Contribution of OS to slim nature and passive fanless cooling of MacBook Airs

Posted by donboscow on Thursday March 27, 2025 @10:32AM
from the self-post dept.

If you recall Jobs' iPhone keynote in 2007 - he quoted Alan Kay saying that companies who are serious about software should make their own hardware. As we see MacBooks today are slim, fanless, passively cooled. That is indeed an engineering feat.

Question - how much of it is due to innovations in the OS - like optimizing code, multithreading architecture novelties, etc., and how much of it is pure hardware engineering like shoehorning lots of components in cramped space? Does the passive cooling without fan dependent on the OS in any way - that it runs in such a way that the machine is never heated above a certain threshold and hence fan is not required?

MacBook folks often say that Apple devices are col because the hardware and software are "intertwined". How exactly?

( 7 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Re:Contribution of OS to slim nature and passive fanless coo... by throwawayffffas on Thursday March 27, 2025 @11:04AM (#43494398)

Feels like marketing bs. The main thing that has driven the adoption of fanless designs is the improvement of the silicon process. The better the process gets, the more performance you can get out of the same watts. There are many fanless designs from other verndors as well.

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Re:Contribution of OS to slim nature and passive fanless coo... by donboscow on Thursday March 27, 2025 @11:51AM (#43494906)

Hmm thought so. They make hardware chips first, right, packing as many cores and transistors as possible in heat efficient manner? They make software like OS, apps, UX on top of the chips? Or is it that they plan the software first and build custom chip that is powerful and efficient enough to support their software vision? Seems unlikely, but just want to know.

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Re:Contribution of OS to slim nature and passive fanless coo... by scarface_74 on Sunday March 30, 2025 @09:50PM (#43529867)

They work in tandem.

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Re:Contribution of OS to slim nature and passive fanless coo... by donboscow on Monday March 31, 2025 @02:16AM (#43531702)

Can you explain a bit? How can they design chip based on software requirements? I mean - they can add more threading, cores, etc. to ensure that heavyweight software like gaming, photo or video editing etc. can benefit from them, but still, the chip design is generic and any heaveweight software can benefit from it, not necessarily Apple's own upcoming in-house software, right?

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Re:Contribution of OS to slim nature and passive fanless coo... by pvg on Thursday March 27, 2025 @10:39AM (#43494136)

Macbook Pros have fans.

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Re:Contribution of OS to slim nature and passive fanless coo... by donboscow on Thursday March 27, 2025 @10:59AM (#43494366)

Oops, sorry, I meant Air. Editing the question, thanks. But the Pro also rarely seems to emit sound of fan, unlike my earlier MacBooks (pre-2016), so something's changed for sure I think.

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Re:Contribution of OS to slim nature and passive fanless coo... by simon_acca on Friday March 28, 2025 @08:01PM (#43511262)

Plenty to read on this topic here

https://eclecticlight.co/m1-macs/

A good start is the series of articles “Making the most of Apple silicon power”

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