“Oh yeah and the keyboard won’t work”
I just bought an M2 air rather than a pro for my coding. It functions great. In my desk it’s fine. On my lap it’s uncomfortably hot after a long compile.
(That said if I asked somebody in Apple marketing they would probably suggest that the pro is there for people like me. )
Apple need to differentiate the pro from the air. Start at 16Gb maybe.
Why Linus hates Apple so much, of course he would not like to disappoint his PC friends on his channel but at least be logical.
TLDW: This video shows this device called the “Frore AirJet”, which is an active cooler that uses piezoelectrics rather than fans to push air through at 1700 pascals.
The Verge article on them: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/27/23975368/frore-airjet-apple-macbook-air-fanless-mems
The LTT team had to do a lot of modifications (remove the speakers to use the speaker vents for airflow, and remove the MagSafe port, one USB-C port, the keyboard’s input cables, and the Wi-Fi antenna), but they were able to get the following results:
Cinebench score Power usage Normal 15" M2 Air 8200 Around 14.5W Modded 15" M2 Air 8600 Around 19W M2 Pro 8700 Around 19.5W All that for a relatively tiny bump? I thought it would be a lot more drastic
the 13" macbook pro is no longer being made, so you can’t get this sustained performance in M3 and newer
The MacBook Pro now has the base M3 available.
It’s extra dumb because
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you are pulling significantly more power for a tiny performance bump, so less “power on time” for the same device
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that computer he’s trying to make exists and called MacBook Pro m2. Now MacBook Pro m3
Why would they degrade the user experience for MacBook Air while increasing performance on LONG and intense applications, a case NOT expected by the MacBook Air customer and also step on the toes of MacBook Pro.
This product is dumb and good thing it doesn’t exist lol.
You actually don’t know what you’re talking about, why are Apple fanatics so confidently ignorant. It’s performing BETTER because it has a higher thermal headroom and still runs cooler. You’re literally complimenting Apple for have poor thermals with your roundabout logic. Astonishing the mental gymnastics you’re pulling off.
It’s performing 5-7% better for 30% less battery life while a similarly priced, slightly more expensive 14 inch MacBook has much better cooling and better features with even more battery life. This doesn’t solve a problem it makes the air a worse product by lowering battery. The air is for nothing more than light work. I can’t imagine anyone who wants one of those would say “yes I’d rather have 30% less battery life for 5% more performance and 1 C cooler on the chassis”.
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I don’t get it. Based on the results wouldn’t using more Watts be worse?
My M2 air never even gets hot. What’s the point?
It will hilarious how much he had to break the machine to get those coolers in.
The tech is cool though. I don’t think Apple will put active cooling into the Air though. The passive is good enough for what Apple wants with the Air and is one of the few ways they can differentiate between the Air and the base level Pro. As long as the throttling is within reason and only affects more pro workloads, I think the silence is a bigger advantage.
Is there a Linus blocker browser extension? I am tired of seeing his face and his shitty videos.
Someone has a vested interest in Apple buying or licensing this tech.
Duh? You think who made this product is going to give it away for free?
The video is clear that this is a Frore Systems/Airjet demo. I feel like both the MacWorld article and LTT on this couldn’t have been clearer on that point. So, yeah, Frore Systems are obviously trying to get Apple to buy/license this tech (or the PC competition), and they aren’t shy about it.
Obviously not just Apple, everyone, they are trying to make their product replace fans in all computing.
Yep. Frore wouldn’t have gone through this kind of engineering effort for an LTT video. I bet they made this design for an internal demo with Apple and are hoping showing off with it will help convince them.
I saw this on PC World YT first, I don’t watch LTT, I don’t trust that dude and his channel. Here is the PC World YT link talking about actual tech and demo: https://youtu.be/u0k46Wnq3Rk?si=BoLk9mxEnOJTVEvj
It was on LTT months before that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdD0yMS40a0
PC World found them at CES earlier in the year, both Gordon M. and PC World take credit for doing the first interview and intro to the community, its awesome stuff: https://youtu.be/YGxTnGEAx3E?si=-gJc3rSlxKJ88_B8
Airjet seems amazing from the information I’ve read on it, hopefully it lives up to the hype and we see it replace fans. Quieter and better performance, Apple would love it.
No, Apple would not love it because it uses way more power. It’s extremely inefficient compared to a regular fan and the battery life would suffer.
If it’s smaller than a fan they can use the extra space to put more battery in. Not my problem to deal with, that’s for Apple engineers.
Not my problem to deal with
You could have just said you didn’t know what you were talking about from the get go…
I forgot, on reddit only apple engineers talk about things like this.
