriously, I share your opinion on laptop keyboards: regular function keys please.

The touchbar is pretty great if you program it yourself using, e.g., BetterTouchTool. I especially love the clipboard widget - works fantastic with VIM/EVIL.

That's exactly what it does.

But 8-9 minutes of full 100% CPU is a relatively rare occurrence for the vast majority of users. Developers might occasionally do that, but it will be very language and project dependent.

I assume it does. My 13" 2016 MBP doesn't turn on its fans much unless it's busy.

My 16“ MBP is running its fans basically all day (iOS dev work and ARQ backups)

Yeah, I think the 45W laptops always run them, even if sometimes very slowly. The smaller laptops have been able to turn them off completely for a while, though, when not very busy.