Although I think this is a cool new technology and Apple could implement this.
I would argue 99% of the userbase for the macbook air wouldn’t actually care. This laptop has always been the laptop for word processing, basic web browsing and just normal day to day computer usage. This laptop was never meant to handle long renders or any tasks that require 20+min of constant 100% load dumping heat into the system.
For the 99% of userbase for the macbook air, the passive cooling is plenty sufficient. Apple sacrificed cooling that wouldn’t really affect the majority of air user anyways for lighter weight, thinner device, cleaner built and absolute silence. For the user that the air is targeted for, these sacrifices are well justified.
I believe this technology would be very nice to be implemented in a new 13in macbook pro of some kind. Small laptop able to handle long load with some “pro” features (promotion, etc). But it’s unnecessary for the air as the majority of its userbase would never see those benefits.
I personally own a 13in M1 air, for what I do with it, it never needs more cooling than it has now and I would happily trade the potentially more cooling for the benefits listed above. I also have a full PC for when I need more power.
This laptop has always been the laptop for word processing, basic web browsing and just normal day to day computer usage
I’m pretty sure people use it to do advanced web browsing too…
There’s a whole range of things people do on a computer that doesn’t involve 20 minutes of 100% CPU load but also isn’t just “basic” web browsing and email. Picture stuff, audio stuff, slow-ass shit-optimized apps and processes of various kinds, uh a bunch of Excel formulas.
Sure nitpick at my wording. But that doesn’t change the fact that none of those tasks you mentioned will put the CPU to 100% load for 20+ min, which was the only scenario tested in that video and also the only time that the performance difference from active and passive cooling is significant enough to not be margin of error.
Even at that point, you will still only see a 5% decrease in performance with passive cooling.
My point stands, 99% of air users will never see the benefit of 5% performance increase when at full tilt for extended periods of time. Your advanced web browsing (whatever that means) still wouldn’t benefit from the additional cooling.
The M2 chip brings more speed to everything you do — whether you’re editing a video for class, collaborating on a business plan or streaming a show while you shop online. And with all-day battery life, you can leave the power adapter at home.
From the Macbook Air Apple page.
editing a video for class
Keyword here is “for class”, which is not a “pro” use.
It can edit videos and the M2 air is more than capable of doing so. Just won’t hold the same performance for extended periods of time. This marketing material also doesn’t defunk the fact that 99% of air users don’t put their air through long heavy workloads. Speak to anyone that actually does video editing as a job or just does heavy loads on a consistent basis, they are going to need 16gb of ram and at least 512gb storage. When air is upgraded to that, you might as well go for the 14in pro that gives these editors significantly more processing power. The targeted consumer for the air simply don’t care about long, heavy load performance.
Do you have a problem editing a video on a MacBook Air?
I think people are focussing too much on the specific machine and concluding this wouldn’t be worth it for the Air.
I don’t think it would make business sense in that making the Air equivalent to the Pro wouldn’t be a thing Apple would do.
I think it’s more of an opportunity to make the Pro line thinner / pack in more battery etc…
Too much focus on the Air rather than what the overall technology could open up.
I agree, hence my suggestion to put this in a new 13in pro of some sort. The air doesn’t really need this improvement, but other laptops definitely can benefit from it. I really don’t understand why so many people since M1 air have been criticizing the air’s cooling performance, it really doesn’t matter to the userbase it’s targeted at. Id definitely describe myself as a power user, it doesn’t bother me cause the job of my air is as it was intended for; word processing, homework and a thin and light laptop to carry all day.
I don’t know why people are dunking on LTT on this one. He clearly says that this is not the product he wants Apple to sell, just that he wants Apple to engineer this into their products, IO and speaker and all. Better cooling could benefit all of us after all.
Just let PCMR do PCMR things and move on with life.
I don’t know why people are dunking on LTT on this one.
Probably because of the click-bait title “We fixed it!” where nothing is to be fixed. A title like “Apple, we have a proposition” would be better.
Because this gets them views. We’ve been down this road before. Nobody at Linus likes these clickbaity titles they have to use for videos, but this is what people click and watch, which is what generates them money.
It gets them views and it also gets them flak from people who are annoyed with it.
Their quest for views doesn’t absolve them from criticism of hyperbolic clickbait titles.
The title is not “we fixed it”
LTT changes the title multiple times after uploading to see what gets them the most views.
The lack of cooling in the air is definitely something that should be fixed, it’s done like that on purpose so it doesn’t perform as well as the Pro. For the price it’s mad.
The lack of cooling in the air is definitely something that should be fixed
That’s not really the point of the MacBook Air. The Air lineup has always been about doing quick, bursty tasks effectively (email, web browsing, word documents etc). Apple Silicon chips have gotten to the point where fans are not necessary to achieve this objective, so Apple skips a fan in the Air models to help better differentiate the various MacBook models.
The 14in MacBook Pro with M3 chip is essentially just a high-end MacBook Air, as it carries most of the same limitations minus cooling.
No it isn’t, it’s done like that because it’s not meant to be used that way and it’s meant to be lighter and slimmer. His solution didn’t work, and while it probably could, why would Apple add this when it adds points of failure to a device that doesn’t need it
The M1 Air is an incredible value. And it’s got no need for a fan. I’d much rather a completely silent machine.
Because of what came out about ltt
No, it’s because every tech subreddit has a hate boner for whoever is biased against their brand, especially if clickbait titles and cringe grins are involved. This sub hated Linus even before those allegations.
Probably because LTT has been in multiple controversies lately, one that they themselves initiated. The clickbait-y title here ain’t helping their case either, even though the video itself has some merits, more or less lol.
Honestly, as someone that’s just swapped over into the Apple ecosystem, some of the reactions here are extremely off-putting. LTT has its clear biases here. In general, they’re a big fan of Apple’s hardware capabilities, especially surrounding the M-series CPUs. They aren’t a big fan of their misleading marketing, pricing, product segmentation, or locked down ecosystem. I feel like that is a very fair stance. Linus used to daily drive Airpods and wear an Apple watch, despite being staunchly an Android user ffs.
Fanboyism in the apple world is just nuts. No wonder they are called sheeple.
The thing is belonging to the blindly hate Apple fan club is equally annoying
blindly? Are you not reading the same thread I am. Yeah it’s totally blind though.
Here is a proper working example
Yeah, and he notes why pretty shortly into the video: the PC realm copies apple. The video seemed to be complimenting apple if anything, and the level of engineering seems pretty commendable.
Regarding the tech itself, I was looking into it for my personal pc a while earlier and it seems like each module has a max of 10W as it needs to act as a heatsink along with a fan. Performs better than passive of course, but (as evident by the video) still falls short to a conventional fan in a larger chassis.
Would have been useful to compare noise levels between this and the traditional blower.
Check out the frore air jet on YouTube, it’s almost noiseless
It is not the same metric these things are much higher pressure, this has been mentioned ad nauseum In the comparisons and documentations.
Finding it so difficult to watch LTT contents.
He’s so cringe
He’s out of ideas so he has to do this nonsense for views.
A channel like Gamers Nexus puts LTT to shame for PCMR. For Apple content there’s dozens of smaller channels.
Linus shifted his content all towards making PCMR comedy now. Most of the jokes are too forced.
Gamers Nexus is so engaging I’d rather just read some written article
GN is meant to be informative over anything else, so you can make informed purchase decisions. I much prefer that to clickbait-oriented channels like LTT.
That’s what I’ve said, for hard data I’d rather have it in a written form than suffer through bland and less time efficient video
If you want to cool a MacBook Air more, an actually practical solution is to layer the ‘heatsink’ with (0.5mm) thermal pads to turn the bottom cover into a heat dissipater
All while the chassis becomes even hotter than it already unbearably is. This is something I’ve done to some of my devices. They are untouchable and can no longer be placed on your lap(you know LAPtop) But sure that’s more practical. Jesus Christ
Apple calls these devices portable computers, and doesn’t recommend them to be on your lap. They may have been used on laps a while ago when they comfortably worked on top of people’s legs with the help of the large sturdy bases that they used to have, but most portables are now too thin for that purpose. Aren’t they usually called Notebooks these days, like in NotebookCheck?
Yea well I don’t remember the last time I used my laptop on my lap. Maybe years… I don’t even have this mod anymore like I said. Jesus Christ?
So to you, turning your chasis into an untouchable source of heat is “more practical” than the incorporation a cooling solution that makes it cooler and allows the device to run better due to less heat. Your metric of more practical is a perfect example of the responses In this thread. Illogical for the sake of it.
Incorporating a cooling solution that doesn’t let you use the keyboard or IO is more practical? Illogical for the sake of it. With my solution only the bottom gets hotter. And you still wouldn’t burn yourself if you touched it.
Did you even watch the video? You call that shit practical?
I’m starting to think you’re lying about having done this yourself
Why didnt they just replace the backplate with a specialized one instead of removing components? :(
I think that mainly to show that it can fit in Air’s design thickness-wise.